The Autumn of Life I: Archibald Alexander

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. My name is John Snyder, and we are starting a new series in the podcast, and it's a little different than what we've done before.

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It's based on a book called Thoughts on Religious Experience by Archibald Alexander, and he was a key leader in the early 1800s, mid -1800s, among the revival -minded men, especially at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was the president.

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He was really quite a keen intellect, but a very warm -hearted pastor, and so it's an unusual combination, and we want to benefit from what he writes.

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We're only going to use a small section of this book, and we will do a giveaway, and so if you're interested in that, you can look at the show notes.

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We'll be giving away one of these by Banner of Truth, Thoughts on Religious Experience, and we will give away one of their

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Revival and Revivalism by Iain Murray, and this, if we haven't said it enough, this is probably one of the most significant books for Western evangelicalism when it comes to understanding the theology and the process by which we kind of moved from Jonathan Edwards to where we're at today, and Iain Murray does a great job.

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So, Revival and Revivalism mentions the life and ministry of Archibald Alexander, so I want to read a couple of excerpts from that, but this is the book that's going to form our text, and toward the end of this book, this book has a whole series of chapters on experiential aspects of Christianity, like early religious impressions, what are the different results, piety or holiness in children, the new birth and its importance, the cause of diversity in experience in our new birth, the effect of sympathy in the

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Christian life, what about melancholy or depression, mental illness, erroneous views of regeneration, considerations of dreams and visions.

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This is a Reformed theologian, the head systematic theologian of Princeton Seminary, so what does he have to say about that?

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What about religious conversation? And then he gives a whole series of small chapters on the religious experiences of different people, deathbed experiences of famous Christians, their last words, backsliding, growing in grace, spiritual conflict and warfare.

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Toward the end of this book, there is an extra section added that...it's not always in the other editions of this, but Banner has put it in here, and it has pastoral letters.

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Pastoral letters to the aged or the aged, the old, counsels to the old and young, counsels to Christian moms, letters to mourning afflicted widows, and a letter to a bereaved widower.

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So, just a lot of practical wisdom here. We're going to be looking at his five letters to the parishioners who were older.

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We would say, maybe we'd say retirement age and above. Before we look at that, it's always good to kind of become familiar with the man that we're going to be listening to, because I find in my own life that if I respect

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Archibald Alexander, and because I understand something of what he's passed through, then

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I take his words differently than if someone just handed me a book and said, hey, this has a lot of really good things in it, and I read it, and I appreciate the words.

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You know, you can check them with Scripture, and you can see the depth or the, you know, the clarity and the sweetness in what he writes, but it's magnified if you know the man.

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So, let me give you a quick intro to Alexander, and that's all we'll cover today, because we want these to be somewhat shorter, since I'm the only one talking, and then next week we'll pick up with the first letter.

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Archibald Alexander was born in 1771, and he lived 80 years, died in 1851, and if you know your

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American history, he's born right before the Revolutionary War, but spiritually, he's born in the time where there was a kind of a spiritual recession.

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The Great Awakening has ended, the Second Great Awakening hasn't yet begun, the focus, the distraction of everyone with dealing with war and, you know, independence and anti -monarchy views that really are, you know, popular in the colonies at this time.

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After the war, there's a movement in churches away from Reform theology and the emphasis on a sovereign

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God, more toward what we would feel is a more palatable, you know, religion, where it's kind of all on me, and it's up to me,

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I'm the captain of my own destiny. So, there's a general drift occurring. There's also the influx of French thinking, with its, you know, revolutionary views, as France is wanting to kick off the fetters of its government and the

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Roman Catholic Church, bishop and king. So, the American culture is flooded, really, with unhelpful ideas and fads.

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The churches suffer, and there's a great decline, and if you have watched the Behold Your God, the first study, we talk about that, and we talk about how

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God used Jonathan Edwards' grandson, Timothy Dwight, at Yale to, really, to be a man who spearheaded and trained many of the men involved in the

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Second Great Awakening. So, Archibald Alexander lives during this time.

