Benefits and Dangers of Reading Old Writers (With Jeremy Walker) | The Whole Counsel

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and today I have with me Jeremy Walker, who, if you recognize that name, you probably recognize that he is the host of a couple of podcasts, Word in Season and From the Heart of Spurgeon.

And Jeremy is also a pastor just south of London. If you're an American, that's about as close as we can get. And Jeremy has been a really good friend to the ministry here, but much more than that, he's been an encouragement to all of us as believers as well.

Good morning, Jeremy.

Hey, John, how are you?

Why Read the Old Writers at All

Good, good. So, Jeremy, today we wanted to talk about the theme of how to benefit from the old writers, why we would even read the old writers, maybe what are some of the dangers, and how do we choose which old writer if we don't have someone who could give us some good advice.

You know, it's kind of a sea of names that we've never heard before, perhaps. So, you know, do we have any help that we could offer folks in those areas?

Yeah, well, I think my experience was that I grew up in a church where some of those old writers were esteemed. My dad had a bunch of them in his own library. I have to say that he made every effort to try and get me involved in them, and I was just not remotely interested, at least not until after I was converted.

And shortly after that, I began to get an appetite for them, began to relish them, began to really appreciate them. And since then, they've been constant companions and real friends.

My path to the old writers was a little different. I grew up in a church that did not read them. You know, the church had a small library, and that's always the room that was least used in the church.

But as a precocious child, I would go in there and pick a book. I remember picking Billy Graham, because that was kind of the only famous preacher I'd ever heard of. And I picked a book that he wrote on demons as a 10-year-old with no spiritual interest.

But I was very interested in people thinking that I had a spiritual interest, you know. I think sometimes people approach old writers for wrong reasons. Maybe the idea that just because it's old, it's better.

Having stood the test of time, which many of the old writers' books haven't, but having had that filter of centuries is a real benefit. Usually it's only the very good stuff that comes to us. One illustration I can think of that is Charles Wesley's hymns.

There were hymn books that Wesley put together to counteract Calvinism. He and his brother wanted to show what they felt was the error of that. And the hymns in that hymn book are not generally the ones that we sing today, because they're not the best.

So there's a benefit there. But it's not just because they're old. It's because every man is a product of his time as well as the work of God in his soul. I think we would agree with Spurgeon when he said he loves the books that have the smell of prison on them, like Bunyan.

When men have suffered terribly to say some things to us about their Lord, like Samuel Rutherford, the things he says in his letters before he goes to prison are good. The things he says about Christ in prison are stellar.

We want to hear from men who are paying a terribly high cost to tell us about our Lord. Those are the ones I find most beneficial.

How the Old Writers Can Jolt Us Out of Our Ruts

Yeah, these are the men who've walked with God, who've been purified in trials. It's not just that, as you said, the cream is rising to the surface over the period of time. Because we have to acknowledge that there's some dross that's floated down on the stream of centuries as well.

But these are men whose experience of God often is... It's not that it's different from ours in the sense that it's altogether of a different kind. But it's sometimes different in degree and depth. And there's a real value, I think, for me in the fact that they're not thinking down the same tracks that I am.

Now, they are themselves sinful men, and that's a filter that I need to apply. But they're not instinctively thinking as I would think. And I find that that freshness, it jars me out of my own ruts and assumptions.

It forces me to read good stuff with a degree of engagement that I've got to process in a way that I might not if it's being put to me on a plate. And so when someone says, for example, have you seen the size of these books?

Or have you seen the size of the print? Or even worse, the size of the book with the size of the print? I'm just afraid of those things. Yeah, I appreciate that. But the effort that is involved in reading them abundantly repays itself because of that processing that it demands.

The Dangers of Reading for Pride or Reputation

When you think about reading old writers, we would certainly not want to give the impression that there are no dangers there. I don't believe that the dangers are inherent to old writers only. I think that there is the temptation to abuse the gifts that the Lord has given us.

We see that all through scripture, that that is a tactic of our enemy. So what are some of the dangers that you see a person could encounter in picking up an old book and really becoming, you know, really diving in and becoming fascinated by these people?

Well, one big problem is intellectual pride. Either I can do this or I have done this. And you end up with some guys who are reading for the sake of saying they have read. So rather than reading for the benefit of one's soul in order to draw nearer to God, to be instructed with regard to the Lord, the triune God in all his saving majesty, or to have a better equipment to minister to others, we end up turning the spotlight on ourselves.

And I think there's a danger, too, if you sort of get a reputation for someone who likes that kind of reading, you keep doing it to maintain the reputation rather than actually to profit from it and to use it as a means to serve God.

So we can't read to create a false identity. You know, I'm this kind of man. I mentioned when I was young going into a church library, I had a grandfather that was godly, who loved Spurgeon. He gave me those little paperback kind of books, Twelve Sermons on Prayer by Spurgeon, you know.

And I was a little disappointed as I grew up to find out that Spurgeon actually didn't write a book called Twelve Sermons on Prayer. It was a collection. But I remember as an 11-year-old, that's nine years before conversion, I read Spurgeon.

I plowed through these things so that when I went to church and the adults ask a question in a Bible study, and I was in that study because my family was always there, I could raise my hand and they would kind of say, Okay, John, do you have something to say?

And I'd throw out a Spurgeon comment. And they would all kind of—you could feel the wow. And it was so intoxicating, you know, the drug. So I certainly misused Spurgeon long before I used him correctly.

I think one of the dangers, other than spiritual pride, is becoming enamored with old writers to the point that they supplant Scripture. Obviously, it's not limited to old writers, but any writer that's worth reading ought to drive us not only to God, but back to the Scriptures.

You know, in a sense, so if we're saying Spurgeon, he becomes a friend, like you mentioned, a lifelong friend who constantly says to me, to you, look to Christ. And then instead of guiding us to kind of some idea of Jesus we create in our own mind, he drives us to the Scripture and kind of hands us a shovel and says, dig your own well.

You know, don't only drink from mine.

And I think they'd be horrified. If you were to have a conversation with them and say, yeah, you know what? I read you for an hour a day. I read my Bible for 10 minutes a day. They would be looking at you and saying, are you mad?

Are you even converted? Why have you elevated me over the Word of God?

Yeah, can you imagine quoting Spurgeon to Spurgeon and him being proud of you? One thing, I remember reading in the 18th century, the young Calvinistic Methodist movement there.

You're older than you. Look, John, you know that, don't you?

Yeah, I know, I was there. So, I remember that Whitefield and Wesley and others on both sides, I mean, they republished Puritan works. In fact, Wesley put together a thing called the Christian Library, which he highly edited.

Partly because he felt that books needed to be manageable. Manageable size for the modern man and purchasable. So, he had a library of over 40 volumes, in which over half were Puritan writers. Which is surprising, considering Wesley's theology.

But he felt that they were good shepherds for the soul. Everywhere he went, he promoted these. And, you know, buy these books, it'll be good for you. And he also tried to get his friends to promote them.

And I remember in one place, a man named John Berridge, who was on the Calvinistic side of the movement. Berridge would not promote Wesley's library among his people. And it was not a theological Calvin-Arminian issue.

It was the issue that his people were very simple. Not very well educated. And he did not want them to devote any of that rare time they had in the day to reading. He did not want them to devote it to any of the old writers, rather than to scripture.

Hal Harris, also, similar thing. Welshman, who had only just learned to read in that century. He said he found that those who immediately, after conversion, filled their mind with old writers or with books, tended to not be as simple and as devoted to Christ himself, but tend to become proud.

How to Grow in Knowledge Without Becoming Puffed Up

Let me ask you. If a person finds themselves in that quandary that Paul mentions, that, you know, knowledge puffs up. Well, obviously, the answer to that is not ignorance. So, how do you encourage a person as their pastor?

How do they increase in knowledge and not increase in pride?

That's a great question. I think if they are increasing in knowledge in the true sense, that should humble them. So, if they're doing it well, it should be an antidote to that. Again, you know, Paul's talking about head knowledge, isn't he?

It's probably not the best phrase, but, you know, a merely rational appreciation of certain doctrines that never really penetrates to the affections. I think one of the antidotes to that is actually just to be selective.

We really need to make sure that people know what to read. Pastorally, that's not just a question of then that I answer with, well, read something old. It's read this particular book. And so I might be trying to feed a particular sheep with something that will do them some particular good.

So that I'm trying to actually minister to someone in a particular circumstance with something that is going to help them spiritually. So that rather than just being an intellectual exercise in accumulating data, it becomes a spiritual exercise of receiving something that is good.

