Prayers of William S. Plumer

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For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others.

I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hands. – C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” in Walter Hooper, ed., God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (1970), p. 205

There is something remarkable in that classic 1867 volume of Christology by William S. Plumer titled The Rock of Our Salvation: A Treatise Respecting the Natures, Person, Offices, Work, Sufferings, and Glory of Jesus Christ. It is a stirring study of Christ in all his many glorious facets, and throughout this doctrinal treatise it is as if Plumer, while writing, was filled with prayerful utterances as he delves into the teaching of Christ for his readers. And his prayers are an example of what the study of God ought to lead us to do. For the theologian — or layman — when our minds are focused on Christ in all his glory, “the heart sings unbidden.”

The following prayers are extracted from the chapter on the divinity of Christ:

• Lord Jesus, thou God over all, thou Jehovah of hosts, be thou our Friend. Bless and help each one of us. Be unto us a horn of salvation (p. 23).

• O thou eternal Son of God, thou Father of eternity, remember that we are of yesterday and are crushed before the moth. Bring us, in the fulness of thy grace, to behold thy glory, which thou hadst with thy Father before the world was (p. 24).

• Blessed Saviour, who art everywhere present, preside in all our solemn assemblies, large and small. Walk thou in the midst of the golden candlesticks. Be thou unto us for a little sanctuary (p. 25).

• Blessed Saviour, we rejoice that thou art the same as when thou didst weep at the grave of Lazarus; as when thou didst pour salvation on the dying thief; as when, in ascending to glory, thou didst bless thy followers. We rejoice that thy state is changed and thy nature is immutable. Oh pity and bless us. Be unto us a sure foundation, a munition of rocks (p. 27).

• O thou which art, and which wast, and which art to come, the Almighty, cover us in the hollow of thy hand. If our hold on thee is feeble, let thy hold on us be the grasp of omnipotence. Go forth conquering and to conquer, till earth owns thee Lord of all (p. 28).

• Glorious Redeemer, we all were made by thee and for thee. We own thy perfect and sovereign right to us and over us. All we have and are, in soul or body, belongs to thee. Nor can any thing dissolve the ties that bind us to thee for ever (p. 29).

• Lord Jesus, who upholdest all things by the word of thy power, bear us up, bear us on, bear us through, giving us the victory over death, and hell, and all the powers of darkness (p. 30).

• Lord Jesus, who hast died the just for the unjust, set thy love on us, wash us from our sins in thy most precious blood, and make us kings and priests unto God (p. 31).

• Lord Jesus, spread the skirt of thy bloody garment over our souls, and grant us repentance and remission of sins, and we shall be saved (p. 32).

• Kind Redeemer, we cheerfully follow thee into the grave, in hope of a glorious resurrection. We would not live always. In the last day raise us up, and make our vile bodies like unto thy glorious body. Give us part in the first resurrection (p. 33).

• Lord Jesus, when thou comest in thy glory, with all thy holy angels, and the heavens shall flee away at thy presence, by thy mercy let us have boldness in the day of judgment (p. 34).

• Jesus, our Lord and our God, when thou shalt dissolve the frame of all sublunary things, remember and spare us according to the riches of thy grace in glory (p. 34).

• O thou Lamb of God, grant us this one favor — to worship thee with true devotion here below, and after this life to unite with the heavenly throng in ascribing to thee blessing, and honor, and power, and glory, and salvation (p. 37).

In the chapter on the Messiahship of Jesus, Plumer concludes with this prayer:

• O God, bring the children of Abraham to embrace Jesus Christ; and to us and to all that dwell in this land give hearts to receive thy Son, to believe on his name, to own him as our Saviour; so that all the blessings of the covenant of grace may come on us and overtake us; that we may be blessed in the city and in the field; that thy blessing may rest on the fruit of our body, and on the fruit of our ground, and the fruit of our cattle, and the increase of our kine, and the flocks of our sheep; that thy blessing may rest on our basket and on our store; that we may be blessed when we come in and blessed when we go out; and that thy who come out against us one way may flee before us seven ways. Oh that all the land and world may soon avouch the Lord Jehovah to be their God, his Son Jesus Christ to be their Saviour; his Holy Spirit to be their Sanctifier, Comforter and Guide; and unto the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, the only wise God our Saviour, be glory, and honor, dominion and power, now and for ever. Amen (pp. 98-99).