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He, as an adult, his life is during the Second Great Awakening. He takes a theological stand against Charles Finney and the new views that are kind of coming into the church, and warns the people that these are not biblical, and they will have terrible consequences, which they did.

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But Alexander's not as well -known as some of the other men of that era, and I want us to get the quick introduction.

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Thirty years before Alexander was born, his grandfather was converted in Pennsylvania, under the preaching of the preachers in the

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Great Awakening, in that First Great Awakening. He becomes a wonderful believer, he gets married, he and his wife move from Pennsylvania area down to Virginia, and this is where Archibald Alexander will spend the early part of his life.

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Now, the grandmother dies in an Indian massacre. Later, their children grow up and marry in Archibald Alexander's parents.

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He's the grandchild, but the grandfather and grandmother understood what we would call experiential, you know, evangelical theology.

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So, good doctrine, and good doctrine applied in the life. But sadly,

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Ian Murray says in his small history that the parents did not have that.

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It didn't seem to pass on to the next generation. So Archibald Alexander grows up with a father and mother that are religious and moral, but their idea of religion was that religion is something that we do because it makes us good people.

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His father, in fact, was an elder at the local Presbyterian Church. Archibald is born into this very moral, kind of religious, but dead orthodoxy kind of situation.

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He grows up and he is educated by his own pastor, a man named

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William Graham. Now, this isn't unusual. It's not that he was particularly religious, or his parents wanted a pastor to be as his teacher.

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It was pretty common in the day that the pastor, who would have been well -educated, if they lived in an area where schools weren't easily gotten together, then pastors would take a limited number of students together into their home, or they would be the kind of the headmaster of a small school.

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Now, William Graham was a godly man, and he came from that revival, reformed thinking that was left over after the

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Great Awakening, but William Graham was a very quiet man, a very subdued man.

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As a teacher, he didn't really spark Alexander's interest. Alexander was very athletic.

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He wanted to focus on horsemanship, swimming, shooting, not books, and not

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God. William Graham's sermons, Archibald Alexander, refers back to them as an adult, and he says that Graham would get up in the pulpit and mumble quietly along and clear his throat so frequently that Archibald Alexander, looking back, said that his pastor was the single worst preacher he had ever heard, up to that point.

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It's not the end of the story for Mr. William Graham, so hang in there. Alexander reaches age 17.

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He's a brilliant young man, and his father feels like he's got enough education, it's time for him to get out in the world and get a job, and so he goes and becomes a tutor to a wealthy family in the neighboring town.

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And while he's there, this family, again, is a moral, church -going family, but while he's there, in this wealthy man's home, there are borders.

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There are other people who are living there, you know, and renting a room, and there was an older lady named

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Mrs. Tyler. Now, she's very old. She has trouble reading because of her eyesight, but she's also very godly, because years prior to this, while the

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Presbyterians at this time in Virginia tended to be pretty cold, the

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Baptists had caught fire, and the Baptists, influenced by, really, the stirrings of that second

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Great Awakening, are quite distinct. The emphasis on experiential religion, you know, experiential

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Reformed theology. Something in religion, it's more than just being known.

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It must be felt. It must be lived. So, old Mrs. Tyler, in the home, began to witness to the young tutor,

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Archibald Alexander. Now, Archibald Alexander is religious, and so he feels that Mrs.

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Tyler's talk about conversion and an experiential new birth, where a person realizes,

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I've gone from death to life, he had never heard of this in his Presbyterian Church.

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As I said, the church wasn't very healthy. He later says that he had never seen one person converted in his first 17 years of life in church.

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Mrs. Tyler talks about things in a way that Archibald Alexander doesn't know what to do with, and he chalks it up at first to the fact that she's a

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Baptist. Later, as he's working with that same family as a to the children, he meets another man, a businessman, a worker, another older gentleman who is also a

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Baptist, and who also talks to him about the new birth, and Alexander is confused. Why are you keep talking about this experiential, you know, time in a person's life, where we go from spiritual death to life?

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I'm a young man who has been baptized into the church.

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I don't need anything more. I'm a moral good guy. So he thinks that this is just the

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Baptist. Now, while he's bothered by this, Mrs.

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Tyler, the elderly lady, asks him would he mind in the evening's reading to her, because she can't read anymore, and she gives him the works of John Flavel, a

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Puritan, and he is a Presbyterian Puritan. So Archibald Alexander is very happy, because he feels finally he's going to hear some

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Presbyterian views about these things, and not just those Baptists, but as he begins to read the works of John Flavel, God uses that period to really begin to bother him, to awaken him, and Alexander mentions that later in life, he mentions that at that time, he began to take prayer seriously.

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He began to take Bible study seriously. He would often use his free hours in the evening after tutoring the children and reading to Mrs.

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Tyler. He would often take time to just go with the Bible and get away, go to a quiet spot in the woods and pray and seek the

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Lord, and during one of those times, the Lord worked in him in such a wonderful way that he was genuinely converted, and you know, that Bible knowledge that he got as a child, as a young man from attending church, good doctrine, but now it catches fire, and now it becomes

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Alexander's life, and not just religious talk. Well, he begins then to turn his mind toward Christian things, and eventually he starts to study for the ministry, but while all of this is happening, he hears about a wonderful working of the

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Lord, a real reviving among the Presbyterians. So not the Baptists, the

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Presbyterians. Back home. So he and his old pastor, the

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Reverend Graham, they go to this town, and they go to a meeting where a man is preaching, and the

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Lord is wonderfully changing the people in this town and in this church, and it really strikes

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Alexander. He just can't forget what a sweet and, you know, deep and lively change has come over the people.

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Prayer meetings are different. Their lives are different. How they talk about God is different. How they treat other people is different.

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Now, while they're at this meeting, William Graham, his pastor, who is the mumbling, throat -clearing, worst preacher, is asked if he would preach one of the meetings, because he's part of this denomination, and he is a godly man, and the young people at these meetings are not excited to hear that William Graham is going to be preaching, you know, the next time.

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They want someone who's exciting. They don't want William Graham. Everybody knows how he preaches. He's so boring.

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So he gets up, and he begins to preach, and as he begins to preach, Archibald Alexander, who's there listening, and now he's a

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Christian, he notices there is a distinct change. It's as if Graham himself is impacted by God's extraordinary work among the people, and his preaching becomes alive.

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And Alexander writes that from that point forward, William Graham was one of the most effective, impacting preachers in the whole region.

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Well, he never forgets these early days of the

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Revival, and in fact, in that area in Virginia, the

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Presbyterians in particular, the Baptists as well, there are about five seasons of Revival, five periods of extraordinary work of the

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Lord among the Christians, primarily, and then through the Christians, from 1787 to 1851.

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Now, what happens then is, in the Presbyterian churches, that good doctrine is joined with a solid experiential application and knowledge of these things, and experiential religion is no longer neglected or treated as a non -essential.

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The prayer meetings now are attended at the churches, a fervency is seen throughout the members, and the biblical standards for church membership shifted, and now people were not just asked, are you a

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Christian, or did you grow up in a Christian family, but there was a real pressing, a real searching of their answers.

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Are you walking with the Lord? How is the Scripture of God, how is this Word of God impacting you?

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How are you responding? How are you applying the Word of God? How are you living upon Christ and working it out?

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Another result of the reviving of the Christians in the area, in the Presbyterian churches, was that the old

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Puritan works, so, you know, we're in the 1780s, the Puritans died off around the 1680s.

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So, about a hundred years later, the Puritan works, which were not popular among church members, suddenly become popular, because in these writings we find solid biblical teaching with very warm application.

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Now, let's fast forward a little bit, because we don't have time to go through his entire life. You can read it, there are biographies about Archibald Alexander, but in 1812, after some pastoring and working with other educational institutions,

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Archibald Alexander and other pastors begin to be concerned that the theological institutions in America are failing to really prepare men for the ministry.

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So, they feel that there needs to be a new seminary, and so, in 1812,

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Archibald Alexander, along with others, they found a new seminary, which is called

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Princeton Theological Seminary. So, this is not attached, at that time, to Princeton University, but it's like a twin, it's a cousin, all right, it's close, but the seminary is taught and run by other men.

