Two new books have come out in the UK which do not seem as yet to be available in the USA.  One is edited by my old Aberdeen colleague, Brian Rosner, and is a collection of essays on the cross in 1 Corinthians.  The other is Serving God's Words: Windows on Preaching and Ministry, a Festschrift for the Australian theologian of preaching, Peter Adam.   Details of both books can be found on David Peterson's very helpful website.

The preaching book is packed with delights, with essays by, among others, David Peterson, Don Carson, David Jackman and William Taylor.  For me, the essay by Vaughan Roberts on Simeon is worth the price of the book.  I am biased: Vaughan and I were contemporaries in CICCU in the eighties (though they did not sell hoodies in those days).  He was the Wykehamist who made CICCU President, I was the grammar school boy who boiled the pack-a-soups for the prayer meeting on Saturday lunchtime.  Not that I have any chips on any shoulder, mind you.  In fact, our friendship-across-the-classes is rumoured to have inspired two of the central characters in a recent BBC hit, as this clip clearly shows.

Vaughan, like Simeon, is an Anglican bachelor minister in a university town -- Simeon at Cambridge, VR at `the Other Place.' So he writes on him with personal sympathy beyond the mere theological.  I flinched a bit at the anti-doctrinal bias that was evident in Simeon but I found Vaughan's account of the ridicule and discouragement Simeon endured to be very moving and a reminder of what true faithfulness often looks like.  Thirty years of hostility from his own congregation is a lot for a minister to bear, but Simeon somehow did it through God's grace.  As Vaughan writes (p. 206):

During the early years the vicious attacks against him distressed Simeon greatly.  At a particularly low point he opened his pocket Bible looking for comfort and read the words of Matthew 27:32, `They found a man of Cyrene, Simeon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.'  He noticed the similarity with his own name and made the connection: what a privilege it was to be asked to bear the cross of Christ!  He said to the Lord, `Lay it one me, lay it on me; I will gladly bear the cross for thy sake!'

Vaughan continues by commenting that the days of greater hostility to the gospel in the West are coming; and men like Simeon will increasingly provide us with worthy models of what true Christian leadership looks like.

On another note, Amazon have told me that they cannot obtain Derek Prime's new book on Simeon over here, but I am glad to report that Day One Publications US website is now offering it for sale.