The following is Plumer’s prayer which concludes the chapter on Christ’s Glorious Reward:

• Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts! The whole earth is full of thy glory. Blessed be the Lord for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth, and the fulness thereof. Still more would we bless for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush, and for thy precious loving-kindness, and for the precious seed of gospel truth, and for the precious promises, and for precious faith to believe thy word, and for the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, and for the precious death of thy saints, and for the precious name of Jesus, which is as ointment poured forth, and for the precious blood of the Son of God, through whom we have redemption.

Look in mercy on this dark world. Remember Zion. Make Joseph a fruitful bough, whose branches run over the wall. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. Bring back the captivity of thy people, that Jacob may rejoice and Israel be glad. Thou hast set thy Son on thy holy hill of Zion. Righteousness is the girdle of his reins. Hasten the time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a child shall lead them; and the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young ones lie down together, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the nations shall learn war no more, and thy ancient people the Jews and the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brough in; when the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ; when the Lord shall call them his people which are not now his people; when the angel shall fly in the midst f heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

Lord God of hosts, cut short the work in righteousness. Let the ploughman overtake the reaper, and let a nation be born in a day.

“Pity the nations, O our God;
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious word abroad;
And the strangers home.”

We are indeed asking great things, but we do it at thy command. We ask no more than thou hast promised to thy Son, and no more than he has purchased by his most precious blood, and no more than he himself intercedes for in heaven. Amen (pp. 437-439).

These prayers of Plumer may inspire you, as they do this writer, to give God the glory when we read a doctrinal book such as this. Who can study the doctrines of God and not be moved to praise Him who is marvelously worthy of all glory? May we too learn to pray like Plumer, as we study Biblical doctrine, whose thoughts of Christ led him to prayer and adoration.

Girardeau on "the queen of the sciences"

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In a tribute to John Lafayette Girardeau, Thorton C. Whaling once wrote:

Philosophy in this sense of the biblical ethics, psychology and ontology underlies the whole structure of the theology of redemption which is thus builded upon these philosophic presuppositions. Dr. Girardeau's profound interest in philosophy therefore rested upon the base of the inherently necessary service which as an ally and handmaid philosophy must render to the "queen of all the sciences."

Theology is known as “the queen of the sciences,” but there are those that have challenged that notion. Whaling continues (his tribute was published separately and in George A. Blackburn’s The Life Work of John L. Girardeau):

In selecting some specimens of Dr. Girardeau's theologizing, the first instance which falls to be mentioned is found in the field of Introductory Theology in his answer to the objection that theology cannot really be a science, because it involves an infinite and therefore an inconceivable and indefinable element, and since the thinking faculty which is the organ of science cannot handle an inconceivable element, there cannot therefore be a valid theological science.

Our theologian's reply is, that every science begins with an indemonstrable, inconceivable and indefinable element. Such is the Soul with which Metaphysics begins. Such is personality with which law begins, continues and ends. Such is life with which Medicine deals. Such is Substance, upon which all the physical sciences rest. The infinite is no more indefinable than is the Soul, Life, Substance. Further, the infinite is a datum furnished by Revelation. If the Scriptures are proven to be from God, theology may accept an infinite God as validly as the other sciences their principia.

Girardeau was elected as Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in 1875, and delivered his inaugural address the following year titled Theology as a Science, Involving an Infinite Element. Here he addresses the question squarely:

It is now so generally admitted that theology is a science, that any elaborate attempt to establish its claims to that denomination would seem to be superfluous. It has been said that the title of science is denied to theology, “partly on the ground that the habit corresponding to it is not natural, but supernatural; and partly on the ground that it does not spring from principles of reason, nor proceed by logical deductions. It does not, in other words, find a place under the Aristotelic definition of science.” Now, even were it conceded that it professes to be a subjective and not an objective science, the first of these objections would not necessarily be fatal. For if there may be a natural habit of natural knowledge, there is no just reason why there may not be a supernatural habit of supernatural knowledge: and if reason, in its natural condition, is adapted to the scientific treatment of the former, one fails to see why reason supernaturally enlightened may not be competent to deal with the latter. Theology, however, claims to be mainly a science in the objective sense, as concerned about the theory rather than the habit of religion, and the difficulty alleged is consequently deprived of force. To the other objection it may be answered that theology does in part spring from the indestructible principles of reason, endorsed and enforced by revelation; that in so far as it arises from the dicta of a supernatural revelation, it does no more than other sciences in accepting fundamental principles already furnished; that if that be granted, it grounds itself upon data which are at least of no lower original than those supplied by reason; and that if the facts and doctrines of a divine revelation be given so as to be apprehensible, our faculties, if supernaturally illuminated, not only may, but must, by a logical necessity, proceed to arrange and classify them — in other words, to reduce them to scientific form. It may surely be allowed to a theologian to do reflectively what every intelligent man of piety, to a certain extent, does spontaneously.

His argument that theology is indeed a science, “the science of sciences,” proceeds further:

But if we are made to know God, and not to know him as infinite is not properly to know him at all; if he has laid deep in the very ground-forms of the human soul a fundamental faith adapting us to that knowledge; if he has so constructed our powers as by the very virtue of their energies to conduct us to it, and if he has been pleased more fully and explicitly to reveal it to us in his written Word what hinders that, in the employment of our reasoning powers, which were made with an adaptation to order and system, we should attempt to arrange and digest that knowledge into a theoretical and practical science of religion? If the term infinite has no corresponding reality, it is of course admitted that there can be no science which involves an infinite element; but it also follows that there can be to us no God. But if the knowledge of the infinite Being and his infinite perfections be a real and not a delusive human knowledge, it may, under proper restrictions, be made the subject of scientific treatment, both inductive and deductive. Not only does the theologian act upon this assumption, but every preacher of the gospel proceeds upon it. He reasons concerning the Infinite inductively when, for example, by a collation of infinite titles and attributes and works, he establishes the divinity of Christ or the Holy Spirit. He reasons concerning it deductively, whenever, in reply to the difficulty of the sinner that his sins are infinitely great and deserve infinite reprobation, he infers the possibility of his pardon from the infinite mercy of God, from an infinite atonement, and from the infinite ability and willingness of Jesus Christ to save. It is obvious that there is a sense in which the Infinite not only may, but does and must enter into the reasoning processes of the human mind. That being conceded, the possibility of a science of theology is granted. Soberly and reverently to reason about God is not to dishonor him; not to do it is to degrade ourselves. This is the science of sciences which the theological instructor is called to teach.

Truly, if we are made know God, and He has revealed Himself to us in His Word, and by His creation, then, as Girardeau teaches, theology — the study of God — is the highest of all sciences, and the most noble of all pursuits.

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Charles Hodge: No claim to originality

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Innovation in theology ought to be a red flag to Christians that signals a warning of trouble. Charles Hodge certainly thought so, as Ralph J. Danhof tells us in Charles Hodge as a Dogmatician, p. 43 (1929). We see this very clearly in a letter that Hodge wrote to the great Scottish Presbyterian William Cunningham dated August 24, 1857, which may be found in A.A. Hodge’s The Life of Charles Hodge, p. 430 (1880):

I have had but one object in my professional career and as a writer, and that is to state and to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformed Church. I have never advanced a new idea, and have never aimed to improve on the doctrines of our fathers. Having become satisfied that the system of doctrines taught in the symbols of the Reformed Churches is taught in the Bible, I have endeavored to sustain it, and am willing to believe even where I cannot understand.

At the semi-centennial celebration of Dr. Hodge’s professorship at Princeton Theological Seminary, on April 24, 1872, Hodge took the occasion to state:

I am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this Seminary.

While decrying any claim to originality in his ideas, Hodge was indeed gifted in his ability to articulate and to systematically summarize that which was Biblical and orthodox. For this gift, we in the 21st century, who continue to study the writings of this great theologian, give thanks to God.

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The Sum of Archibald Alexander's Theology

As recounted in Practical Truths (1857), p. 386, “on his dying bed, [Archibald Alexander] uttered to his family these memorable words: ‘All my theology is reduced to this narrow compass, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.'“ What a beautiful summation of the gospel, and what a simple truth to meditate upon this day to the glory of God, who sent his Son to save sinners.

Be on the lookout for our forthcoming booklet by Archibald Alexander, which includes his counsel to those in the autumn of life. Coming soon!