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About the Book


"Backsliding" by Dag Heward-Mills is a powerful and practical book that explores the causes and consequences of spiritual backsliding. The author provides guidance on how to recognize and overcome backsliding through repentance, prayer, and a renewed commitment to God. This book serves as a comprehensive resource for Christians seeking to strengthen their faith and walk closer with God.

George Whitefield

George Whitefield George Whitefield was born at Gloucester in 1714. His mother kept the Bell Inn, and appears not to have prospered in business; at any rate, she never seems to have been able to do anything for her son’s advancement in life. Whitefield’s early life, according to his own account, was anything but religious; though, like many boys, he had occasional prickings of conscience and spasmodic fits of devout feeling. He confesses that he was ā€˜addicted to lying, filthy talking, and foolish jesting’, and that he was a ā€˜Sabbath-breaker, a theatre-goer, a card-player, and a romance reader’. All this, he says, went on till he was fifteen years old. Poor as he was, his residence at Gloucester procured him the advantage of a good education at the Free Grammar School of that city. Here he was a day-scholar until he was fifteen. The only known fact about his schooldays is this curious one, that even then he was remarkable for his good elocution and memory, and was selected to recite speeches before the Corporation of Gloucester at their annual visitation of the Grammar School. At the age of fifteen Whitefield appears to have left school, and to have given up Latin and Greek for a season. In all probability, his mother’s straitened circumstances made it absolutely necessary for him to do something to assist her in business and to get his own living. He began, therefore, to help her in the daily work of the Bell Inn. ā€˜At length’, he says, ā€˜I put on my blue apron, washed cups, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, became a professed common drawer for nigh a year and a half.’ This, however, did not last long. His mother’s business at the Bell did not flourish, and she finally retired from it altogether. An old school-fellow revived in his mind the idea of going to Oxford, and he went back to the Grammar School and renewed his studies. At length, after several providential circumstances had smoothed the way, he entered Oxford as a servitor at Pembroke at the age of eighteen. Whitefield’s residence at Oxford was the great turning-point in his life. For two or three years before he went to the University his journal tells us that he had not been without religious convictions, But from the time of his entering Pembroke College these convictions fast ripened into decided Christianity. He diligently attended all means of grace within his reach. He spent his leisure time in visiting the city prison, reading to the prisoners, and trying to do good. He became acquainted with the famous John Wesley and his brother Charles, and a little band of like-minded young men. These were the devoted party to whom the name ā€˜Methodists’ was first applied, on account of their strict ā€˜method’ of living. At one time he seems to have been in danger of becoming a semi-papist, an ascetic, or a mystic, and of placing the whole of religion in self-denial. He says in his Journal, ā€˜I always chose the worst sort of food. I fasted twice a week. My apparel was mean. I thought it unbecoming a penitent to have his hair powdered. I wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes; and though I was convinced that the kingdom of God did not consist in meat and drink, yet I resolutely persisted in these voluntary acts of self-denial, because I found in them great promotion of the spiritual life.’ Out of all this darkness he was gradually delivered, partly by the advice of one or two experienced Christians, and partly by reading such books as Scougal’s Life of God in the Soul of Man, Law’s Serious Call, Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, Alleine’s Alarm to Unconverted Sinners, and Matthew Henry’s Commentary. ā€˜Above all’, he says, ā€˜my mind being now more opened and enlarged, I began to read the Holy Scriptures upon my knees, laying aside all other books, and praying over, if possible, every line and word. This proved meat indeed and drink indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh life, light, and power from above. I got more true knowledge from reading the Book of God in one month than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men.’ Once taught to understand the glorious liberty of Christ’s gospel, Whitefield never turned again to asceticism, legalism, mysticism, or strange views of Christian perfection. The experience received by bitter conflict was most valuable to him. The doctrines of free grace, once thoroughly grasped, took deep root in his heart, and became, as it were, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Of all the little band of Oxford Methodists, none seem to have got hold so soon of clear views of Christ’s gospel as he did, and none kept it so unwaveringly to the end. At the early age of twenty-two Whitefield was admitted to holy orders by Bishop Benson of Gloucester, on Trinity Sunday, 1736. His ordination was not of his own seeking. The bishop heard of his character from Lady Selwyn and others, sent for him, gave him five guineas to buy books, and offered to ordain him, though only twenty-two years old, whenever he wished. This unexpected offer came to him when he was full of scruples about his own fitness for the ministry. It cut the knot and brought him to the point of decision. ā€˜I began to think’, he says, ā€˜that if I held out longer I should fight against God.’ Whitefield’s first sermon was preached in the very town where he was born, at the church of St Mary-le-Crypt, Gloucester – ā€˜As I proceeded I perceived the fire kindled, till at last, though so young and amidst a crowd of those who knew me in my childish days, I was enabled to speak with some degree of gospel authority.’ Almost immediately after his ordination, Whitefield went to Oxford and took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. He then commenced his regular ministerial life by undertaking temporary duty at the Tower Chapel, London, for two months. While engaged there he preached continually in many London churches; and among others, in the parish churches of Islington, Bishopsgate, St Dunstan’s, St Margaret’s, Westminster, and Bow, Cheapside. From the very first he obtained a degree of popularity such as no preacher, before or since, has probably ever reached. Whether on week-days or Sundays, wherever he preached, the churches were crowded, and an immense sensation was produced. The plain truth is, that a really eloquent, extempore preacher, preaching the pure gospel with most uncommon gifts of voice and manner, was at that time an entire novelty in London. The congregations were taken by surprise and carried by storm. From London he removed for two months to Dummer, a little rural parish in Hampshire, near Basingstoke. From there he accepted an invitation, which had been much pressed on him by the Wesleys, to visit the colony of Georgia in North America, and assist in the care of an Orphan House which had been set up near Savannah for the children of colonists. After preaching for a few months in Gloucestershire, and especially at Bristol and Stonehouse, he sailed for America in the latter part of 1737, and continued there about a year. The affairs of this Orphan House, it may be remarked, occupied much of his attention from this period of his life till he died. Though well-meant, it seems to have been a design of very questionable wisdom, and certainly entailed on Whitefield a world of anxiety and responsibility to the end of his days. Whitefield returned from Georgia at the latter part of the year 1738, partly to obtain priest’s orders, which were conferred on him by his old friend Bishop Benson, and partly on business connected with the Orphan House. He soon, however, discovered that his position was no longer what it was before he sailed for Georgia. The bulk of the clergy were no longer favourable to him, and regarded him with suspicion as an enthusiast and a fanatic. They were especially scandalized by his preaching the doctrine of regeneration or the new birth, as a thing which many baptized persons greatly needed! The number of pulpits to which he had access rapidly diminished. Churchwardens, who had no eyes for drunkenness and impurity, were filled with intense indignation about what they called ā€˜breaches of order’. Bishops who could tolerate Arianism, Socinianism, and Deism, were filled with indignation at a man who declared fully the atonement of Christ and the work of the Holy Ghost, and began to denounce him openly. In short, from this period of his life, Whitefield’s field of usefulness within the Church of England narrowed rapidly on every side. The step which at this juncture gave a turn to the whole current of Whitefield’s ministry was his adoption of the system of open-air preaching. Seeing that thousands everywhere would attend no place of worship, spent their Sundays in idleness or sin, and were not to be reached by sermons within walls, he resolved, in the spirit of holy aggression, to go out after them ā€˜into the highways and hedges’, on his Master’s principle, and ā€˜compel them to come in’. His first attempt to do this was among the colliers at Kingswood near Bristol, in February, 1739. After much prayer he one day went to Hannam Mount, and standing upon a hill began to preach to about a hundred colliers upon Matthew 5:1-3. The thing soon became known. The number of hearers rapidly increased, till the congregation amounted to many thousands. Whitefield’s own account of the behaviour of these neglected colliers, who had never been in a church in their lives, is deeply affecting: ā€˜Having’, he writes to a friend, ā€˜no righteousness of their own to renounce, they were glad to hear of a Jesus who was a friend to publicans, and came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. The first discovery of their being affected was the sight of the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks as they came out of their coal-pits. Hundreds of them were soon brought under deep conviction, which, as the event proved, happily ended in a sound and thorough conversion.’ Two months after this Whitefield began the practice of open-air preaching in London, on 27 April, 1739. The circumstances under which this happened were curious. He had gone to Islington to preach for the vicar, his friend Mr Stonehouse. In the midst of the prayer the churchwardens came to him and demanded his licence for preaching in the diocese of London. Whitefield, of course, had not got this licence. The upshot of the matter was, that being forbidden by the churchwardens to preach in the pulpit, he went outside after the communion-service, and preached in the churchyard. From that day forward he became a constant field-preacher, whenever weather and the season of the year made it possible. Two days afterwards, on Sunday, April 29th, he records: ā€˜I preached in Moorfields to an exceeding great multitude. Being weakened by my morning’s preaching, I refreshed myself in the afternoon by a little sleep, and at five went and preached at Kennington Common, about two miles from London, when no less than thirty thousand people were supposed to be present.’ Henceforth, wherever there were large open spaces round London, wherever there were large bands of idle, godless, Sabbath-breaking people gathered together, in Hackney Fields, Mary-le-bonne Fields, May Fair, Smithfield, Blackheath, Moorfields, and Kennington Common, there went Whitefield and lifted up his voice for Christ. The gospel so proclaimed was listened to and greedily received by hundreds who never dreamed of going to a place of worship. The ministrations of Whitefield in the pulpits of the Church of England from this time almost entirely ceased. He loved the Church in which he had been ordained; he gloried in her Articles; he used her Prayer-book with pleasure. But the Church did not love him, and so lost the use of his services. The Church was too much asleep to understand him, and was vexed at a man who would not keep still and let the devil alone. The facts of Whitefield’s history from this period to the day of his death are almost entirely of one complexion. One year was just like another; and to attempt to follow him would be only going repeatedly over the same ground. From 1739 to the year of his death, 1770, a period of thirty-one years, his life was one uniform employment, and he was always about his Master’s business. From Sunday mornings to Saturday nights, from the 1st of January to the 31st of December, excepting when laid aside by illness, he was almost incessantly preaching Christ and going about the world entreating men to repent and come to Christ and be saved. There was hardly a considerable town in England, Scotland, or Wales, that he did not visit as an evangelist. When churches were opened to him he gladly preached in churches; when only chapels could be obtained, he cheerfully preached in chapels. When churches and chapels alike were closed, or were too small to contain his hearers, he was ready and willing to preach in the open air. For thirty-one years he laboured in this way, always proclaiming the same glorious gospel, and always, as far as man’s eye can judge, with immense effect. In one single Whitsuntide week, after preaching in Moorfields, he received one thousand letters from people under spiritual concern, and admitted to the Lord’s table three hundred and fifty persons. In the thirty-four years of his ministry it is reckoned that he preached publicly eighteen thousand times. His journeyings were prodigious, when the roads and conveyances of his time are considered. He visited Scotland fourteen times; he crossed the Atlantic seven times, backward and forward, in miserable slow sailing ships, and arrested the attention of thousands in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He went over to Ireland twice, and on one occasion was almost murdered by an ignorant Popish mob in Dublin. As to England and Wales, he traversed every county in them, from the Isle of Wight to Berwick-on-Tweed, and from the Land’s End to the North Foreland. His regular ministerial work in London for the winter season, when field-preaching was necessarily suspended, was something prodigious. His weekly engagements at the Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, which was built for him when the pulpits of the Established Church were closed, comprised the following work: Every Sunday morning he administered the Lord’s Supper to several hundred communicants at half-past six. After this he read prayers, and preached both morning and afternoon. Then he preached again in the evening at half-past five, and concluded by addressing a large society of widows, married people, young men and spinsters, all sitting separately in the area of the Tabernacle, with exhortations suitable to their respective stations. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, he preached regularly at six. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings, he delivered lectures. This, it will be observed, made thirteen sermons a week! And all this time he was carrying on a large correspondence with people in almost every part of the world. That any human frame could so long endure the labours that Whitefield went through does indeed seem wonderful. That his life was not cut short by violence, to which he was frequently exposed, is no less wonderful. But he was immortal till his work was done. He died at last very suddenly at Newbury Port, in North America, on Sunday, 29 September, 1770, at the comparatively early age of fifty-six. He was once married to a widow named James, of Abergavenny, who died before him. If we may judge from the little mention made of his wife in his letters, his marriage does not seem to have contributed much to his happiness. He left no children, but he left a name far better than that of sons and daughters. Never perhaps was there a man of whom it could be so truly said that he spent and was spent for Christ than George Whitefield. [Adapted from J. C. Ryle’s ā€˜George Whitefield and His Ministry’ in Select Sermons of George Whitefield; see also George Whitefield’s Journals, Robert Philip’s Life and Times of George Whitefield, and Arnold Dallimore’s 2-volume biography George Whitefield.]

