At various times in history, nations and churches have issued calls to prayer, often in times of crisis. Whatever the rights and wrongs of these events, it is unquestionably the case that the Christian should be a praying person, and the church should be a living, praying organisation.

The Lord Jesus Christ himself taught his disciples how to pray, and God has seen fit to record that for us in the Scriptures. We have examples of Christ’s prayers (John 17, Luke 22) for our instruction, and there are many places in the Gospels where he tells his disciples to pray. In Acts we have descriptions of the early church and what they were doing – ‘they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’ – prayer was a key part of the early church.

In Acts 4 we have the believers praying for boldness in proclaiming the gospel, and when Ananias was told to go to find Saul/Paul, what did the Lord say to him? – ‘look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold he is praying’. Praying should be a natural part of the life of a Christian, it’s why Paul ends his description of the whole armour of God in Ephesians 6 with ‘praying at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication’. Then there is also that well-known passage at the end of James on the prayer of faith.

Prayer was part of the DNA of the early church, and so it should be for us today.

There are multiple places in the New Testament where Paul asks for others to pray for him and the work of the gospel. Examples would be Romans 15:30-32, Ephesians 6:18-20, 2 Corinthians 1:11, Philemon 1:22, and 1 Thessalonians 5:22 where he simply writes, ‘Brothers, pray for us’.

And at this time in the history of the work of the Banner of Truth Trust, the trustees and the staff of the Banner are simply taking the example of Paul and saying ‘brothers and sisters, pray for us.’

We know that there are many people around the world who do already pray for the work of the Trust, but at this time we want to bring a particular need to you for your prayers.

Summary – The Next Chapter Project

There is a pressing need for a new headquarters building for the Banner of Truth in Edinburgh. Much has been done already, but we now need to raise the necessary finances to see the project to completion.

We are asking people like you to pray for the project. Our particular prayer requests are listed below in this article.

And we are asking people like you, where possible, to consider financial contributions to the project. Details of how to donate are listed below.

Read on for more information on this Next Chapter…..

A Bit of History

It is nearly 70 years since the Banner of Truth was founded, and a little over 50 years since the Banner of Truth headquarters moved into its current premises in Edinburgh, Scotland.

From its humble beginnings in the 1950s the founders, Iain Murray, Jack Cullum, had a vision to make available the great truths of God that were to be found in the classic Christian books of the past – books that had enduring value but had become unavailable and out of print.

As the founders embarked on this venture, they probably had little idea of how God was to use their efforts in the coming years.

Along with other influences and people , the ministry of the Banner was used by God as part of a remarkable return to the ‘old paths’ of Christian truth. As men and women were once again able to read the writings of the Reformers, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, Ryle, Spurgeon and others, there was a renewed interest in biblical Reformed theology and a renewed understanding of how that affects Christian living, affects the church, and indeed, affects the proclamation of the gospel.

That renewal started off in the UK and US, and it spread to other countries too. For instance, Conrad Mbewe speaks about the impact of Banner of Truth books in his own life and how they played a part in the reformation of the church in Zambia.

There are many people who testify to the impact of the Banner of Truth on their lives. The following quote is from Sinclair Ferguson, who many readers will be familiar with.

Ever since, as a teenager, I happened on my local library’s copy of C. H. Spurgeon’s The Early Years, books published by the Banner of Truth Trust have been the soundtrack of my life. The same is true of friends whose ministries have shaped congregations and in some cases, an entire generation. We thank God for prompting, providing for, and blessing the vision of the trust founders, Iain Murray and Jack Cullum, in the nineteen fifties.

From those early beginnings of the first books and the magazine, the ministers’ and youth conferences developed. The work of the Book Fund grew from the early 1960s and through that endeavour hundreds of thousands of books have gone all around the world to needy places. And then more recently things like the podcast have been added in to the ongoing work of the Banner.

As we look back we can clearly see the hand of God guiding and blessing the work. Something like 20 million books have been distributed, and we have around 900 currently in print. Over two million magazines have gone out, and it is almost impossible to number the ministers, young people, and others who have attended our conferences.

