First Fuller Friday

Over at the blog of one of my "token" Southern Baptist friends, I joked that since he was going to take Mondays to consider what Brian McLaren has to say, I would in turn take Fridays to bring to light some of Andrew Fuller's work. So at the risk of posting two blogs in a row that are heavily dedicated to quoting Fuller, and at the risk of taking a slightly different approach on a day when all the good bloggers of the world are posting pictures and poetry, I submit without further ado: Fuller Fridays.

“It is owing in a great degree to this contentment with a superficial knowledge of things, without entering into the spirit of them, that we so often hear the truths of the gospel spoken with a tone of disgust, calling them ‘dry doctrines!' Whereas gospel truths, if preached in their native simplicity, and received with understanding and cordiality, are the grand source of all well-grounded consolation. We know of no consolation worth receiving but what arises from the influence of truth upon the mind. Christ’s words are spirit and life to them who hunger and thirst after them, or have a heart to live upon them; and could we but more thoroughly enter into this way of living, we should find the doctrines of the gospel, instead of being dry, to be what they were in the days of Moses, who declared, ‘My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass,’ Deut. xxxii. 2. O brethren, may it be our and your concern not to float upon the surface of Christianity, but to enter into the spirit of it!”

- excerpt from "Causes of Declension in Religion, and Means of Revial" para. 6