The Book Readers Guild: Orthodox Convictions of Ethereal Thinkers

William Cowper (1731 - 1800) Biography - Cowper was born in Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England and was one of the most popular poets of his time. He changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. He suffered from periods of severe depression, which caused him frequently to doubt his fervent evangelical Christianity, the source of his much-loved hymns - going so far once as to express his dismayed surprise at ever having written a particular hymn. Cowper died in East Dereham, Norfolk. - http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/William_Cowper To Jesus, the crown of my hope, My soul is in haste to be gone; O bear me, ye cherubim, up, And waft me away to His throne!  My Saviour, whom absent I love, Whom, not having seen I adore; Whose name is exalted above All glory, dominion, and power;  Dissolve thou these bonds that detain My soul from her portion in thee. Ah! strike of

Classic Sermons Chapter Six Charles G. Finney Biography: (1792-1875) AMERICAN REVIVALIST PREACHER AND EDUCATOR. Finney was born in Litchfield County, Conn., on Aug. 27, 1792. He studied law from 1818 to 1821, when he had a sudden conversion experience. After this he began to preach and was licensed to preach by the Presbyterian denomination in 1824. Wherever he traveled he started extensive religious revivals. Finney was criticized because he emphasized the will of man in the process of regeneration and employed revival techniques that became known as "New Measures", calculated to evoke a highly emotional response. Impatient with Presbyterianism, he became a Congregationalist, serving New York City's Broadway Tabernacle. Finney was appointed professor of theology at Oberlin College (1835), minister of the First Congregational Church at Oberlin (1837), and was named president of the college in 1852. His Lectures on Revivals (1835) became a handboo

Classic Sermons Chapter Five George Whitefield Biography:  (1714-1770) METHODIST EVANGELIST George Whitefield was born on December 16, 1714, in Gloucester, England. The youngest of seven children, he was born in the Bell Inn where his father, Thomas, was a wine merchant and innkeeper. His father died when George was two and his widowed mother Elizabeth struggled to provide for her family. … In 1732 at age 17, George entered Pembroke College at Oxford. He was gradually drawn into a group called the "Holy Club" where he met John and Charles Wesley. Charles Wesley loaned him the book, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. The reading of this book, after a long and painful struggle which even affected him physically, finally resulted in George's conversion in 1735. He said many years later: "I know the place.... Whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to the spot where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and gave me the new birth. "

Classic Sermons Chapter Four   John Bunyan Biography: (1628-1688) PURITAN AUTHOR John Bunyan had very little schooling. He followed his father in the tinker's trade, and he served in the parliamentary army from1644 to 1647. Bunyan married in 1649 and lived in Elstow until 1655, when his wife died. He then moved to Bedford, and married again in 1659. John Bunyan was received into the Baptist church in Bedford by immersion in 1653. In 1655, Bunyan became a deacon and began preaching, with marked success from the start. In 1658 he was indicted for preaching without a license. The authorities were fairly tolerant of him for a while, and he did not suffer imprisonment until November of 1660, when he was taken to the county jail in Silver Street, Bedford, and there confined (with the exception of a few weeks in 1666) for 12 years until January 1672. Bunyan afterward became pastor of the Bedford church. In March of 1675 he was again i