And very often it will be directed perhaps to a particular weakness, perhaps, in understanding. Or it may be an area where they're starting to grow and you want to just help them in a certain way. It may be somebody comes to you and says, look, I just, I've lost my appetite for Christ.

OK, I think I've got it's almost like having a little medicine cabinet. And you say, OK, I think I have something for that. I think I have something for that with, as you've said, never the intention to introduce a replacement or in that sense, even a supplement to scripture.

Although perhaps the latter more so that this is actually going to help you draw in some distinct scriptural teaching so that we're really trying to make sure that we're not just sort of tickling an itch to know stuff or to get a reputation for knowledge.

But this is designed, intended, prayed over with a view of feeding your soul. And when that happens, actually, you'll have a less high opinion of yourself than you started with, but a far higher opinion of God in Christ.

Balancing Human Books With Scripture and Across the Centuries

Yeah, the part you mentioned about the medicine cabinet, I think that's really helpful, not just for a spiritual leader. You know, maybe a mom and dad in the family and the kid comes with questions or a pastor, teacher.

But even when we deal with our own soul, to be careful that outside the scripture, every book has its benefits, but it is limited. You know, we can read anywhere in the Bible. That classic question that a young Christian asks, well, where should I read for my quiet time?

Where do I start? What do I read next? You know, I finished Philippians. Now what, pastor? You know, I almost want to chuckle at them, except I don't want to make light of their hunger. But you want to say to them, actually, if the heart is right, you can begin anywhere and he will meet you and he will teach you from his word.

But with human books, even the best of them, we do have to balance our diet. You know, sometimes I need the objective truth in front of my face without all of the close application because I'm down in the dumps and I've looked at myself too much.

And then sometimes, you know, I need someone to drive me to ask hard questions and not just show me objective truths. And, you know, so I do find for my own soul that I have to balance my reading.

And I think not just balanced across topics, but balanced across centuries. We can get so sucked in and we understand it. You know, you have favorites, favorite periods, favorite authors, I'm sure. And you say, oh, this this this season in the history of the church is the balm to my soul.

This is my natural environment. And that's fantastic. And that does us good. But precisely because different men under different circumstances are going to see different things and put it in a different way that that helps to stretch us.

And it stops us again falling into interrupts or grooves that that perhaps otherwise we would get trapped in. So so reading, reading the church fathers is just as important as reading the 18th century particular Baptists.

Read the Puritans by all means, but also read some Spurgeon. Read the reformers, but also read some Whitfield's. You know, keep your keep the breadth of this so that I think the advantage then is you see that all of these men with whatever their own personal constitutional failings, inclinations to sin, whatever may be the spirit of the age in which they were living.

What you actually get in the end is the fact that they're all subject to the word of God. You see that humility, that disposition to bring the scriptures to bear upon themselves and others. And then you get this kind of consensus developing.

What are the real priorities? What are the high points? What are the things that that all men in all ages have been concerned for? What are the pressures? And it enables you to step back and then rise above the spirit of your own time and say, actually, there's some big picture stuff here that's really the same in every time and place.

Right.

I give an illustration from my college years. I was converted halfway through college and I had already collected some Christian books because strangely I was studying for the ministry before I was converted.

Of course, I was self-deceived. And so I had started to gather good books. I had MacArthur books. I had some Sproul books. And I had some of the older writers, Whitefield, some stuff from him, and mainly Spurgeon.

And after I was converted, my whole library could fit on one kind of standing bookshelf at the time. I took tape and I taped a giant X across the front of my whole library. And one of my friends, who's my co-pastor now, would look at that and he would say, what are you doing?

And I'd say, I really just want to spend time with God and his word. And right now I don't want to go back to these guys. I'll come back later. And I did come back later. But for a while, I put every other book away.

How to Choose Good Old Writers Without Personal Guidance

Jeremy, if someone were to come to you and say, OK, so older writers, I've never read them. In fact, I don't know people that do read them. And, I mean, a Puritan, in my opinion, when I was younger was a man that landed in America on the Mayflower and he had big buckles on his shoes.

And he ate Quaker oats. So I didn't know anything about a Puritan until later. How would you, in the sea of names that are now available, especially with the Internet, how do you direct people to be able to pick good writers if they don't have someone near them that they can ask?

Yeah.

In the absence of that personal recommendation, which is, I think, probably the safest way to proceed, you've got to know the parameters you're working within. So there are some publishers that you would say the older material that they are republishing is typically going to be the safer, better stuff.

