GLASGOW, 9th December 1878.
MY DEAR ROBERT,
—From Day to Day is a book of most pleasant and profitable reading. It is 365 meditations—as many as Samuel Rutherford's Letters—as many as Enoch's years of earthly pilgrimage and walking with God. There is a clearness and pointedness in your style of writing that at once attracts the reader, and, dipping his rod in the honey, he finds his eyes enlightened.
Had I attempted such a book my aim would have been to forge a chain of 365 links—every day a doctrine that naturally followed the one before! But I fear my idea is Utopian.
Many thanks—and may you get thanks of the best kind in the prayers of those who are receivers of blessing by your pages.—Your brother in the faith and patience of the Lord Jesus,
ANDREW A. BONAR.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GLASGOW, 16th May 1882.
MODERATOR,
—I understand that to-morrow is your birthday. Well, in turning over some papers, I lighted on a few scraps of Robert M'Cheyne's, and one is entitled a 'Birthday Ode' to his father. I venture, my dear Moderator-Elect, to apply to you the two lines with which the fragment concludes :—
'We pray that, as oft as thy birthday appears,
Thy purified joys may increase with thy years.'
I hope to see and hear you on Thursday, if the Lord will. (The opening of the Free Church Assembly, of which Dr. Macdonald was that year to be Moderator.) Take this text, brother, 'Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law. Turn not from it to the right hand nor to the left, for then thou shalt prosper and have good success.' —
Your fellow-soldier,
ANDREW A. BONAR.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GLASGOW, 18th Jany. 1886.
MY DEAR 'ROBERT MACDONALD,'
—Only think how old you and I must be! (1) You were ordained in Blairgowrie before I was a minister at Collace, and I was there eighteen years, and have been in this city twenty-nine years. (2) This being so, it must be forty-seven years at least since you and I began to interchange ministerial services! How old we are now! Well, remember the Eastern saying,'‘The palm-tree bears the finest dates when it is a hundred years old,' and as you are on the way to that goal (though not quite in sight of it yet), we here in Glasgow, who are expecting you in the end of the week, are, of course, warranted to look for the 'finest dates' that were ever shaken from the Blairgowrie-and-North Leith Palm-tree. . .
Paul wrote to Philemon (verse 22nd): 'Prepare me a lodging.' Let me anticipate any such request by saying your prophet's chamber shall be ready for you (with a good fire in this cold, cold weather) whenever you come on Saturday. . . . —Ever yours, dear brother,
ANDREW A. BONAR.
Be the first to react on this!
Andrew Bonar (1810 - 1892)
He was a well-known pastor in Scotland with the Free Church. His brother Horatius was another well-known minister who was contemporary with Robert Murray Mchyene and others in those days. They saw a move of revival in their churches where the Spirit brought many immediate conversations in a short period of time.He is best known for his work on compiling the life of the prophet of Dundee: Robert Murray Mchyene: "Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McCheyne." One cannot read this volume and feel the sobriety of eternity and the fear of the Lord. He also wrote a wonderful volume on Leviticus.
Andrew Alexander Bonar was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and the youngest brother of Horatius Bonar.
He studied at Edinburgh; was minister at Collace, Perthshire, 1838 - 1856 (both in the Church of Scotland and the Free Church); and of Finnieston Free Church, Glasgow, 1856 till his death.
He was identified with evangelical and revival movements and adhered to the doctrine of premillennialism. With Robert Murray McCheyne he visited Palestine in 1839 to inquire into the condition of the Jews there. During the visit of Dwight L. Moody to Britain in 1874 and 1875, Moody was warmly welcomed by Bonar, despite the latter receiving considerable criticism from other Calvinist ministers in the Free Church.
Andrew Bonar preached from the whole Bible, the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. When one of his friends remarked on his originality in finding subjects for preaching, and wondered where he got all his texts, he just lifted up his Bible. He did not ignore any part of it, but explained it all. He did not shy away from any passages that might be seen as unpopular or unpleasant. Even the first chapters of Chronicles became 'God calling the roll of mankind.' He made it come alive as a history of men and women, living in their time, as we live in ours, accountable to God.
Christ and Him crucified was at the centre of all his preaching, in all parts of the Bible. He declared 'the whole counsel of God', and was deeply aware of his responsibility as a man of God. He spent hours every day in prayer and meditation of the Scriptures, and asking for the Holy Spirit to show the truth to him, so that he might pass it on to his flock. He wrote in a letter: "Persevering prayerfulness is harder for the flesh than preaching."
Above all, he was aware that his personal holiness would be of crucial importance to his preaching, as his remark shows: "Sins of teachers are teachers of sins."