Our castaway this time is Richard Brooks, Pastor of York Evangelical Church. He is the author of two Welwyn Commentaries, one on Lamentations and one on Revelation and another EP commentary on Psalm 119. (published Winter 1997)
Having to choose just five books certainly focuses the mind and exercises the heart. It is like having to choose between dear friends: which ones shall I take with me and which ones shall I leave behind? And of those I leave behind, will I ever see them again?
There is a grain of consolation to be drawn from the fact that I am not the first castaway on this desert island. I am hoping, therefore, that some of the brethren who have been there before me will have had the large-heartedness and generosity of spirit to leave some of their books behind for those of us who come after. Reading through the earlier contributions, I have in mind particularly J. I. Packerıs Knowing God, John G. Patonıs Autobiography, and The Writings of John Bradford. They can always buy fresh copies themselves back at home. And who knows: maybe in time a new branch of the Evangelical Library could be opened on this desert island, and visits arranged for all!
Coming to my own selection, over and above what is already provided for me on the island, my first fundamental need would be for a metrical psalter. The worship and praise of God would need to be my first duty and delight here, as anywhere else. Hopefully it would be a case day by day of ³Lord, though shalt early hear my voice² (Psalm 5), along with the thankful recollection that ³He took me from a fearful pit and from the miry clay² (Psalm 40). The assurance that ³For of my heart God is the strength and portion for ever² (Psalm 73) would be a great stay for my soul, not least on the worst of jdays. I trust that His praise would always be in my heart and my mouth.
I could not envisage being without the Diary of Kenneth MacRae. This book is one of my "all-time favourites". Upon first reading it I was quite overwhelemed, and by the time I reached the end, and the account of his death, I felt personally bereaved. This is no triumphalist record. The joys and sorrows, the encouragements and heartbreaks, the clear jtimes and the perplexities are all set forth humbly and honestly and to the glory of God. Mr. MacRae was the Free Church of Scotland minister first in Lochgilphead (Argyll), then Kilmuir (Skye) and, for well over thirty years, Stornoway (Lewis). One of the most exquisite parts of the book is the account of his visit to the Isle of Arran for the communion season in 1916. He says of it at its close: "Thus ended the most blessed time I ever had in my life. I got a taste then from the Lord that was worth waiting for for a hundred years, yet after that I can never rest content until I get another such."
Then I would also need to have with me the Letters of Samuel Rutherford. These, you remember, Spurgeon held "to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men". There is a matchless spiritual fagrance about these letters, and much of the "atmosphere of the Old Testament Song of Songs. Many of them were written from "Christ's Palace" in Aberdeen -- the title which he gave to his place of exile away from "fair Anwoth by the Solway", wher he was prhibited from preaching and had to endure what he poignantly referred to as "dumb Sabbaths". How full of Christ Rutherford always is, and how large and felt is his concern for "Christ's crown and covenant". In the complete edition (and one could not settle for less) there are 365 letters -- so, well away on my desert island from all the bills and such like that so often come at home, there would alway sbe a letter from Rutherford "in the post", one for each day of the year.
How welcome it would be to "open one" and read such lines as these: "Let Christ fare well, suppose I should eat ashes. I know that He must be sweet Himself, when His cross is so sweet. And it is the part of us all, if we marry Himself, to marry the crosses, losses, and reproaches also, that follow Him. For mercy followeth Christ's cross. His prison, for beauty, is made of marble and ivory; His chains, that are laid on His prisoners, are golden chains; and the sights of the prisoners of hope are perfumed with comforts, the like whereof cannot be bred or found on this side of sun and moon."
My fourth choice would be a Puritan one: the Works of John Flavel. What a wealth of good spiritual matter is to be discovered in Flavel. A careful re-reading of his great work on providence would be timely and profitable while on the island. Yet in the course of his six volumes there is so much more. Let me mention a few even of his titles: The Fountain of Life (a display of Christ in His essential and mediatorial glory); The Method of Grace in the Gospel Redemption; the Righteous Man's Refuge; England's Duty Under the Present Gospel Liberty; A Saint Indeed (the greaty work of a Christian explained and applied); The Tochstone of Sincerity; A Token for Mourners; The Balm of the Covenant; The Character of an Evangelical Pastor drawn by Christ. Do you get the picture? Here, surely, is more than enough to cause the soul to sing, to assist in guarding the heart and to set the affections on things above, howeverlong the desert island expeience might last.
I expect it is assumed that contributors to this feature have read all the books they want to take with them. My final choice, however, is one I have yet to read. It has only recently come into my hands. Its very title causes it to stand out. I refer to The Precious Things of God by Octavius Winslow, one who is always good comapny and good value.
He says something in his preface which perhaps makes this ideal for a leisurely desert island read. "The truths which it contains, and the style in which they are presented, are perhaps more adapted to those peculiar seasons in the Christian experience of the believer, in which profund discussion and laboured thought would not only be distasteful, but out of place. Bearing with him the volume in his sequestered walks with God, or making it the sharer of his temporary seclusion from the active engagements of God, or making it the sharer of his temporary seclusion from the active engagements of life, the 'precious things of God' which it unfolds may serve to shed the perfume and lustre of Jesus' name and work around his lone and pensive path -- cheering solitude, soothing grief, and dissolving doubt, depression, and gloom."
It is both striking and instructive, leafing through this volume, to be reminded of some of the things to which "precious" is connected in the Scriptures -- such as Christ Himself, faith, the trial of faith, God's thoughts, the divine promises, Christ's blood, the sons of Zion, the Word of the Lord, the death of the saints, and so on.
So then, with my psalter, MacRae, Rutherford, Flavel, and Winslow I should just about be ready for off. But what about all those friends that I have had to leave behind? Hopefully the island experience would teach me that whatever other friends we have, "Christ is all", on earth and in heaven.
