The Complete Gathered Gold

Not since reading 1200 Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes by A. Naismith can the present reviewer remember seeing any book quite like this one. Based upon previous compilations by the author, this new book brings together 16,000 quotes on 600 or so topics and from many hundreds of sources. It would be difficult to give anything but a flavour of the scope of this volume which covers topics such as assurance, conscience, faith, grace, holiness, justification, liberty, mercy, prayer, repentance, sin, and trust. There is no shortage of material on more contemporary issues, such as this quote from Nicholas Johnson on television, ‘All television is educational television. The only question is, what is it teaching?’.

In many ways a book of this nature says much about the library and reading habits of its compiler. Coming from a Reformed background, Blanchard quotes extensively from such writers as Calvin, Ryle, Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, and Matthew Henry. For this reason, some readers of this magazine may not find their favourite authors. Equally, they may be surprised to find others such as Nikolai Lenin, Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, and Thomas Huxley. Overall, this is a fascinating mix of material, with some that requires careful thought, some that are remarkable for their pithy simplicity, some with which one would easily agree, and some which are questionable. It is a mine of information in which the reader could become absorbed for hours. It is a pity that it lacks an extensive index as this would make the material far more accessible.