BILLY BRAY IN HIS OWN WORDS
By Chris Wright
Highland Books. 288 pages. £8.99
ISBN 1 897913 73 7
It is undeniable that some of the people that God has used very greatly over the centuries have been highly unusual individuals.
It should be equally clear that this is not necessarily an endorsement of all their characteristics, methods or utterances! We want our Christian heroes to be right in everything they believe and do; all too often we assume they are and follow them uncritically. Heroes easily become idols! Conversely, we reject them altogether and assume there is nothing we can learn from them when we discover things they said or did with which we cannot agree.
You would be a strange Christian not to have your heart warmed and challenged by the story of Billy Bray, the 19th-century Cornish tin miner and evangelist extraordinary. This book consists largely of his own journal (but now made more readable than the original by punctuation and more orthodox spelling!) along with explanatory comments by the author (not the Chris Wright famous for his commentaries) and extracts from other source material.
You may think, as I did, that you would not have felt comfortable in his meetings where, as well as singing and preaching (might it be better described as exhorting?), shouting and dancing were seen as appropriate expressions of the joy of salvation. Like-wise you, with me, might question his reliance on direct words from the Lord. But I think you would also find yourself asking whether your joy in salvation, your love for the Lord Jesus and hourly sense of his reality, your concern for your fellows and your boldness in gospel testimony come anywhere near his.
A good read, a good tonic and a bit of a heart scan as well!