The work of the Banner is multigenerational – the grandson of a man who was at the first Banner of Truth ministers’ conference is now in ministry and attends the conference. We now have men speaking at the Banner Youth Conferences who used to attend when they were young people, and now their children come along to the conference – we don’t think that we have seen grandchildren yet, but that is perhaps only 5 or 6 years away.

People Like You and the Hope for the Future

People like you reading this article are the people who have enabled the work of the Banner. You are the people who have been coming to Banner conferences, reading Banner books and magazines, visiting the website, listening to the podcast, subscribing to our mailings, and following Banner on social media. It is people like you, who over the years, have prayed for the ongoing work of the Banner. It is your work every bit as much as it is the work of our staff – you are a part of this story.

As we look to the future, we pray that the Lord will keep us faithful, keep us ever mindful that it is his work and not ours; as the psalmist says, we may labour but he is the one who builds the house. And our prayer is that our children, our grandchildren and, if the Lord tarries, future generations when we are long forgotten will know a Christian life with the Banner of Truth present.

It is our prayer that new generations of Christians will have their lives shaped by the biblical wisdom and practical theology of the Reformers and Puritans – those truths that are contained in Banner of Truth literature – whether that be books from the sixteenth century or the twenty-first century – and preached at our conferences. It is those truths that are the heartbeat of the Banner work and are the things that people like you have grown to appreciate and value.

The Present Need

The hope for the future that we have just described, presents us with a challenge in the present.

We have been in our current premises for over fifty years, and they have been a God-given provision. But now, as the work of the Banner has grown, and as we look forward to the next chapter of the work and ministry of the Banner, we have recognised that the current facilities are no longer suitable; indeed, they have become a limiting factor on the growth of the work. A new facility has been designed to address these problems.

The current office is no longer suitable for a twenty-first century publishing operation, and it cannot be modified to address that. Some of the facilities that we need to operate, we just don’t have, and lack of office space for daily activities has become a limiting factor in our work.

The design of the new facility solves these problems.

The Banner of Truth has some valuable archive material and many reference books which are difficult even for our staff to access. We would like to make these materials more accessible to staff, but also to make them available for others who visit to view and use them.

The design of the new facility solves these problems.

Then there is an opportunity to expand the conference ministry with day events that would generate additional material for wider dissemination, but we don’t have the space and capacity in the current facilities to host such events. Nor do the current facilities allow for filming and streaming of such events which would allow the events to be shared world-wide.

The design of the new facility solves these problems.

And then there is the warehouse. Designed in the 1970s it is no longer suitable for modern warehouse operations. And it is full! – the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule that applies to many things in life, also applies to warehouses. Efficient operation means that you should never be operating at over 80% capacity. We are operating at around 98% capacity. Added to that, the warehouse is 5 miles away from the office and that brings other problems.

The design of the new facility solves these problems.

We have many visitors who come and want to buy books and learn about the work of the Banner. Currently there is no dedicated retail space nor any space for presenting the story of the work of the Banner.

The design of the new facility solves these problems.

Needed Infrastructure

The bottom line is that we need a new headquarters to provide a suitable infrastructure for the work that we do now and to secure the ministry of the Banner for generations to come.

Nearly ten years after this need was first recognised, and after much prayer and careful consideration of the options, the conclusion is clear: we must now take the significant step of procuring a new building.

A lot of work has already been done. We have acquired a site on the southern edge of Edinburgh. We have planning permission to develop the site, and we have a settled building design that is in the process of gaining technical permits.

Some site preparation work has been completed, including an archaeological survey, ground investigations for foundation design, and initial site clearance.

But there is a long way to go and we need your help.

So, what might you be able to do to help?

1. Pray

We covet your prayers, your prayers that God would provide for the needs of the Banner of Truth.

We firmly believe that God has answered the prayers of his people in blessing what started off back in 1957 as a small endeavour to make some out-of-print books available, and we know that there are many people who have prayed for the work of the Banner of Truth over the years.

But we need the prayers of his people as we look to the next chapter of the ministry of the Banner.

