ROBERT CHAPMAN
Apostle of love
By Robert L. Peterson. Lewis and Roth Publishers. 210 pages. £8.74
ISBN 978 0 936 083 278
A letter from overseas was once addressed simply to ‘R.C. Chapman, University of Love, England’; yet so well known was its intended recipient and his reputation that it was correctly delivered to Robert Chapman, the pastor of an Assembly of Christians in Barnstaple, Devon. Charles Spurgeon once described him as ‘the saintliest man I ever knew’.
This self-effacing, humble man rubbed shoulders with and was consulted by the likes of Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, J.N. Darby, George Muller and even Gladstone, the Prime Minister, yet was always reluctant to see his own name in print lest it draw attention to himself and detract from the Bible and the Lord.