Christian Biographies

"If they were to put me into a barrel, I would shout glory out through the bunghole!" So said Billy Bray, the singing, shouting drunkard-turned-preacher from Cornwall, England. Born in 1794 near Truro, Billy served the devil with all his might in his early years, often drinking and frolicking the night away. He rarely came home sober on pay-day. But Bunyan’s Visions of Heaven and Hell awakened him to his lost condition, and after a period of conviction for sin he experienced a marvelous conversion. He became a wonder to all who knew him. "They said I was a mad-man," recalled Billy in later life, "but they meant I was a glad-man, and,...

The story of Charles G. Finney can be told in one word...revivals. This is the key that unlocks the treasures of his marvelous life. Even in his own thinking all else he did is worthy of note only in connection with his evangelism. It was he who sired a new evangelistic movement in America.

"I am better acquainted with Jesus Christ than I am with any man in the world," said Robert Murray McCheyne. Andrew Bonar, his biographer and bosom friend, informs us that "during the last years of his short life, [he] walked calmly in almost unbroken fellow-ship with the Father and the Son." This no doubt explains why the spiritual impact of his life was so great, both during his short life on earth (he died in his twenty-ninth year), and in the years that followed his death—even up to the present time. The pastoral letters contained in this short volume were written by McCheyne during a forced absence from his congregation....