I’m picking up again the series ‘The Preacher and…..’ looking at different aspects of the preacher’s life and work. For the next few weeks we are going to consider ‘The Preacher and…..his study’. This is not so much the place as the practice - though we might unearth some helpful comments on the former. Having just relocated my study and library some 35 miles to the College where I am about to start work, I was amused by this quote I found some time ago. In his book, The Puritan Hope, Iain Murray recounts how David Bogue, who was greatly used in the preparation of mission workers in England around the turn of the eighteenth century, included in his issues to be considered, “What proportion as to expense ought a minister’s library to bear to his furniture?”

However, my main quote for this new theme comes from a biography of John Henry Jowett who ministered at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York and at Westminster Chapel in London.

“I am learning to resist almost every hour of the day the tremendous forces that would push me here and there. I do not know what time ministers spend here in their studies. They are evidently engaged in a hundred outside works which must leave them very little time to prepare their message. I am going to stand steadily against this pressure, even at the cost of being misunderstood. When I get into my own home I shall allow nothing to interfere with my morning in the study. If the pulpit is to be occupied by men with a message worth hearing we must have the time to prepare it. I feel the preaching of the Word of God is incomparably my first work in New York.”