10. Andrew Bonar (1810–1892)
One of the richest experiences you can have is reading the diaries and journals of great men and women in Christian history. Among many that I enjoy, perhaps my favorite is Andrew Bonar: Diary and Life edited by his daughter, Marjory Bonar, and published by Banner of Truth Trust.
Most people know Andrew Bonar as the brother of hymn-writer Horatius Bonar and the close friend of Robert Murray McCheyne. He was also the editor of the best edition of Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, and the author of both a devotional commentary on Leviticus and Christ and His Church in the Book of Psalms, which has been reprinted by Kregel Publications.
But when you read his journal, you will meet and learn to love a truly great man of God. He lived and labored at a critical time in the church in Scotland, and God used him in wonderful ways to uphold his truth and build his people.
Andrew Alexander Bonar was born on May 29, 1810, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the seventh son of James and Marjory Bonar. He was surrounded by spiritual influences, but not until he was twenty years old and in college did he have assurance of his salvation.
Later he became a divinity student, and during that time cultivated his friendship with McCheyne. He served as an assistant pastor and city missionary in Jedburgh and at St. George’s in Edinburgh. In 1836, he candidated at St. Peter’s Church, Dundee, but the congregation called McCheyne instead.
In 1838, Bonar accepted a call to the Presbyterian Church in Collace, where he was ordained and remained for eighteen fruitful years. When he arrived, there were probably only half a dozen true believers in the parish, but God sent revival to the area and many turned to Christ. While Bonar and McCheyne were on a special missionary deputation to the Holy Land in 1839, God used William Burns to bring a fresh wind of the Spirit to McCheyne’s church in Dundee, and the blessing spread to other churches.
1843 was a difficult year for ministers and churches in Scotland, for in that year more than four hundred dedicated ministers left the Established Church and founded Free Church. Those who seceded protested the modernistic tendencies of the denomination and the interference of the civil courts in church affairs. At Collace, Bonar preached in a tent until the congregation, which had forfeited its property, could build a new place of worship.
In 1856, Bonar became pastor of a new church on Finnieston Street in a needy area of Glasgow; and there he remained until his death on December 30, 1892. Before long, what had begun as a small work had grown to a congregation of more than a thousand members, with a strong Sunday school program and an evangelistic outreach into the city. The work was difficult, but Bonar preached the Word and trusted God. When a friend asked one day how things were going, Bonar replied, “Oh, we are looking for great things!” When his friend admonished him not to expect too much, Bonar replied, “We can never hope for too much!”
A confirmed premillennialist, Bonar enjoyed preaching about the return of Jesus Christ. He had a remarkable ability to remember names and faces. One day he addressed by name a little girl on the street, and she ran home and announced, “Mother, Mother, he knows me!”
He could detect when a member was absent on Sunday and during the week would visit to see if there was a special problem or need. He also had a marvelous sense of humor. One child called him “the minister with the laughing face.” One day he told an invalid he was visiting, “I have a new medicine for you: ‘A merry heart doeth good like medicine.’” When a man told Bonar he had felt an angel touch him during an illness, Bonar said, “Have you a cat in the house? Don’t you think it may have been the cat?”
He believed in pastoral work, particularly visiting in people’s homes. “There is a blessing resting on visiting,” he wrote to a pastor friend. “What else is fitted to make us know the state of our flocks? Were it not for their good but only for our own, is not this department of work most important? It is only thus we can know our people’s spiritual state.” He usually visited every afternoon from one o’clock to five, walking great distances to bring encouragement and help to his beloved people.
I think the greatest value of the Diary and Life is its record of Bonar’s interior life. He was able to accomplish much with people in public because he spent time with God in private. There are scores of references in these pages to prayer, meditation, and self-examination. They also record times of discouragement and defeat, when Bonar felt he had failed the Lord and his people. God’s choicest servants rarely evaluate their own ministries with accuracy and balance, and often Bonar was too hard on himself.
During the Kilsyth Revival of 1839–40, Bonar wrote to his brother Horace: “Pray for Collace. We have no more than a few drops as yet, and I believe I am to blame. I work more than I pray.” Later he wrote in his journal: “I was living very grossly, namely, laboring night and day in visiting with very little prayerfulness. I did not see that prayer should be the main business of every day.” Again, he wrote: “I see that prayerlessness is one of my great sins of omission. I am too short, ask too little, ask with too much want of forethought. Then, too little meditation upon Scripture.”
He discovered that even his books and his literary ministry could create problems in his spiritual life. “Tried this morning specially to pray against idols in the shape of my books and studies. These encroach upon my direct communion with God, and need to be watched.” As he was writing Christ and His Church in the Book of Psalms, he noted in his diary: “I distinctly see now that Satan’s chief way of prevailing against me is by throwing in my way a great deal of half literary work, half biblical.” When he was preparing Rutherford’s Letters, he wrote: “A piece of extra work this year has been an edition of Rutherford’s Letters, which I fear has been a snare to me, inasmuch as it has sometimes shortened prayer, yet it has also helped me.”