So, we are asking that you would pray:

Pray that the Lord would provide the financial resources that we need for this major new development

Pray that the Lord would continue to bless the work of the Banner of Truth

Pray that he would provide all that we need to press on with the day-to-day work that he has given us to do

And as we step forward with this necessary project, in amongst all of the work and disruption that comes with creating a new home for the work of the Banner:

Pray that he would enable us not to be distracted, but to keep ‘on mission’ with the day-to-day work

To inform your prayers

In terms of finances, the project is going to cost in the order of £13.5 million, and we currently have about £5 million in hand, so we are looking to raise some £8 million. When you say that quickly, it doesn’t sound very much, but when you sit and think about it, it sounds a lot of money! But it is what is necessary to secure the future ministry and influence of the Banner of Truth. It is what is necessary to put in place the foundation for the future work, for future, yet unborn, generations. We could restate the financial need another way. Putting it in round numbers, could 10,000 people around the world who love the work of the Banner contribute £1,000? – that would work! We know that there are many more people than that around the world who follow what we do and have an interest in the work of the Banner.

So please pray that the Lord will provide. It does sound like a big number, but we have a big God who is able to bless and provide for us beyond what we can even imagine is possible.

2. Share the need

The second thing that you can do to help us is to tell people about what we are doing and ask them to remember the needs of the Banner in their prayers too.

Does your church have a prayer meeting? Please do make the work and needs of the Banner a regular part of your prayer meeting.

Perhaps you have people in your church who know very little about the work of the Banner. Then please tell them about it, tell them how you have benefitted over the years.

3. Give and share the targets.

If you are able to financially support this project, that would be very much appreciated, whether it be a large gift or a small gift. We have an article here on the website about the ‘power of littles’ that you might find interesting and encouraging.

Encourage others to consider giving – could your church consider a gift? Would your church even consider a special offering towards the needs of the Banner?

We also know there are people who God has blessed materially and who are sometimes looking for things that they can support to further the work of the gospel. If you know people like that, then please do make the need known to them. We are by no means expecting this, but we have known of needs like this being met with just one or two significant donations!

Could you be one of those 10,000 people we need?

How to give

• You can make a donation by credit card
• You can send a cheque to:
  The Banner of Truth Trust
  3 Murrayfield Road
  Edinburgh
  EH12 6EL
• Or you can contact our offices if you would like details for a direct bank transfer
  Call +44 131 337 7310, or Contact us

If you would like more information or to discuss a donation email John Rawlinson or call him on the UK office number above.

More Information about the Next Chapter Project

There is a lot of information about the project in the ‘Next Chapter area’ of the website. Do take a look. We have tried to make it interesting and informative. You can read background information about why this project is necessary, there is information about the location of the site in Edinburgh, and you can explore the building design and more.

Final Thoughts

Our mission is to equip the church, to equip you, to equip your congregations, to equip church leaders. We’re not about buildings.

But buildings are necessary if we want to see the Banner mission fulfilled and go forward.

We need facilities.

Please partner with us in prayer and giving for this need.

‘The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power’  – James 5:16

The post A Call to Prayer – The Next Chapter appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Perhaps to the ears of many of us today that doesn’t sound so bad, but for the ministers and the congregations who left, it was to have huge implications. The minister’s homes were lost, the new church had no buildings, there were wages to be paid. There were missionaries across the world who needed supporting.

For many, it seemed hopeless. How could the finances be raised to build the church buildings, build the manses, and support the ministers and missionaries? But Thomas Chalmers, one of the leaders of the Free Church was not daunted by the task. He had a vision for the financing of the new church, a vision that he called the power of littles!

‘What if’ said Chalmers, ‘every family in our churches were to give 1 penny per week. What could be achieved?’ The ‘power of littles’ scheme was launched, much to the scepticism of many in the church. But the sceptics were proved spectacularly wrong – the success of the scheme was astonishing. Some gave large amounts, but the majority of the funds came in from lots of small amounts, ‘the littles’. Within a year something like 470 churches had been built, a training college established (with premises built by 1850), and missionaries funded.

In another website article, you can read about partnering in prayer with the trustees and staff of the Banner of Truth as we seek to provide the premises that are needed for taking the work of the Banner into a new chapter.

With the support of people like you, who read our web articles, buy our books, come to our conferences, listen to our podcast, read the magazine and support the work of the Book Fund, over the last 69 years, the ministry of the Banner has been an integral part of the Christian life of many Christians and churches around the world. We give thanks to the Lord that he has been pleased to bless the work of the Trust and provide for the work over these many years.

