Because I had a week off and some time traveling, I took the chance to read something that I actually wanted to read versus something I had to read for class. So after much deliberation about what book to read I chose Thomas Watson’s “Mischief of Sin”. Now I knew I wanted to read something puritanical and since I was going to be traveling and this book was hard cover so I chose this one.
I know its been said many times before about many different Puritans, and specifically John Bunyan, that when you prick them they bleed Bibline. Well, this book is no exception, as Watson litters the book with references and amazing quotes. Here are a few memorable lines that stay with the reader:
“We deal with God’s mercies as with flowers. When they are frewsh, we smell them and put them in our bosom. But within awhile, we throw them away and mind them no more.”
“Sin is the trojan horse out of which a whole troop of afflictions comes.”
“Sin brings many a one to a seared conscience… They are like the blacksmith’s dog that can lie and sleep near the anvil when all the spakrs fly about. Conscience is in a lethargy.”
“Tis good to fall into God’s hands when He is a friend, but it is ill falling into His hands when He is an enemy.”
“Oh, what a venomous, accursed thing sin is that makes a merciful God take comfort in the destruction of His own creature!”
“It is first a fox and then a lion. Sin does to a man as Jael did to Sisera. She gave him milk, but then she brought him low.”
And he wraps it up with a touching closing sentence in one chapter: “Christian, do not be desirous to be in heaven before your time. Wait but awhile and you shall have what you have prayed and wept for. ‘Tis but while and God will take the cross off your shoulders and set a crown upon your head.”
Every Christian needs to realize his own sin and exactly wha it is that he’s been saved from. A Christian can only live the way he ought by realizing what he was saved from.
Ramblings, Rumblings, and Ruminations 
Our paper for American Church History can be either on a particular person, event or movement in American church history or a biography of a person in Christian American church history. I was thinking of doing the biography on Jonathan Edwards by George Marsden, that’s supposed to be the “definitive” bio. I have it and hadn’t gotten to it yet. Any other suggestions on a topic or bio?
Good stuff!
the only reason I wouldn’t do Jonathan Edwards is just because it seems like everyone would do him. I would also look into George Whitefield, maybe Tozer who I think was a pastor in Chicago. Of course a biography would be easier to do than a movement, but a movement may be interesting. maybe something like the Crusade movement and its effects on American Christianity.
an interesting one would be the effect of the Auca 5 on the modern missions movement. That would be hard to do, but it seems like I’ve been hearing from a ton of missionaries who said they were inspired by Elliot and the others to do missions.
another one might be the effect of the Azusa Street Revival in LA in 1906, or Charles Finney and his effect.
one thing you might like is Christianity through the Civil War or whether the Revolutionary War was a just war. I guess it depends on how much research you gotta do.
Oooh, good ideas! I’d like to research them all…but it might cut into Greek exegesis. 😉 I also thought about maybe an exposition of the Christian mind at the time of Edwards and the effect of the 2nd Great Awakening, or a comparison b/w the 1st and 2nd Great Awakening.
I started the Edwards bio and was struck by the importance they attached to having a well educated mind. While women were not allowed collegiate education, his 10 sisters were highly educated in theology and the classics. Their father was a Pastor who had a school in part of their home, educating the children of the town as well as his own children. Even though their roles would be as homemakers, wives and mothers, it was considered vital for them to be well educated. “New England’s elite encouraged their daughters to develop their intellectual gifts as these were useful for religion.” His sister, Hannah, who didn’t marry till age 30 remarked that women may find the single state a great advantage “if they can make religion and knowledge their chief end”. That’s a lot different than what we’re often led to believe in the modern Christian community!
Pastor Steve one time went through all the people that came from Edwards, and almost everyone one of them held some major position somewhere in the country. I know one was Aaron Burr, that one stuck out to me.
Edward’s Descendants:
13 became college presidents, 65 college professors, 3 United States senators, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 physicians, 75 army and navy officers, 100 preachers and missionaries, 60 authors of prominence, one a vice-president of the United States, 80 became public officials in other capacities, 295 college graduates, among whom were governors of states and ministers to foreign countries.