©2010, Reprinted by Sprinkle Publications, 586 pp., hbk.

How would you respond if your children asked you to pen an autobiography of your life? When the aged Jay received this request he fulfilled it in a series of eighteen letters. These letters along with much additional material are brought together in this personable and insightful volume.

The author was born in 1769 and preached from age of 16 until he turned 84. He came from a poor but religious home. When a pastor saw young Jay’s hunger for God’s word he invited him to attend a local academy.

Later his ministerial training was slowed because the head of the school saw the spiritual needs of the surrounding area and sent the students out to preach Christ. Recollecting this time in his life Jay points out the importance of this training.  The Gospel was advanced as God used their messages to convert sinners. This practical experience kept the students better focused on their studies as they saw the importance of learning. It also gave them confidence in proclaiming God’s word in front of listeners.

These letters to his children are full of personable reflections on a long life of ministry principally at the Independent Church of Bath. Most of the letters are topical rather than theological. Topics include his views of Christian unity, his view of visitation of members, family trials (sickness and death), and some of his experiences in preaching in Ireland and Scotland. I particularly enjoyed the letter in which he reflected on the growth of Christianity in his lifetime.

As one would expect, an autobiography of this type leaves a number of gaps. In this case, editors have provided helpful material in a number of places. This work is insightful in that the reader can read Jay’s reasoning for his response to certain events in his life as well as read numerous anecdotes both of which a biographer, writing years later, would probably have had little, if any, knowledge of.

Yet this book is more than an autobiography. It also includes Jay’s reminiscences on the character of a number of people that were well-known. Herein there is insightful reading regarding John Newton, William Wilberforce and John Wesley and lesser-known individuals. These accounts are full of anecdotes which reflect the character of the subject in each chapter. Jay shows his personal humility. He is unashamed to include, for example, a letter of correction that William Wilberforce once wrote him regarding a deficiency in his preaching. Jay’s remarks show that he took this criticism to heart and it resulted in sounder preaching. The book’s final section is composed of selections from various letters he wrote to others.

Sprinkle Publications has published a number of very helpful and practical works from Jay’s pen. There include Short Discourses To Be Read In Families, Morning Exercises For Every Day In The Year, Evening Exercises For Every Day In The Year,  and The Christian Contemplated. These and other reprinted works reveal a man with a pastor’s heart, a passionate desire to make Christ central in his reflections in scripture, and an aim of practical application of God’s word to readers in any generation.

Readers of these other books will enjoy this autobiography. Those interested in learning more about the times of people of Jay’s era will find the book to be profitable reading. Readers who want to read about God’s work in a man from common origins and raising him up to a place of unexpected, long time influence in many lives will enjoy this book. I appreciated Jay’s remarks regarding his thankfulness for having grown up in a stonecutter’s home and how this prepared him for the later ministry God had for him. Although Jay was brought into contact with a number of famous people, these contacts never catapulted him away from a desire to minister to people from a variety of classes God placed in his path.

Thus this book can be profitably read by many in our day not only to gain insight as to life and people in the author’s day but to also provide reflection on how we can live out the Gospel today.

©2011 Byron Snapp, Hampton,Virginia