Our castaway this time is Philip Eveson, pastor of Kensit Evangelical Church in Finchley and resident tutor at the London Theological Seminary. (published Winter 1993)

I am glad that Calvin's Works, Henry's Commentary, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress will be already on the island. They have been significant in my early years and it is always rewarding to go back to them again and again.

Lloyd-Jones has had a profound impact on my life. When I was a boy he used to come to my home town of Wrexham about every two years. It was a notable occasion to be taken to hear him preach. His messages always gripped my attention and stirred my spirit.

Only once did I have the privilege of hearing him preach on a Sunday at Westminister Chapel but it is good to have his sermons in print and I would like to take with me to the island the set of Lloyd-Jones on Romans. Here is a masterful exposition of this great Pauline epistle that is both intellectually stimulating and deeply moving and challenging. The way he opens up the text and makes clear the Gospel truths puts in the shade all other modern commentators and preachers on Romans that I have read or heard. I would like to be able to study these sermons in detail and to meditate upon them, and hopefully to return from the island with a deeper appreciation of this glorious Gospel and a renewed zeal to preach it.

Before I entered the Christian ministry a pastoralia course was thought fitting by the powers that be in the denomination to which I then belonged. The most profitable part of the year was the time spent in the college library where I discovered the works of Machen. All through my university days I had to contend with liberalism and modernism and even the pastoralia lecturer in the theological college was influenced by this thinking. Machen's books were like a breath of fresh air. I had never read anything like them before. My only regret was that I had not read them before my Biblical Studies and Theological training. Machen tackles the liberals and modernists head-on in an appealing, succinct, and intellectually satisfying way. If I am only entitled to take one of his books it would be What is Faith?, the first of his books which I read. Even the introduction is arresting and still so relevant to today's world. I wish that our modern educationalists would read what he as to say on the subject of education.

Dallimore's Life of George Whitefield would be the next choice. To read again of the wonderful works of God through the life of this man of God would both keep me humble and encourage me to continue in prayer for another great awakening in our land today. Would it not be wonderful to come back from the desert island to find Britain in the throes of a mighty revival of true religion!

I like reading history for relaxation, particularly the Reformation period. But I think I would take with me a two-volume work on a completely different period, The Victorian Church by the former master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Owen Chadwick. He encouraged me in the study of Reformation history and this magisterial work on nineteenth century church life is a scholarly yet readable study covering the Anglican, Noncomformist, and Roman Catholic scene. It not only whets the appetite for further research into the period but is essential for understanding the state of Christianity in twentieth century England.

There is a new book in the library, The Prophecy of Isaiah by J. A. Motyer. Here is the fruit of a lifetime's study of the evangelical prophet by a man who is a careful, godly exegete of God's Word. I am looking forward to reading it on the island as part of my daily study of the Scriptures.