Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 35:1 (Fall 1972)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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WTJ 35:1 (Fall 72) p. 68

Book Reviews

Wilbur M. Smith: Before I Forget. Chicago: Moody Press, 1971. 304. $5.95.

Reviewers are often chosen because they are believed to know something about the major subject treated by the book under review. The present volume is primarily about the life of a popular preacher. The reviewer is a teacher and not a preacher. But the author is also a teacher. Furthermore at various points in life we have functioned in the same environment—Chicago in our boyhood years and the vicinity of Philadelphia years later. Perhaps that is the excuse for the choice of the present reviewer.

This is the autobiography of a warm, loving, and enthusiastic man. He believes that Christians have a supernatural gospel, that it can transform lives through the work of the Holy Spirit, that we learn about it in the inerrant Scriptures, and that it ought to be constantly preached and taught. So the book is a record of the life of a man who tried to apply these principles and has been successful in doing so. The style is lively and entertaining. The reader has no difficulty in keeping awake.

A very unfortunate principle is announced by the author early in the book in reference to others, “There is absolutely no reason for recording, in a volume such as this, dismissals from the staff of some Christian institution because of serious transgressions, nor the great sorrow and constant disappointment that some have known through domestic tragedies….I have refrained, for the most part, in recording those experiences which have actually irritated me…” (pp. 7f). Fortunately, as Smith indicates, he does make exceptions to this rule. But it is a very unhappy rule to use, for it gives the reader, especially the younger reader, a false picture of life. Young people often read the biographies of men and women whom they admire to find out what they can beneficially learn for the guidance of their own lives. If the tragedy, the disappointment, the ethical failures with which every one comes into contact are left out of the picture, a false impression is made on the reader which misleads him as to the true character of the life that lies before him. The Victorian type of Christian biography has produced sad results in many lives, because young people

WTJ 35:1 (Fall 72) p. 69

are discouraged vitally when they find that the Christian life is not free from opposition which is often successful. It frequently uses methods that the ethics taught by our Lord would never permit. Christians should be alerted from the beginning to the fact that even the church is full of evildoers, so that they will not be surprised when they face them in their own service.

The volume is, then, not a full biography but, as the author himself...

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