Again, if we're saying that over time the cream has risen to the surface, they're skimming off that cream and they're churning into butter and they're sending it out to us. So whether that's something like maybe Banner of Truth or Reformation Heritage Books, there's a few republishers.

They're doing new stuff as well, which is grand. But there's almost an inbuilt quality control at this point that you can say, I generally think I'm going to be OK with these particular volumes, these particular authors.

Yeah, you could almost picture it in your mind, these publishers become a friend who introduce you, who bring to your doorstep new friends. And if you recognize the friend, you say, well, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to let him in the living room and get to meet this new author.

Yeah, I think that's one of the safest ways. And you mentioned, too, that really have proven themselves faithful. I think another way is to consider reading the men that are heroes, so to speak. I don't like that word, but our favorite authors, the ones that benefited them.

So that's actually how I came to the Puritans. So I had dabbled in Charles Spurgeon, but I remember reading, after a few sermons, I went to his autobiography, that big four-volume monster. And I think I drowned a few times before I made it through, but I remember Spurgeon saying that there's a group of people called the Puritans who lived on lion's marrow.

That took a long time for me to figure it out, but I realized what he's saying. He said they ate giant food, and they were enormous spiritual giants. But he also mentioned a guy named George Whitefield, and he said Whitefield really lived.

Compared to him, we have a poor dying rate of Christianity. So I went and found a book on Whitefield, and I read this book by J .C. Ryle on Whitefield, that little paperback. That was a wonderful, warm-hearted introduction.

But when I read Whitefield, I was surprised to find that he talked about the same guys, these giants among men called Puritans. So that led me to John Flavel, or a John Owen. So I worked my way back. If MacArthur or a Sproul admired a Spurgeon, then I would read.

I wanted to read the men that my heroes were reading. I wanted to drink from the well they drank from. And then I just worked my way back, like that.

Reading Back Through Christian History

Well, you used the illustration of inviting someone in. Say, hey, these guys are going to come into my living room. They're going to sit down with me. We're going to be friends. And after a while, it's as if they say, hey, I think you'd really like one of my other friends.

Why don't we get him in as well? And as you begin to do that reading, this range of reference or frame of reference begins to develop. And again, you have this sense that you're within safe bounds reading a man that this man might recommend, and sometimes with qualifications.

But they're setting those boundaries for you. They're introducing you to new people. And as you say, obviously, they're not recommending people forwards. But the people who are closest to us, you can trace those paths backwards.

And again, eventually, you find yourself saying, so who is this Augustine dude? And what was his hippo? And then you find out, oh, OK, Augustine of hippo. And so who's Tertullian then? And so really, you get this capacity to step back.

The whole span of Christian history is in front of you. And you see these beautiful, sparkling lines of connection so that all along the timeline, these are not people who are standing alone. But there's this glorious succession taking place.

And then we have the privilege, God willing, of being both the inheritors of what's gone before and also those who are passing it on to those who are coming afterwards.

Right.

One other thing I would recommend with reading the older writers since they're not alive during our day is that it's always beneficial, I've found, to get my hands on a good biography regarding the person.

So when I read Samuel Rutherford, who is one of my favorites, I don't find his writing easy to read. I find his books pretty difficult. But when I read his biography and then I came back to his books, I wanted to know what that man had to say.

So a biography, knowing the author, can either lend weight to what they say and so the words carry greater benefit. Or it can make his words light in my eyes where I think, this is not a man I want to spend a lot of time listening to.

So I generally try to find a good, maybe concise biography on the author if I've never read him before.

Have you ever done it the other way around where you've read a biography and thought, wow, I've got to go away and read whatever this man wrote?

Yeah, that has happened. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

How to Read Difficult Old Books and Sermon Collections

Well, my last counsel to people looking at it, like, so in a sense, kind of walking into a room and there's just a library full of books and these names may seem a little strange. The words, like you mentioned, they may be a little hard.

The paragraphs are long. Recently I recommended a book to a man in our church and he mentioned that he looked at a long page and it was one sentence. There was just a lot of semicolons, you know?

Yeah.

And so I said, yeah, I know. So I would say, counsel I generally give, one is, when reading an author you're not used to, don't give up in the first three chapters. Usually, even though I've read a fair amount, when I read a new author, whether it's modern or old, simple or difficult, I usually am a bit frustrated with my new author until about chapter three because I just don't know how they talk.

