THE WAY OF LIFE:
Christian Belief and Experience
By Charles Hodge
Banner of Truth. 276 pages. £12.50
ISBN 978 1 848 719 521
Charles Hodge was born in an epidemic; his father and three of his brothers died of yellow fever in the 1790s. His best-known writings, including this marvellous book of 1841, do not seek to justify God, but to show how God justifies sinners.
He is best known for his Commentary on Romans and his Systematic Theology. The Way of Life (which he calls ‘this little book’) was written between these others, as a popular exposition of the gospel, to help the younger reader think and live in the way of Christ.
To the modern reader it is a bit dense, requires some concentration, and has long paragraphs. The first section (on the Scriptures) is tightly reasoned. The second (on sin) is strong and good. And it is with the third section (on Justification) that the book comes alive. Now the writer is excited, inspiring, quoting verses to thrill us, eager to bring our experience up to match the glorious truth that God saves sinners. If only the CofE, and other denominations too, could consistently hear this practical and energising theology from its leaders and its theological educators today.
Hodge was always eager to restrain the excesses of Christian experience, either from the European Romantics or the American Revivalists, but in this work he seeks to bring truth and experience together rightly, such that the gospel be truly lived, and its wonders truly felt. In this he is extremely successful.
The Banner of Truth has produced a beautiful new hardback edition with a slightly off-putting cover design. But don’t be put off! Buy, read, give this charming, eloquent, strong, good, clear outline of Christian truth, and stop at regular intervals in your reading to pray and give thanks for so great a gospel and so gracious a God.
