Many of you know that the pastors at Calvary Philly always recommend the writings of C.H. Mackintosh, the Irish pastor from the mid-1800’s. He’s just great–kind of like Spurgeon but a lot shorter and easier to read. I can literally say I have never sat down to read him and not been blessed. If you want someone deep, yet warm enough to read devotionally, who will keep your mind riveted on Christ and the things that really matter, while making you want to worship and live for Jesus, then CHM is your man. You just might start shaving your chin and growing your neck hair out.
You can get a short bio of him here. We have several of his books left in print at the bookstore (look in ‘Classic Christian Authors” section), but if you’d like a free test drive, you can get his all his writings (for free) at www.stempublishing.com/authors/mackintosh.
So you get a sense for him, here’s a section from the article Gideon and His Companions (which is available in print in the big green Mackintosh Treasury):
There is one truth which shines out with uncommon lustre in the Book of Judges, and that is, that God is ever to be counted upon, even amid the darkest scenes of human history; and, moreover, faith can always count upon God; God never fails a trusting heart No, never. He never has failed, never will, never can fail the individual soul that confides in Him, that takes hold of His precious word, in the artless simplicity of a faith that trusts Him in the face of man’s deepest and most humiliating failure and shortcoming.
This is most consolatory and encouraging, at all times, and under all circumstances. True it is — alas! how true! man fails in everything. Trace him where you will; mark him in whatever sphere of action or responsibility he occupies, and it is the same sad tale, over and over again, of unfaithfulness, failure, and ruin. Let man be set up in business, as often as he may, with the largest capital and the fairest prospects, and he is sure to become a bankrupt. It has ever been so, from the days of Eden down to the present moment. We may assert, without fear of contradiction, that there has not been one solitary exception to the dismal rule, in the history of Adam’s fallen race. We mast never forget this. True faith never forgets it, in its highest flights and brightest visions. It would be the blindest folly to attempt to ignore the fact that ruin is stamped, in characters deep and broad, upon the entire of man’s story, from first to last.
But, in the face of all this, God abideth faithful. He cannot deny Himself. Here is the resource and the resting-place of faith. It recognises and owns the ruin; but it counts on God. Faith is not blind to human failure; but it fixes its gaze on divine faithfulness. It confesses the ruin of man; but it counts on the resources of God.