From the introduction: “...in writing these articles Pink expounded the Scriptures as penetratingly as he did in his expository and doctrinal writings. His practical Christianity, then, is not a collection of pious thoughts on the Christian life or a simple outline of Scripture, but a full treatment of the subject.” The book covers many expected topics (e.g., progress in the Christian life; the armor of God) and offers some surprises (e.g., the inability of even a renewed person to produce good in his life; the authority of employers).
The widespread circulation of his writings after his death made him one of the most influential evangelical authors in the second half of the twentieth century.
—Iain H. Murrary
A. W. Pink (1886-1952) a native of Nottingham, England, whose life as a pastor and writer was spent in a variety of locations in the British Isles, the United States, and Australia. As a young man he turned away from the Christian faith of his parents and became an adherent of the theosophical cult; but then he experienced an evangelical conversion and crossed the Atlantic in 1910, at the age of 24, to become a student at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After only six weeks, however, he left to take up a pastoral ministry. It was during the years that followed that he found his way to a strictly Calvinistic position in theology. He was soon wielding a quite prolific pen. As one whose life was devoted to the study and exposition of the Scriptures, he became the author of numerous books which the Banner of Truth Trust has been assiduously reprinting in recent times. No doubt his chief monument is the paper Studies in the Scriptures which he produced monthly and regularly for a period of thirty years from the beginning of 1922 until his death in 1952.
“Reader, if there is a reserve in your obedience, you are on the way to hell.” (Page 15)
“First, with many it is because they are willing for Christ to save them from hell, but are not willing for Him to save them from self.” (Page 15)
“, there are multitudes who are quite ready for Christ to justify them, but not to sanctify.” (Page 15)
“‘Doctrinal preaching is designed to enlighten the understanding, to instruct the mind, to inform the judgment. It is that which supplies motives to gratitude and furnishes incentives to good works.’ ‘Doctrinal Christianity is both the ground and the motive of practical Christianity, for it is principle and not emotion or impulse which is the dynamic of the spiritual life.’ But doctrine, unless reduced to practice, is of no avail. Pink wrote, ‘There is no doctrine revealed in Scripture for a merely speculative knowledge, but all is to exert a powerful influence upon conduct. God’s design in all that He has revealed to us is to the purifying of our affections and the transforming of our characters.’” (Page 7)
“If I say ‘I come to the U.S.A.’ then I necessarily indicate that I left some other country to get here. Thus it is in ‘coming’ to Christ; something has to be left. Coming to Christ not only involves the abandoning of every false object of confidence, it also includes and entails the forsaking of all other competitors for my heart.” (Page 20)