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The Christian's Great Interest

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This product is an electronic addition to your WORDsearch, QuickVerse, or Bible Explorer program. This is not a physical book or a stand-alone program. Click here to get Bible Explorer for free.

"That author I take to have been one of the greatest divines that ever wrote. It is my vade-mecum I carry it and the Sedan New Testament about with me. I have written several folios, but there is more divinity in it than in them all."

—John Owen (1616-1683), English Nonconformist church leader

"The best book I ever read."

—Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), leader, Free Church of Scotland

This wonderful little book is divided into two parts. The first gives various tests whereby someone may know he is a Christian; the second shows plainly the way of salvation. It was mightily blessed of the Lord firstly in Scotland during a time when many churches lost their pastors, and then throughout the world in various translations. It continues to be a source of comfort and encourage­ment to the Lord's people today, and ought to be a part of every Christian's library.The remarkable fact that it has gone through more than eighty editions and been translated into several languages testifies to its value.

About the Author

When the Lord raises up a number of faithful ministers of the gospel at once, as He did in Scotland with the Covenanters in the seventeenth century, not all of them are given due recognition and many are forgotten over time. One such man is William Guthrie, born in 1620 at Pitforthy, Scotland. Mr. Guthrie was the minister of the church in Fenwick, Scotland, and a pastor who dearly loved his flock. He was a man of tender heart and earnest love for the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus. Though little has been written of him, what we do know of him warms our souls. William Guthrie studied at St. Andrews University under his cousin, James Guthrie, and later prepared for the ministry under Samuel Rutherford. He is generally considered to be the earliest fruit of Rutherford's labors. He was licensed to preach in August 1642, and ordained in the newly erected parish of Fenwick on November 7, 1644. Being the first pastor there he found a great ignorance of the things of the Lord amongst the people and a general neglect of religion. Though this was very discouraging, his zeal for the glory of his Master and his great love for the souls of men were blessed of God and accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of many souls.

This wonderful Presbyterian pastor was highly esteemed in the eyes, not only of the people of Fenwick, but in all of Scotland. He received numerous calls to minister in various churches throughout that nation, most of them much larger than the one in Fenwick. But he preferred to remain where the Lord had first led him and where His people loved him. In the light of his great popularity there is very little that remains of his sermons or writings. Many sermons were printed and circulated in his name which either he did not write, or were poor and inaccurate notes taken from one of his sermons. A few of his actual sermons were published, mostly after his death. There is, however, one book that this eminent servant of the Lord did write. It was published in 1658 under the title The Christian's Great Interest, and is still in print.

Though surrounded by others who were martyred for their faithfulness to Christ, yet Guthrie died of a complication of physical disorders on October 10, 1665 in Brechin, leaving a widow and two daughters. In his lifetime he had been imprisoned, but never suffered physical torture. He was scorned and mocked, but endured all for the sake of the gospel. William Guthrie was a man who was truly raised up of God to stand uncompromisingly for the truth of God's Word and the liberty to preach it in his native land. He was a man who loved his God and those souls entrusted to his care by the Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep.