Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Carson on M'Cheyne: Study and Piety

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart(Deut 6:5-6)


When D.A. Carson was asked, "Whom would you name as someone whose contributions have been overlooked?" His answer? Robert Murray M'Cheyne! (See this post and that one, from last week).

Carson explains further:
Where M’Cheyne excelled was in his mix of serious study and eminent piety. While still a theological student in Edinburgh, he met regularly with Andrew Bonar, Horatius Bonar, and a handful of other earnest ministers-in-training. The purpose of these informal meetings was to pray, to study, and to work through Greek and Hebrew exercises—disciplines M’Cheyne preserved throughout his short life. This group of students took the Bible so seriously in their living and preaching that when the eminent Thomas Chalmers, then Professor of Divinity, heard of the way they approached the Bible, he said, “I like these literalities.”

- In "Overlooked Shapers of Evangelicalism," Southern Seminary Journal (Spring 1999): 78.
I have found M'Cheyne's Memoirs so invigorating and challenging for the same reason - "serious study and eminent piety." What God has joined together let no man separate.

May the tribe of "literalities" increase!

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