Pre-eminently a book of the heart; C.H. Spurgeon describes it
as worth its weight in gold .
Psalm 119 twenty-two pearls upon one string , as
Bridges calls it has ever retained a strong fascination for exercised souls.
Luther said that he would not exchange one leaf of it for the whole world.
About the Author
Charles Bridges (1794-1869) was one of the
leaders of the Evangelical party in the Church of England in the nineteenth century.
He was the vicar of Old Newton, Suffolk, from 1823 to 1849, and later of
Weymouth and Hinton Martell in Dorset.
Educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, Bridges was ordained in 1817. As a
preacher he was called upon for such important occasions as the Clerical
Conference at Weston-super-Mare in 1858 (when he preached along with J. C.
Ryle) and the consecration of the Bishop of Carlisle in York Minster in l860.
Renowned though he was in his own day for his pulpit ministry, his subsequent
fame rests in the books which came from his pen An Exposition of
Psalm CXIX (1827), Forty-eight
Scriptural Studies (5th
ed. 1833), Fifty-four
Scriptural Studies</o> (1837), An
Exposition of the Book of Proverbs (1846), a Manual for the Young (1849), and An Exposition of the Book of Ecclesiastes (1860). His The Christian Ministry went through nine editions within 20 years
of its appearance in 1829 and has probably remained unequalled in its field.
These works earned high commendation from many, including C. H. Spurgeon, who
described all Bridge's writings as 'very suggestive to ministers.'
After his death a small selection of his
correspondence was published in book form in 1870 and it reveals a man of deep
Christian piety. 'I never remember anyone,' says the writer of the Foreword to
The Christian Ministry, 'in whose presence it was more difficult to be
irreligious, or even frivolous.'