Those of us who work at the the Banner of Truth recognize that the work is not just about the staff who have laboured over the years, but it is also about you, about those who have supported the work in so many ways.

As you read, you might be asking what is the relevance of Thomas Chalmers and the power of littles? In the article referred to above, which is a call to prayer, and also elsewhere on the website you will see numbers quoted for the funds that are needed to put in place the facilities that are desperately required for the next chapter of the work of the Banner. And they are large numbers; just as the figures were large in the early days of the Free Church.

Let’s put some round numbers to things. If we need £10M that sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it is the cost of 2026 construction projects. But what does that break down to in ‘the power of littles’ thinking? It’s 10,000 donations of £1,000. And that sounds like a different proposition.

We have many, many more people on our mailing lists than that, many more people than that who buy our books, and there are thousands of churches across the world who have been part of the story of the Banner of Truth. And you are probably one of them. Can you pray for us?

If people like you are praying for this project, is it too much to expect that our bountiful God could move 10,000 churches, organizations, and individuals to provide £1,000 of funding? Of course, there will be people/churches who may be able to contribute far beyond that, which would be a wonderful provision. And there will no doubt be many who are not able to contribute anything financially. If that is you, we understand that, but we covet your partnership in prayer. Whatever you are able to do, you can play a vital part.

The power of littles!

The post The Power of Littles appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

The Banner of Truth Trust was founded in 1957, and early in the following year the Trust published its first books. Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity was one of them. At that time the book and its author were little known. In an issue of the Banner of Truth magazine (Nov. 1957), the editor, Iain H. Murray, enthusiastically informed readers of the new titles that were soon to come from the press: ‘Watson’s Body of Divinity,’ he wrote, ‘contains some of the richest doctrinal and experimental material to be found anywhere amongst the Puritans.’ And then he asked, ‘Who can estimate how much we have suffered individually and as a nation for neglecting our unsurpassed seventeenth-century literature!’

The book when published carried an interesting note on its copyright page: ‘The unabridged but revised version of Watson’s Body of Divinity, published in 1890,¹ has been followed in this reprint. ‘This present edition, though a comprehensive work in itself, does not contain the whole of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism; it is the Publishers’ wish to reprint the remainder if warranted by public demand.’ Many contemporary voices decried the idea of republishing the books of seventeenth-century Puritans in the middle of the twentieth century. But the founders of the Trust believed that such were needed, and if made available, would be avidly read by Christians whose spiritual appetite was being whetted by the kind of preaching they had heard from the minister of Westminster Chapel, London, Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The trustees’ wishes were soon to be fulfilled, and in a manner ‘exceeding abundantly above all they could ask or think’; for not only was Watson’s Body of Divinity to be reprinted many times in the succeeding years,² but alongside it was soon to appear the two other parts of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism, The Ten Commandments (1959)³ and The Lord’s Prayer (1960).⁴ In 1971 the Trust also reprinted Watson’s sermons on The Beatitudes.⁵

The hunger for more of Watson’s writings led to the inclusion of a number of them in the Banner’s Puritan Paperbacks series. The first to appear was A Divine Cordial (1963),⁶ followed by The Doctrine of Repentance (1987), The Godly Man’s Picture (1992), The Lord’s Supper (2004), The Great Gain of Godliness (2006), and Heaven Taken by Storm (2025).

The seven decades that have passed since the beginning of the Trust’s work has witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the writings of the English Puritans. In acknowledgment of this, the Banner of Truth is issuing The Works of Thomas Watson. It is amazing to think that this will be the first time that Watson’s ‘concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive’⁷ treatises and sermons will appear in a uniform set of volumes, similar to those produced in former generations for the works of several of his contemporary Puritan authors, such as John Owen, John Flavel, and Thomas Brooks, which have also been reprinted by the Trust. It should be said, however, that not every work that bears the name ‘Thomas Watson’ has come from the pen of the minister of St Stephen’s, Walbrook. In particular, two works, The Witnesses Anatomized, and Jerusalem’s Glory, do not appear to belong to our Thomas Watson, when judged on the basis of internal and external evidence. We are grateful to Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn for his expert insight and helpful advice regarding this matter.

