By Faith Cook
Banner of Truth. 342 pages. £18.95
ISBN 0 85151 732 3
I personally found this book very fascinating. Partly, I was drawn to a rugged individualist who actually hailed from my own grammar school in Blackburn 200 years before me, and even ministered with John Wesley in the parish of Fulwood in Sheffield, from which I have just retired. But I was much more challenged by the extraordinarily contemporary relevance of this book and this man.
William Grimshaw faced in the 18th century the problems of the priority of evangelistic zeal over ecclesiastical rules. He had to battle with his love for the Church of England and yet his friendship with those who found themselves moving outside its confines into Methodism and other forms of dissent. In his Biblical preaching, Grimshaw found himself often opposed, misunderstood and even physically persecuted. We need men and women of like courage today.
