Book Review: Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Readings

Edited By Richard Rushing

Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, November 2009.

The Puritans…Really? Those unfamiliar with the Puritans may wonder if a book composed entirely of selections from their writings could possibly edify a Christian today. The answer is a resounding “Yes!”

In this devotional volume Richard Rushing and the Banner of Truth have done the Church a great service. The work, ten years in-the-making, incorporates into one volume a variety of selections from over twenty different Puritan writers that address such relevant issues as: suffering, temptation, sin, imagination, contentment, fear, providence, and God’s will. 

Why should you care what some Puritan pastor who lived several centuries ago had to say about any of these issues? Because the Puritans, perhaps more than any group of Christians before or since, knew God and knew people. You will find passages in this book which so wonderfully depict God in all his glorious splendor that you cannot help but put the book down and respond in prayers of praise. You will also find passages that bring such light to the dark and sinful corners of your heart that it will feel as though a sword has pierced through your very soul, the only remedy for which is the gospel so readily offered by the authors. In a day and age in which devotional books rarely offer more than what could be found in the latest self-help manual, Voices from the Past offers the Word of God explained, illuminated, and applied to the Christian’s everyday life.

This book is intended for Christians, and probably will be most appreciated by those who are not easily intimidated by theological language. However, I believe it also could be a useful tool in the hand of a more-mature Christian seeking to disciple a less-mature Christian. For example, reading a passage together and discussing the truths contained therein that otherwise may be too difficult for a new Christian to grasp on their own. You might use the same approach to incorporate these readings into your times of family worship if your children are a bit older. In short, these pages offer the meat of God’s Word broken up into very manageable bite-size pieces—about 350 words per reading, one for each day of the year.

Richard Rushing not only desires to edify the Church through these daily readings from the Puritans, he also hopes that these readings would point the readers to the treasure trove of Puritan writings from which these selections come. To help the reader toward that end, he includes a bibliography of all the works referenced. Another useful feature that this volume contains are exhaustive author, Scripture, and topic indices. If you want to see what these Puritans had to say about a specific passage of Scripture or a particular topic, all you need to do is turn to these indices and you will more than likely find exactly what you are looking for.

To top it all off, the quality of the book itself is superb. The hardback clothbound covers will ensure that the book will not fall apart in your lifetime, and the sewn-binding will effectively keep all the pages in the book exactly where they belong—between the two covers! If you are looking for something of substance to supplement your daily reading of God’s Word, I invite you to look no further than Voices from the Past.