Bonar tried to keep each Saturday evening as a time of prayer and special preparation of his own soul for the ministry on the Lord’s Day, a practice I strongly recommend to preachers today. But he discovered that he was especially vulnerable to Satan’s attacks on Saturday evenings and Monday mornings. He often sought for “Saturday assurances” from God to encourage him for his Sunday ministry. He observed that Christ, after a busy day of ministry, arose early to pray (Mark 1:35); and he tried to follow that example on Monday mornings.
In spite of his success as a pastor, preacher, and writer, Bonar often saw himself as a failure in the pulpit. On December 5, 1857, he wrote in his diary: “Got such a sight of the impotence of my preaching that I felt as if I need never to attempt it more.” One day he received special encouragement from Proverbs 23:16, “Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.” He wrote in his journal, “Christ listening to our sermons!”
Bonar realized that he could not go on forever, no matter how much his people loved him. There is a deeply touching entry in his diary for September 11, 1890, when he was eighty years old.
I see distinctly that my Lord is teaching me to “glory in my infirmities” and to be willing to be set aside. My voice fails; some of my people, specially the younger part, going elsewhere; my class melts away. Some very mortifying cases of ingratitudes on the part of some; my influence with brethren manifestly declines—all this is saying, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
On October 14, a committee met with him to arrange to call a successor. “I read with them Numbers 27:15–18, and prayed with thanksgiving, and the business went on pleasantly,” he wrote.
“Oh, I don’t think anything about growing old,” Bonar once told D. L. Moody’s associate, Major D. W. Whittle. But those closest to him detected a gradual failing of his strength, even though he continued in ministry as much as possible; and after only two days of illness, he went home to glory on Friday, December 30, 1892.
Each time I read Bonar’s Diary and Life, I find something new to ponder, or I am reminded of something I had already read and underlined but had forgotten. His personal character has always impressed me. He was not envious at the success of others, but rejoiced at God’s blessing, even if he disagreed with the methods other men used. When many Calvinists were opposing Moody and Sankey, Bonar was praying for them and laboring with them. Moody invited him to minister at his Northfield Conference, and in 1881 Bonar sailed to America and ministered in several cities. Like F. B. Meyer, Henry Drummond, and many other ministers of the Word, Bonar was greatly helped by his friendship with Moody.
I have also been impressed with Bonar’s emphasis on evangelism. He kept two texts (in the original Hebrew) in his study: “He that winneth souls is wise” (Prov. 11:30) and “For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come and will not tarry” (Hab. 2:3). When the church in Finnieston Street moved to a new location in 1878, “He that winneth souls is wise” was carved in Hebrew over the front door. Bonar had a special burden for the Jews, and he hoped that the text would not only attract them but also remind his own people of the importance of witnessing.
Although Bonar was criticized by some and ignored by others, he stuck to his premillennial interpretation of the Word and greatly advanced the study of prophecy in Great Britain. He viewed the Lord’s return as a practical motivation for life and ministry. His views closed doors for him, but they also opened many hearts.
Bonar noted in his diary on July 5, 1847, “I have been much impressed with the sin of choosing my text without special direction from the Lord. This is like running without being sent, no message being given me.” He also tried to relate each text to the needs of his people. “I feel as if I had not got my subject from the Lord,” he wrote in 1858. “This whole matter had led me to search into my feelings toward my people, and I have discovered that I do not sufficiently think of them individually and pray for them . . . Lord, give me a larger heart and a holier to me.”
In my own preaching ministry, I have quoted some of Andrew Bonar’s “spiritual sayings,” and I want to close with some of my favorites.
The best part of all Christian work is that part which only God sees.
If the Father has the kingdom ready for us, He will take care of us on the way.
Lot would not give up Christ, but he would not give up much for Christ.
Let us be as watchful after the victory as before the battle.
God likes to see His people shut up to this, that there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the Church’s power against the world.
Love is the motive for working; joy is the strength for working.
We have got more from Paul’s prison-house than from his visit to the third heaven.
He had a card in his study near the mantelpiece that read:
He who has truly prayed has completed the half of his study.
The sins of teachers are the teachers of sins.
Beware of the bad things of good men.1
Bonar was pleased when the University of Edinburgh granted him a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1873. But when he was made Moderator of the Free Church Assembly, he said, “Alas! How far down our Church has come when it asks such as me to take this office!”
“Many want salvation, but they do not want the Savior.”
Finally, “You need not be afraid of too much grace. Great grace never makes a man proud. A little grace is very apt to make a man be puffed up.”
I hope you will get acquainted with this delightful man of God—a wholesome example in ministry, and a saint who encourages us to live in the Holy of Holies with God.