He Saw God Through His Pen: George Herbert

If you go to the mainstream poetry website Poetry Foundation and click on George Herbert’s name, what you read is this: ā€œHe is . . . enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist of this or any other time.ā€ This is an extraordinary tribute to a man who never published a single poem in English during his lifetime and died as an obscure country pastor when he was 39. But there are reasons for his enduring influence. His Short Life George Herbert was born April 3, 1593, in Montgomeryshire, Wales. He was the seventh of ten children born to Richard and Magdalene Herbert, but his father died when he was three, leaving ten children, the oldest of which was 13. This didn’t put them in financial hardship, however, because Richard’s estate, which he left to Magdalene, was sizable. Herbert was an outstanding student at a Westminster preparatory school, writing Latin essays when he was eleven years old, which would later be published. At Cambridge, he distinguished himself in the study of classics. He graduated second in a class of 193 in 1612 with a bachelor of arts, and then in 1616, he took his master of arts and became a major fellow of the university. ā€œHerbert’s aim was to feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel.ā€ In 1619, he was elected public orator of Cambridge University. This was a prestigious post with huge public responsibility. A few years later, however, the conflict of his soul over a call to the pastoral ministry intensified. And a vow he had made to his mother during his first year at Cambridge took hold in his heart. He submitted himself totally to God and to the ministry of a parish priest. He was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1626 and then became the ordained priest of the little country church at Bemerton in 1630. There were never more than a hundred people in his church. At the age of 36 and in failing health, Herbert married Jane Danvers the year before coming to Bemerton, March 5, 1629. He and Jane never had children, though they adopted three nieces who had lost their parents. Then, on March 1, 1633, after fewer than three years in the ministry, and just a month before his fortieth birthday, Herbert died of tuberculosis, which he had suffered from most of his adult life. His body lies under the chancel of the church, and there is only a simple plaque on the wall with the initials GH. His Dying Gift That’s the bare outline of Herbert’s life. And if that were all there was, nobody today would have ever heard of George Herbert. The reason anyone knows of him today is because of something climactic that happened a few weeks before he died. His close friend Nicholas Ferrar sent a fellow pastor, Edmund Duncon, to see how Herbert was doing. On Duncon’s second visit, Herbert knew that the end was near. So he reached for his most cherished earthly possession and said to Duncon, Sir, I pray deliver this little book to my dear brother Ferrar, and tell him he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it: and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public; if not, let him burn it; for I and it are less than the least of God’s mercies. (The Life of Mr. George Herbert, 310–11) That little book was a collection of 167 poems. Herbert’s friend Nicholas Ferrar published it later that year, 1633, under the title The Temple. It went through four editions in three years, was steadily reprinted for a hundred years, and is still in print today. Though not one of these poems was published during his lifetime, The Temple established Herbert as one of the greatest religious poets of all time, and one of the most gifted craftsmen the world of poetry has ever known. ā€œThe effort to say more about the glory than you have ever said is a way of seeing more than you have ever seen.ā€ Poetry was for Herbert a way of seeing and savoring and showing the wonders of Christ. The central theme of his poems was the redeeming love of Christ, and he labored with all his literary might to see it clearly, feel it deeply, and show it strikingly. What we are going to see, however, is not only that the beauty of the subject inspired the beauty of the poetry, but more surprisingly, the effort to find beautiful poetic form helped Herbert see more of the beauty of his subject. The craft of poetry opened more of Christ for Herbert — and for us. Secretary of God’s Praise On the one hand, Herbert was moved to write with consummate skill because his only subject was consummately glorious. ā€œThe subject of every single poem in The Temple,ā€ Helen Wilcox says, ā€œis, in one way or another, Godā€ (English Poems of George Herbert, xxi). He writes in his poem ā€œThe Temper (I),ā€ How should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rymes Gladly engrave thy love in steel, If what my soul doth feel sometimes, My soul might ever feel! Herbert's aim was to feel the love of God and to engrave it in the steel of human language for others to see and feel. Poetry was entirely for God, because everything is entirely for God. More than that, Herbert believed that since God ruled all things by his sacred providence, everything revealed God. Everything spoke of God. The role of the poet is to be God’s echo. Or God’s secretary. To me, Herbert’s is one of the best descriptions of the Christian poet: ā€œSecretarie of thy praise.ā€ O Sacred Providence, who from end to end Strongly and sweetly movest! shall I write, And not of thee, through whom my fingers bend To hold my quill? shall they not do thee right? Of all the creatures both in sea and land Only to Man thou hast made known thy wayes, And put the penne alone into his hand, And made him Secretarie of thy praise. God bends Herbert’s fingers around his quill. ā€œShall they not do thee right?