What others are saying about the book
What a strange mixture of glory and corruption in fallen man; what incongruities exist in the affections and perceptions of the regenerate soul! This introduction to the piety of the Senior and Junior Basil Manly is a fascinating, moving, and shocking look at piety among Southern Baptists in the middle two-thirds of the nineteenth century. Biographical introductions and primary sources show the reader the beauty of the life harnessed to the glory of God and the bewildering sense of honor displayed in the beating of a slave, an abiding sense of the eternality and transcendent claims of the kingdom combined with a relentless southern jingoism. A carefully stated doctrinal orthodoxy co-exists and gives rise in the same hearts to the creative linguistic power of singable poetry. The reader of this volume will certainly be educated, challenged, fascinated, perplexed, and led to examine himself and take heed lest he also be tempted.
-Tom J. Nettles, Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
A superb collection of well-edited primary sources by two of the most formative shapers of Southern Baptist life in the nineteenth century. The brilliance, vision, passion, and faults of Basil Manly, father and son, come through with clarity in these historic documents, shedding much needed light on Southern culture and Baptist history.
-Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and a senior editor of Christianity Today
The Manly family provided Southern Baptists with two generations of leadership during the nineteenth century. Basil Manly Sr. and Basil Manly Jr. were pastor-theologians and pioneers in theological education among the Baptists in the American South. This collection of their correspondence and shorter writings evidences the evangelical Calvinistic piety that buttressed their many accomplishments. Michael Haykin, James Fuller, and Roger Duke have done us a service by introducing the Manlys to a new generation. Hopefully contemporary Southern Baptists and other evangelicals will drink deeply from the same well that nourished this great family’s gospel efforts of a previous century.
-Nathan Finn, Assistant Professor of Church History, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary