This year marks the 300th birthday of John Brown of Haddington.
In 1722, Brown was born into a poor Christian family in Scotland. As a young teenager, he found himself an orphan after an illness claimed the lives of his parents. Soon after, he found himself quite sick as well. Brown wrote this in his memoirs, ‘Four fevers on end brought me so low within a few months of my mother’s death, as made almost every onlooker lose all hopes of my recovery.’
Eventually, Brown did recover and began to support himself as a herd boy. Despite his Christian roots, Brown lived in disobedience until he heard a particularly convicting sermon while his sheep were resting. The Scripture preached on was John 6:64 which reads: ‘But there are some of you that believe not.’ This was a major turning point for Brown. He later said this sermon ‘pierced my conscience as if almost every sentence had been directed to none but me, and made me conclude myself one of the greatest unbelievers in the world’. He was further moved by sermons on Isaiah 53:4 and Isaiah 45:24 that drew him closer to the Lord. He soon found himself leaving what he called ‘practical apostasy’.