This new production has followed the editorial policy of George Rogers, principal of Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College, who prepared the 1869 edition of Body of Divinity (see his comments on p. xx — reproduced below for the sake of this article). Where it was thought necessary, translations of foreign words and phrases have been added, as well as footnotes to elucidate the text. May the ‘happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience, and practical wisdom’ make these volumes useful to all who read them.

The Grey House
Edinburgh
January 2026

The Editorial Policy of George Rogers (from page XX of Volume I of The Works of Thomas Watson):

‘All editions extant which we have seen, abound in errors and imperfections. These have been rectified, not entirely we fear, but in a degree as nearly approaching to accuracy as in revision of another’s composition could be expected. No alteration of sentiment has been made, but every shade of the author’s meaning has been scrupulously retained. The style has been modernised, so far as could be done without detracting from its own peculiar characteristics. Long sentences have been divided into two or three, where it could be done without injury to the clearness or force of the signification. Modern words have been substituted for such as had become obsolete; Latin quotations restored to their correct form, as far as their sources could be ascertained; and divisions of subjects more perspicuously arranged. The whole, in fact, has been rendered more readable, and consequently more attractive and intelligible, which in our estimation far outweighs all the supposed advantages that could arise from perpetuating the crudities and vulgarities, as they now appear to us, of former times. By popularizing ancient works, their readers are multiplied and their meaning may often be more readily apprehended.’

The Works of Thomas Watson:

The post The Works of Watson: Publisher’s Preface appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

In the small cemetery of Union Theological Seminary, beside a narrow road in the heart of rural Virginia, the earthly remains of Thomas Ephraim Peck were buried in the first week of October 1893. Two years later the first of these three volumes of his collected writings was published, and the set was complete by 1897. Since then the world has moved on, just as Union Seminary itself has moved to Richmond, the state capitol of Virginia, and, except for a few, Peck’s writings are as little known as that quiet country grave at Hampden-Sydney. In part the explanation lies in their rarity, for the original print run was probably not large and until the present there has been no reprint. A more fundamental reason, however, lies in the fact that even by the time of his death the convictions which he represented were losing ground both among the Southern Presbyterians to which he belonged and among evangelicals more generally. To read Peck today is to realise how much has changed and to conclude that either he or many contemporary spokesmen for Christianity are far astray from Scripture.

Born in 1822, Peck was brought up by his widowed mother in Columbia, South Carolina, where he graduated at the College of that state at the age of eighteen. It was here, also, that he came under the saving power of the gospel through James Henley Thornwell and by the latter he was prepared for the work of the Christian ministry. Such was Thornwell’s esteem for his pupil that, when he was delayed in taking up the pastorate of the important Second Church of Baltimore, he sent Peck, who was not yet twenty-four years old, to fill its pulpit in the meantime. Unexpectedly Thornwell was not released from Columbia and the Baltimore congregation were happy to appoint his deputy to the charge in 1846. One of the finest of Thornwell’s surviving letters was one of encouragement written to ‘My Dear Thomas’ at Baltimore in 1848: ‘I have never entertained a doubt that you were the Lord’s instrument, to accomplish the Lord’s work, in the sphere of your labours … Effective sermons are the offspring of study, of discipline, of prayer, and especially of the unction of the Holy Ghost.’ But Peck was evidently finding that his attainments in preaching fell far short of his desires and Thornwell, often regarded as the preacher par excellence, consoled him with these words, ‘My own performances in this way fill me with disgust. I have never made, much less preached, a SERMON in my life; and I am beginning to despair of ever being able to do it.’¹

In a fuller biographical account which the reader will find in the third volume of this set, C. R. Vaughan speaks of Peck’s years in the Second Church of Baltimore as years of slow progress and of difficulty. No doubt this was preparatory to his future greater usefulness. Few men have safely attained to spiritual leadership without a preparatory period of humbling. During this period he edited with his friend, Dr Stuart Robinson, the Presbyterian Critic and Monthly Review (1855-56).² For a longer period in later years he was to be an associate editor of the Southern Presbyterian Review.