And so I feel like I'm having a conversation with someone and I think, I don't understand your accent. I don't understand your viewpoint. So if I continue reading, I often find, if they're a good writer and their content is good, I find that by chapter three I'm glad I didn't give up.

So that's one thing. But the final thing I would advise people, from my perspective, is that even reading older writers, like you mentioned, considering what topic do I need right now, what passage, what does my soul need?

The general counsel I would give people is that while there are many very important secondary issues, if I have limited time, I would guide a person to read in their limited time those books which give them the clearest pictures of the love and loveliness of our God.

Because if that's all they can do, other things tend to fall in place if that fuel is given to the soul.

Read the men who have taken up with Christ because when they are, they themselves will be plugging everything into the right center. And as you say, everything else aligns around the Lord Jesus. So I remember a long time ago now, relatively speaking, at least for me, thinking, I just feel so dry.

And I was thinking, I'm reading a lot of books about Christ, but I'm not reading many books that are full of Christ. And it was in fact one or two of those older authors just taken up with the person of Jesus himself, who he is and what he's done.

And it was so refreshing to my soul. And so, yeah, I would be absolutely alongside of you in that. Start there and let everything else flow from there.

Reading Sermons as Spoken Truth

Jeremy, you've been doing a podcast on Spurgeon's sermons, and a lot of the old writers, their books are sermon collections. Do you have any advice on reading a sermon, a book of sermons, as compared to reading what we would consider a regular book?

That's another fantastic question. As you say, a lot of the older stuff are collections of sermons or sermonic material. Now, some of that is more edited into book form. Some of it still reads a bit like a sermon.

So you might want to distinguish between the two, as you're suggesting. Some of those big old collections, you can almost hear it. You talked about getting used to the sound of someone's voice. Well, you can do that on the page as well, the rhythms of their speech.

So you could read a treatise that's a little bit more philosophical, a little bit more in depth, but it's written to be read. I think it's worth remembering that sermons were typically spoken to be heard.

One of the things that may be helpful, and this could be true of almost any of the older stuff, read it out loud. Read a sermon out loud and try and get a sense of a man of God in the presence of God speaking God's truth to your soul.

And remember, not to try and be too highfalutin about it, but there's a difference between oral and scribal, the spoken and the written word. Now, people often say something like, you know, Lloyd-Jones, oh man, you know, he just spoke and it came out like writing.

No, he didn't. He spoke speaking and then it was edited or written down. It became the same with Spurgeon. Spurgeon's first task on a Monday morning typically was to edit the transcript of the previous week's sermon.

So these men understood the difference between what they spoke and what people would read. But I still think there's something of that, what an older mentor of mine, lovely man, used to call the orality.

Remember the orality of this material. It sounds well read. So bear in mind that there are some things where you're going to be really tracing out hard connections, following streams of logic quite a long way.

Think of someone like John Owen in some of his more technical work. And you're saying, OK, Owen may be the first person in the world to use the phrase 53rdly or something like that. And you've got to try and keep track of that.

That's a different exercise to reading something that's more immediately sermonic, where it's typically simpler, clearer, more straightforward. You mentioned John Flavel earlier. Flavel's got a couple of treatises in his collected works that are really quite long, quite detailed.

They're full of rich application, but you've really got to concentrate. But he's also got these wonderful series of sermons on the fountain of life, which is on the person of Christ, the method of grace, how God deals with us.

And they're broken up. They're much more accessible. So sometimes that really sermonic material has a freshness and vividness and accessibility that can bring it very close to home because you get the sense of the preacher almost looking you in the eyeball and say, no, I'm talking to you.

Some of the more developed stuff that the treatises, the I hesitate to use the word philosophical, but the more careful, technical, theological works, those are the ones you might just need to read with a pencil in hand.

Try and follow the flow of the argument. Mark it out so you can work out where they're going. But be aware, again, of the difference between the scribal, what's written to be read, and the oral, what's spoken to be heard.

Thank you.

That really is helpful. Well, Jeremy, we're kind of needing to bring this down to a close. So why don't you give us kind of a sampler list if you were to recommend some of the older writers, and you could just give a few.

Who would you mention?

Recommended Old Writers for Christ-Centered Reading

Well, I always hate that question, John, because I'm stuck with this embarrassment of riches. I think in terms of some of the men have been a particular blessing to me. And I feel I feel awkward because it's like telling some of your friends that they're not part of a gang anymore.

