When this book first landed on my desk I picked it up with a strange combination of eagerness and hesitation.  Eagerness, because anything written by Iain Murray is bound to be serious and important as well as readable; hesitation, because I was unsure how the biography of a man who regularly preaches to congregations of several thousand might be of much practical use in our own present church context.  Eagerness eventually won the day, and the spiritual lessons which this book brings out are highly applicable to anyone concerned about today’s church, and especially anyone concerned about preaching.  We ought not to be intimidated by ‘big names’, nor should we be inclined to think that the reasons for the success of their ministries lie within the men themselves.  Not that this biography portrays a man for whom the work has been ‘plain sailing’.  There have been controversy and reversals along the way; this is no wide-eyed hagiography.  The influences and movements that shape modern American evangelicalism are addressed with particular insight in Chapter 15, for example.  For all that, Murray’s biography is essentially that of a faithful man of God who has been honoured by his devoted adherence to Scripture.

 Paul Yeulett