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’.
After God changed Brown’s heart, he was compelled to teach himself Greek as a teen. People were so shocked that this poor young man became fluent in Greek that they accused him of being taught by Satan. These cutting yet foolish remarks kept Brown humble. Despite the slander, God continued to work through Brown, which made his critics look foolish. The Lord instilled in Brown a love for language which led him to eventually become fluent in nine other foreign languages besides Greek.
In addition to his expertise in language, Brown was also a gifted author. He published several works and The Self-Interpreting Bible proved to be his most notable. Brown’s biographer, Robert MacKenzie, said this about his magnum opus: ‘Your Self-Interpreting Bible seems to stand in lieu of all other commentaries; and I am daily receiving so much edification and instruction from it, that I would wish it in the hands of all serious ministers.’ Brown also published a Bible dictionary, a concordance, and a commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism among his other works.
This former herd boy spent the last two decades of his life as a professor of several subjects including divinity and theology. In addition to his numerous other accomplishments, Brown also pastored a church in Haddington, Scotland for 36 years.
Let us marvel at the testimony of John Brown of Haddington. God took a poor orphan at death’s door and moulded him into a bold proclaimer of truth. Praise God for the mighty work He did in the life of John Brown of Haddington.
R.A. Miller is an elder at Sarasota Reformation Chuch (Reformed Baptist) in Sarasota, FL, USA. He is a church history enthusiast and loves to write about key figures from the past.
More about John Brown
• Many of Brown’s descendants were to become eminent ministers, scholars and public servants. In 1753 he had married Janet Thomson, with whom he had several children, two of whom, John Brown (of Whitburn) and Ebenezer, survived childhood – both of these following their father into the ministry. After Janet died in 1771, aged 38, Brown married Violet Croumbie in 1773. They had nine children, five of whom survived childhood, including William, who became secretary of the Scottish Missionary Society and author of a major work on the history of Christian missions, as well as being biographer of his father. - Banner of Truth
• Brown’s preaching was ‘earnest, simple, and direct, as if he had never read a book but the Bible’. His delivery was ‘sing-song’, yet ‘this in him was singularly melting to serious minds’. One story claims that philosopher David Hume heard him preach, and was so impressed he said: ‘That old man speaks as if the Son of God stood at his elbow.’ The anecdote, though undoubtedly mythical, shows the popular impression as to his preaching.- Wikipedia