Spurgeon I love for his Christ-centeredness. And there's a beautiful collection of sermons or treatments. The Saint and His Saviour, which is a wonderful study of the believer's relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Absolutely fantastic. John Bunyan, he's vivid. He's accessible. Again, he's taken up with the Lord Jesus Christ. I might mention I'm going to mention the Holy War. In fact, I love the Holy War. I really think that he's got this penetrating insight into the inner spiritual life.

And it's so practical. And then other favorites, some of the 18th century particular Baptists, men like Andrew Fuller, Samuel Pierce, John Ryland. There's a recent Andrew Fuller reader that's come out that could be a really good introduction.

And there's a couple of lovely little studies of Samuel Pierce that include some of his his sermons or writings. Absolutely beautiful. But those, again, start there and think about the people that they talk about.

How about you? Where would you go?

Yeah, well, you know, when we were talking about this earlier, I wrote a list and I wrote another list. So it's like you said, you know.

You're cheating.

Yeah, yeah.

So different guys crowd in and kick the door in and say, you're not leaving me out.

All right.

So I'm going to, I would say one of the early most significant older writers that I read would have been John Flavel. And it was that book, The Fountain of Life, where, you know, as you mentioned, it's really a Christology, but it's a collection of sermons.

So each one is kind of an individual unit. So, as you mentioned, different than reading a long kind of complicated, maybe, you know, a little more difficult work on Christ. So just all those heartwarming looks at Christ, but laid out in a very logical order.

So I found that very helpful. For letters, you know, we're going to have a tie in the letter category. Rutherford's letters, as I mentioned, I had read a lot of guys who mentioned Rutherford's letters.

So Spurgeon, I think Spurgeon must have given a blurb for more books than any human on the earth, you know. And so he says, you know, aside from scripture, this is one of the greatest books, you know.

And even Rutherford's enemy, theologically, Richard Baxter said one of Rutherford's books was the worst book ever written in the English language. And then the letters was the best book written in the English language by man.

But Rutherford's letters, but I do say that with a kind of a little caveat. I do encourage people to start when he finds out he's going to be arrested for preaching the gospel and standing against the tyranny of the kings.

And start there when he starts traveling north in Scotland where he's going to be under house arrest. Because then he starts to speak of Christ in a way that just finds a new gear.

That experience of drawing near to God and God drawing near to him then starts to bleed out, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah. He describes prison as being living in the suburbs of heaven. He says, you know, I'm almost seeing. It's not even faith anymore. It's almost sight. And, you know, and he was having such experiences of the nearness of God that he had to guard himself from two Christs.

The Christ of Scripture. And then he had to guard himself from making an idol of the nearness of Christ. The experience, you know. So what wonderful.

Yeah, just not a problem most of us struggle with, sadly.

And then the other letter writer is John Newton. I've read Newton's sermons and they're fine. But he's not my favorite sermon writer, but his pastoral letters. I read a little each night of those, and to me those are just so down-to-earth practical.

I am ashamed at how easily as a pastor or as an individual I get stuck with these, you know, I don't know, all this circumstantial stuff. And Newton just goes right to Christ. And everything then sinks into its right proportion, you know, its right size compared to Christ.

And my last one I'll throw in there is Thomas Vincent's little book, The True Christian's Love to the Unseen Christ. And that was a book that helped me. You mentioned that it helped you during one of those times of coldness.

I remember a quote by Rutherford who said that we dwell far from the well and complain dryly of our dryness, but we are dry, not thirsty. So the point he was making was go to the well. If you're thirsty, go to the well.

Quit complaining you're dry. So Vincent to me was like one of those wells where I ran to him and he gave me a cup of Christ. And, you know, really reignited things that had become cold.

Yeah, yeah. Well, if you're getting four, I'm going to add John Fawcett's Christ Precious to Those Who Believe, which does just that same thing. Why do we delight in Christ? And he just has this beautiful, warm, stately tread around the Lord Jesus.

And he's just—you come away thinking, that's it. That's what it means. That's who this is all about. This is where I see the glory of God shining forth. Fantastic stuff.

Well, Jeremy, thank you for being with us today. Those that you are listening, we hope that this has kind of stirred you to pick up more good books or to maybe brave some of the waters that you've not been in.