The Land and Life of Rest

“We must strive eagerly to attain that rest” (4:11): and this word “strive eagerly" is the same as that in Joshua 4:10, where we read that “the people hasted and passed over” the Jordan. From this we see that faith is not a substitute for effort, and that effort can never be a substitute for faith. The truth about practical holiness has suffered at times, because it has been represented as something that needs not the effort of man for its realization. This, however, is not true. Just because we are rational and moral beings, we have some responsibility for our own sanctification.


William Graham Scroggie was born in 1877 at Great Malvern, England, of Scottish parents; his father, an evangelist, being unable to afford for his children the advantages of higher education. He grew up among the Brethren, and later, after a few years in business, entered Spurgeon’s College, London, at the age of nineteen, to train for the Baptist ministry.

Turned out of his first two churches (at Leytonstone, E. London, and Halifax, Yorkshire) through his opposition to modernism in the one and worldliness in the other, he set himself to the study of the Bible; and in the next two difficult years, without income except for occasional gifts, he laid the foundation of all his subsequent work.

His ten years’ pastorate at Bethesda, Sunderland, was followed by seventeen years at Charlotte Baptist Chapel, Edinburgh, during which time the University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity, in recognition of his writings and of his work in the Capital.

After two years of ministry in New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, the United States and Canada, he spent almost seven years at Spurgeon’s (Metropolitan) Tabernacle, London, till nearly the end of the Second World War. During this time he was bombed out of three houses and his historic church was burnt down, all within a period of six months of the worst air-raids of 1940-41.

Increasing ill-health forced him to retire in 1944, after which he devoted his available strength to completing his literary work and undertaking occasional preaching and teaching. Between 1914 and 1954 he had the exceptional privilege of giving twelve series of Bible Readings at the Keswick Convention.