WHYTE

EXPERIENCE

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Alexander Whyte, senior minister of St. George’s Free Church, Edinburgh, was born at Kirriemuir (Thrums), Scotland, in 1837.  He was educated at Aberdeen University (M.A., 1862), and at New College, Edinburgh (1862-66), and after being assistant minister of Free St. John’s, Glasgow, from 1866 to 1870, became at first assistant minister, and later (1873) minister, of Free St. George’s, Edinburgh, a position which be still retains, having had there an uninterrupted success.  He is the author of a number of biographies, his most recent work being “An Appreciation of Newman.”

WHYTE

BORN IN 1837

EXPERIENCE

And patience; experience; and experience, hope.—­Romans v., 4.

The deeper we search into the Holy Scriptures the more experimental matter do we discover in that divine Book.  Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament the spiritual experiences of godly men form a large part of the sacred record.  And it gives a very fresh and a very impressive interest to many parts of the heavenly Book when we see how much of its contents are made up of God’s ways with His people as well as of their ways with Him.  In other words, when we see how much of purely experimental matter is gathered up into the Word of God.  In a brilliant treatise published the other year, entitled, “The Gospel in the Gospels,” the author applies this experimental test even to our Lord’s teaching and preaching.  Writing of the beatitudes in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount that fresh and penetrating writer says:  “When our Savior speaks to us concerning what constitutes our true blessedness He is simply describing His own experience.  The beatitudes are not the immediate revelation of His Godhead, they are much more the impressive testimony of His manhood.  He knew the truth of what He was saying because He had verified it all in Himself for thirty experimental years.”  Now if that is so demonstrably true of so many of our Lord’s contributions to Holy Scripture, in the nature of things, how much more must it be true of the experimental contributions that David and Paul have made to the same sacred record.  And we ourselves are but imitating them in their great experimental methods when we give our very closest attention to personal and spiritual religion, both in ourselves and in all our predecessors and in all our own contemporaries in the life of grace in all lands and in all languages.