ā€ Shall I not be a faithful secretary of thy praise — faithfully rendering — beautifully rendering — the riches of your truth and beauty? Saying Leads to Seeing But Herbert discovered, in his role as the secretary of God’s praise, that the poetic effort to speak the riches of God’s greatness also gave him deeper sight into that greatness. Writing poetry was not merely the expression of his experience with God that he had before the writing. The writing was part of the experience of God. Probably the poem that says this most forcefully is called ā€œThe Quidditieā€ — that is, the essence of things. And his point is that poetic verses are nothing in themselves, but are everything if he is with God in them. My God, a verse is not a crown, No point of honour, or gay suit, No hawk, or banquet, or renown, Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute: It cannot vault, or dance, or play; It never was in France or Spain; Nor can it entertain the day With a great stable or demain: It is no office, art, or news; Nor the Exchange, or busie Hall; But it is that which while I use I am with Thee, and Most take all. ā€œThe craft of poetry opened more of Christ for Herbert — and for us.ā€ His poems are ā€œthat which while I use I am with Thee.ā€ As Helen Wilcox says, ā€œThis phrase makes clear that it is not the finished ā€˜verse’ itself which brings the speaker close to God, but the act of ā€˜using’ poetry — a process which presumably includes writing, revising, and readingā€ (English Poems of George Herbert, 255). For Herbert, this experience of seeing and savoring God was directly connected with the care and rigor and subtlety and delicacy of his poetic effort — his craft, his art. For Poor, Dejected Souls Yet Herbert had in view more than the joys of his own soul as he wrote. He wrote (and dreamed of publishing after death) with a view of serving the church. As he said to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, ā€œ[If you] can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public.ā€ And this is, in fact, what has happened. People have met God in Herbert’s poems, and their lives have been changed. Joseph Summers said of Herbert’s poems, ā€œWe can only recognize . . . the immediate imperative of the greatest art: ā€˜You must change your lifeā€™ā€ (George Herbert, 190). Simone Weil, the twentieth-century French philosopher, was totally agnostic toward God and Christianity but encountered Herbert’s poem ā€œLove (III)ā€ and became a kind of Christian mystic, calling this poem ā€œthe most beautiful poem in the worldā€ (English Poems of George Herbert, xxi). Love (III) Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guiltie of dust and sinne. But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lack’d any thing. A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here: Love said, you shall be he. I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee. Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I? Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame Go where it doth deserve. And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame? My deare, then I will serve. You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat. Herbert had struggled all his life to know that Love’s yoke is easy and its burden is light. He had come to find that this is true. And he ended his poems and his life with an echo of the most astonishing expression of it in all the Bible: The King of kings will ā€œdress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve themā€ (Luke 12:37). You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat. This is the end of the matter. No more striving. No more struggle. No more ā€œspiritual conflicts [passing] betwixt God and my soul.ā€ Instead, Love himself serves the poet’s soul as he sits and receives. Words as a Way of Seeing Worth George Herbert found, as most poets have, that the effort to put the glimpse of glory into striking or moving words makes the glimpse grow. The poetic effort to say beautifully was a way of seeing beauty. The effort to find worthy words for Christ opens to us more fully the worth of Christ — and the experience of the worth of Christ. As Herbert says of his own poetic effort, ā€œIt is that which, while I use, I am with thee.ā€ ā€œThe poetic effort to speak the riches of God’s greatness gave Herbert deeper sight into that greatness.ā€ I will close with an exhortation for everyone who is called to speak about great things. It would be fruitful for your own soul, and for the people you speak to, if you also made a poetic effort to see and savor and show the glories of Christ. I don’t mean the effort to write poetry. Very few are called to do that. I mean the effort to see and savor and show the glories of Christ by giving some prayerful effort to finding striking, penetrating, and awakening ways of saying the excellencies that we see. Preachers have this job supremely. But all of us, Peter says, are called out of darkness to ā€œproclaim the excellenciesā€ (1 Peter 2:9). And my point here for all of us is that the effort to put the excellencies into worthy words is a way of seeing the worth of the excellencies. The effort to say more about the glory than you have ever said is a way of seeing more than you have ever seen. Therefore, I commend poetic effort to you. And I commend one of its greatest patrons, the poet-pastor George Herbert. Article by John Piper

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