In 1857, when Peck was expecting to move to Lynchburg, Virginia, the Baltimore Presbytery directed him to remain but to remove to the charge of the large Central Church left vacant by the departure of Stuart Robinson. Thus, as Vaughan says, ‘Peck, suppressing his personal preferences, assumed the care of a large and important field in the same city in which he had spent twelve years of discouraging work.’

Leaving Baltimore in 1860, Peck took up the great work of his life at Union Theological Seminary. This Seminary, the first in the South, had arisen as a department of the College of Hampden-Sydney in 1823-24. Soon the two became separate institutions and the Seminary gained its own buildings in the same location with John Holt Rice as its first president.³ The death of Rice in 1831 slowed the growth of the work but it increased again notably after the appointment in 1853 of Robert Lewis Dabney as professor of Church History and Government. The next year Benjamin M. Smith was elected professor of Oriental Literature. By 1860, when student numbers stood at thirty-nine, it was thought desirable to transfer Dabney to the chair of Theology, leaving Peck to take the chair of Church History. After the devastation of the Civil War, from which several of the students never returned,⁴ this same division of duties between Peck and Dabney continued until the latter’s removal to Texas in 1883. Thereafter, Peck succeeded Dabney as professor of Theology, and continued in that post through the last ten years of his life until his death at the age of seventy-three. Dabney outlived him and it is indicative of the abiding affection which existed between the men who taught at Union that he directed that on his death his body was to be taken back to Hampden-Sydney. ‘He loved the homely little cemetery,’ his biographer writes, which contained the dust of friends and of three children.⁵

In speaking of ‘the great men of the past,’ Ernest Trice Thompson, in his monumental history of the Presbyterians of the South, lists them at one point in this order: ‘Thornwell, Dabney, Palmer, Peck . . .’⁶ In the last thirty years the memory of the first three has begun to be revived with the republication of their works and biographies.⁷ It is fitting that these volumes of Peck should also appear. C. R. Vaughan, his successor at Union, said of him: ‘As an expositor of truth, as an exegete of Scripture, as a philosophic student of history, he was probably without a rival in his day.’⁸ Peck’s mother survived him, and to her Palmer wrote of her son:

He was so strong in his convictions, so unswerving in fidelity to truth, so powerful in his humility before God to prevail in prayer, so wise and considerate in counsel, that he always seemed a strong staff on which to lean in time of trouble and of peril to the Church. On these public grounds I always admired and loved him; while a closer personal affection for him grew out of the intercourse of the years long since gone by.⁹

In a chapter entitled ‘Some Presbyterian Leaders of Our Own Time’, Henry Alexander White wrote: ‘First among these let us name a beloved instructor, that godly teaching elder, Thomas E . Peck.’¹⁰ Despite such tributes it was only with difficulty that T. C. Johnson brought together anything that began to approach the worth of the man in these volumes. This is reflected in the original title given to this set, Miscellanies of Thomas E. Peck. It was a fitting description, for the volumes do not contain ‘works’ prepared by the author for publication. Many items included were indeed written for the press and gathered by Johnson from various journals, but they were not composed with any sequence in view. Other material is from surviving manuscripts of his speeches or (in volume 3) from ‘notes’ used in the seminary class or in the pulpit.¹¹ C. R. Vaughan observed the difficulty in the sketch of Peck’s life which originally appeared before this set was published: ‘It was a fault with him, as it is with other gifted men, that he published so little.’

Bearing this in mind the present publishers considered a reprint of only parts of these three volumes. We decided against that course for the very good reason that, while there is undoubtedly an unevenness in some of the material, striking and suggestive insights turn up repeatedly in sections where they might least be expected. All in all, readers will prefer to make their own decision on what remains of abiding value.

