Greater than a King

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 24, 1858

Greater than a King.

The Rev. John Brown, of Haddington, born in 1722, one of the most distinguished ministers of Scotland in his day, has the following testimony:

"After all, I dare not but confess Christ to be the best Master I ever served. Often in preaching and otherwise, I have found his words 'the joy and the rejoicing of my heart.' He hath often laid matter before me in my studies, and enabled me with pleasure to deliver it. God in our nature, and doing all for us, and being all for us—free grace reigning through his imputed righteousness—God's free grant of Christ—and the believer's appropriation founded on that grant, and the comfort and holiness of heart and life flowing from that, have been my most delightful themes. And though I sometimes touched on the public evils of the day, yet my soul never so entered into these points.

"No sermons I ever preached were I think, sweeter to my own soul than those on Psalm 142:7, first clause; Isaiah 44:5, first clause; Isaiah 6:20, last clause; John 11:28; 1 Timothy 1:15, 16; and Rev. 3:21. The little knowledge which I had of my uncommonly wicked heart, and of the Lord's dealings with my own soul, helped me much in my sermons; and I observed that I was apt to deliver that which I had extracted thence, in a more feeling and earnest manner than other matters.

"And now, after near forty years' preaching of Christ and his great and sweet salvation, I think that if God were to renew my youth, and put it entirely in my choice, whether I would be a king of Great Britain, or a preacher of the gospel, with 'the Holy Ghost send down from heaven,' who had to beg his bread all the laboring days of the week, in order to have an opportunity of preaching on Sabbath to an assembly of sinful men, I would by His grace never hesitate a moment to make my choice. By the gospel do 'men live, and in it is the life of my soul.'"