Our castaway this time is John Kilpatrick, Pastor of the Grace Batist Church in the High Road, North Finchley. A Scotsman, he was based in Liverpool for many years before coming to London, initially to study at the London Theological Seminary. (published Winter 1996)

For me, the idea of captivity on a desert island does not conjure up the prospect of leisurely reading or extended study. My capacity to get everything out of synchronisation whenever I am left to my own devices, even for just a few days, leads me to believe that, as a castaway, I would be more like Ben Gunn than Robinson Crusoe. Belief in common grace keeps me from the fear induced by William Golding's Lord of the Flies but I know I would be bound to squander the opportunities won from the wreck by more able colonists. It is against the potential wrecking of my mind that I must prepare as I choose my comansions for exile. What shall best serve to keep me in my right mind so that there is someone left to rescue?

I do not need a library as much as a spiritual tool kit to provide a watch over my thinking. I do not anticipate much time for reading in the struggle to eat and keep myself alive, therefore I am looking, firstly, for brevity. I expect to be subject o many discouragements so I am also looking for encouragement. For these reasons I am choosing to take with me, firstly, a catechism. There will be nobody else for me to interact with so the rather artifiicial question and answer from might even keep me from talking to myself. It might be supposed that a Scotsman would want to take the Westminister Shorter Catechism or that a Reformed Baptist would take the 1689 Confession, We Believe, or ideally Keach's Catechism. However, I want to take the Heidelberg Catechism with me. My reasoning is, to quote Herman Hoeksema, that "the Heidelberg Catechism considers and explains the truth from the viewpoint of the consciousness and subjective experience of the believing Christian in this world". Other catechisms and confessions are much more objective but it occurs to me that on a desert island I shall need to be reminded regularly, for instance, that salvation in Jesus Christ is my only comfort in life and death, as the first answer says to well.

It might be well argued that I should not need to take a catechism as I should have memorised most of it by now. The same, perhaps, goes for a hymnbook but nevertheless I am choosing to take one with me. Memory fails under stress and it will be as well to take one even thought I want to take a collection of hymns whose words I sang before I was able to read. Rather than take a hymnbook that I might urge a church to choose for congregational singing now, I want The Believer's Hymnbook for my isolation. Apart from the fact that it contains many treasures neglected in other collections it will stir up helpful memories for me. We used to sing from it unaccompanied in four-part harmony (at least). On my island I shall hear the voices of those now in glory and the voices of those now far from me and will echo from the past and nobody will be there to note how poorly I hold the melody.

Other memories of the past will be engendered by Princeton Sermons by Charles Hodge. When I left home, the Dundee University Christian Union introduced me to preaching of a sort that I never knew existed until then. Not that Charles Hodge ever preached at Dundee but these sermon outlines were also preached to students -- though to an earlier generation in a different place. How many Christian Unions have the stomach for such preaching today? The fact that this is a book of outlines will meet the need for brevity and will give me something to meditate on as I struggle for survival.

Is there room for a book that is simply a Christian classic that will repay reading again and again? Knowing God by J. I. Packer should be in every library and is for anyone to read. On a desert island I will not be lending my copy to other people so it will be good to sit down with it for myself. I expect to get a great deal of enjoyment and spiritual stimulation from it.

My last book will have to be a book that will prepare me for the world to which I shall return no matter how long I have been away. For this I am ready to break my self-imposed rules about brevity and encouragement. The Gagging of God by Don Carson is neither brief nor particularly encouraging but the confrontation with Pluralism is hardly likely to go away in my absence. It would be good to be prepared for a return to work soon after rescue. It could be said, of course, that our failure to graple with the issues posted in this book has placed us all in the wilderness already when it comes to the evangelism of our generation. We do not need a desert island for isolation, just enough sand in which to stick our heads.