In view of Peck’s identification with theology which is already more readily available in the writings of Thornwell and Dabney, it may also be queried whether Peck’s writings contain anything of distinctive importance which merit their republication. We believe that they do and that it would be a mistake to suppose that to have read one of these men is to have read them all. While representing a common ethos they thought too much of the need for independence in judgment not to be in occasional disagreement. Dr Thompson illustrates this by a subject keenly debated after the Civil War, namely, whether or not black congregations should be encouraged to meet separately and  independently of the white, contrary to previous practice. Dabney was for that proposal. Peck was against and asked:

Why . .. should the freedmen who cultivate our soil, serve us in our houses, cook our food and nurse our children be put into a church by themselves? … If the freedmen should, all of them, become Presbyterian in faith and order we ought to welcome them all into our pale. This distinction of race, be it remembered, has been expressly abolished by Christ.¹²

One of Peck’s arguments against the separation proposed brings out a prominent aspect in his thinking. He pointed out that the black population constituted ‘above all others’ the poor of the land and asked, ‘Are we prepared to say that these poor shall be excluded from our pale?’ This was driven home with the assertion, ‘I have no doubt that one great cause of the little progress made by the Presbyterian Church in Virginia is its neglect of the poor, both white and black.’ In harmony with this view are two sermons in this volume and his address on ‘Systematic Beneficence’ which led to the Presbytery of Baltimore reminding its congregations that giving is ‘an act of religious worship . .. an ordinance of God as much as prayer, or preaching or singing.’¹³ In part out of the same concern Peck was a leader in the endeavour to have the office of the deacon restored to its full and proper function in the Presbyterian churches where too often ‘it remained comparatively unimportant.’¹⁴

It was on debate on the same subject on another occasion that we get a glimpse of what Vaughan calls Peck’s ‘keen sense of humor’. In a General Assembly debate in 1868 a committee chaired by Peck put forward the recommendation that the use of a hat in taking up the collection in Sunday services should be discontinued. A minister from North Carolina expressed strong opposition to such a departure from custom and, holding up his own hat (a fine glossy beaver) demanded, ‘The people are accustomed to the use of the hat. It is endeared to them by familiarity and habit. What would you substitute in place of it?’ ‘I would remind our brother,’ Peck responded, ‘that it is not always such a hat as he held up to view that is carried around in raising a collection. Sometimes it is an old, greasy slouch.’¹⁵

Given such a stand-point it might be thought that Peck would have supported the popular practice of teaching that Christians should all tithe. But Scripture, he believed, did not support that conclusion, and his treatment in this volume of ‘The Moral Obligation of the Tithe’ is a good example of an important argument which is not readily to be found elsewhere. Another example of his ability to take up subjects not to be found in the works of his better-known colleagues has to do with revival. The whole Old-School of men to which he belonged believed in outpourings of the Spirit at special epochs in history. One such revival, affecting wide areas, had occurred in Hampden-Sydney itself in 1787. But too often the belief was assumed rather than clearly set out as Peck does on ‘Revivals of Religion’ in this volume.

Some parts of these volumes will be seen only as expressing the opinions of a past age and the denominational loyalties of the author. No doubt there are instances where that is true, yet part of the value of these volumes is the pervasive scriptural seriousness which forces the reader to question whether it is we who may be adrift from the truth. As an instructor Peck certainly wanted nothing more than to have his pupils bring all to the test of Scripture. No one left Union Seminary in his day without being impressed with the conviction that all success and popularity gained without the sanction of the word of Christ can ultimately only bring disaster.

Many of the subjects in these pages remain critically relevant to the church at the present time. They include such issues as those of worship, of church and state, of the moral law and of Roman Catholicism. Unlike too many of the professors of the present day, Peck does not write as an academic. He would have agreed entirely with the words of John Milne, a Scottish contemporary, who wrote, ‘The Church’s danger ever has been to substitute a ministry of the intellect for a ministry of the Spirit: to confide in the human instead of the superhuman.’¹⁶

Peck’s writings pass on to us the same message which Thornwell wrote to him as a young minister in 1848, ‘Have faith in God; aim singly at His glory.’ A little anecdote which Vaughan gives us suggests that Peck kept that aim before him. When the Civil War had convulsed the nation in calamities, a Virginian in another part of the state met someone from the neighbourhood of the seminary and asked for news. The reply he got was long remembered: ‘Well,’ answered the person from Hampden-Sydney, ‘Dr Dabney is fighting the Yankees, Dr Smith is hunting for provisions, and Dr Peck is trusting in God.’ Whether we agree with Peck in all things or not, a Christian can hardly rise from his writings without wishing for more of that same spirit, to be kept in the same steadfastness to the end.

IAIN H. MURRAY
3 Murrayfield Road
Edinburgh
October 1998

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