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In 1814, Archibald Alexander is unanimously voted in as the president, and he's also the chief theological teacher, he's the chair of theology.

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Now, understand that in 1814, they gave a survey of the school to see where the students were in their religion, and they also surveyed over at Princeton, and here's what they found.

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In 1814, at Princeton College, not the seminary, which is just now being founded, only 12 of the 105 students professed to be

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Christians at all. So, of the 105, 12 say, well, we're

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Christians, and the rest deny Christianity, or say, I'm not interested, or no,

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I'm not a follower of Christ. The college and the seminary were meeting separately until a fire burned down the church where all the college students attended in Princeton, New Jersey, and so the seminary students and the college students had to meet together for worship on Sundays, and Archibald Alexander preached, and God used that in those years to stir the students and to do a mighty work among them.

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In fact, after three months of meeting together and hearing from Alexander and God working through those gathered

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Sundays, there was such a work of the Lord among even the Princeton College students that it was hard to find,

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Alexander said later, it was hard to find a dorm room at Princeton College that had not become a place of earnest devotion and prayer.

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Years later, it's very helpful to understand that Alexander describes this time, and he says they only used two tools to promote this revival of religion, preaching and prayer.

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There wasn't anything else needed, and these things were used in an extraordinary way, you know, that you see the extraordinary need, and so prayer is given to this, you know, the seeking of God by his people that he would come and stretch out his arm, and in a great display of mercy and strength that he would work among the students and among the churches, and he did, and the prayer was at an extraordinary level.

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Now, Alexander served Princeton for the next 40 years until he died, so this is really that being the guide of Princeton Seminary and the head theologian is really where he pours out his life, and he did write a number of books, but it's interesting, he did not start to write until he was 52 years old.

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One of the books he wrote is this that we're going to be looking at, Thoughts on Religious Experience, because as a

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Reformed theologian, Alexander, in his own experience, in his own life, he knew the difference between good theology without application and good theology with application, good theology without an experiential grasp of the truth and good theology with an experiential grasp, and he understood that this was a life -and -death matter.

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It wasn't just, you know, your preference, what kind of church you prefer to go to. So his writings on religious experience are very biblical, but they are in earnest, very pointed and helpful, and I think we'll see that as we look at his five letters to those elderly people in his congregation.

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One last thing about Archibald Alexander, and that is, with his background in pastoring and seeing revival occur in his own church, seeing revival occur, as I mentioned, five seasons of it during his lifetime in that region,

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Alexander understood that genuine biblical seasons of revival, where the work of the

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Spirit is lifted to a pitch that is unusual, that this understanding of the work of the

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Spirit in fulfilling the covenant obligations of God, in sending the gospel across the world, and in rescuing and saving all the way, preserving, protecting, and causing the church to flourish.

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So Alexander understood that in the theological category of pneumatology, or the doctrine of the person and work of the

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Spirit, revival was a legitimate biblical category. It was a serious theological topic, but when

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Alexander dies and other good men take his place as the professor of, you know, systematic theology, you see a definite drift at Princeton and in other places among Reformed men, away from treating revival as a serious theological topic, to the point that you see in our own day that many

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Reformed men, many careful men, feel that revival is a kind of a careless category, maybe not a legitimate category at all.

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They don't deny that God did great things in the past, but it's not a theological category that needs to be carefully understood, historically understood, biblically, and explained.

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So up to the death of Archibald Alexander, it tended to be

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Reformed, theologically clear men who wrote about revival, after it tended to be those who disagreed with the

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Reformed doctrines, and the reason is Charles Finney. When the old guard dies, that still remembered real revival, and the new guard comes up, they agree on paper, they're careful with their biblical texts, and they're hermeneutic, but the problem is they've never seen

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God move in the mighty way that Alexander and others had seen, and so for the most part, all they think of when they think of revival is either old accounts or Charles Finney's perspective on revival, which was very destructive in many ways.

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So they move away from that theme. In my opinion, that makes Archibald Alexander a really valuable theologian for those who care about biblical doctrine and about the theme of real revival, and we'll pick that up next week as we look at his first letter.