BIOGRAPHY
By Himself
I HAD the inestimable privilege of being brought up in a
Christian home. I feel sure the well-being of a nation lies in the proportion
of Christian mothers it possesses. The mind of a child is plastic, and takes
impressions for good or evil at a very early age. One may and does forget a
good deal of what was learned at a mother´s knee, but the impression
lasts through life, and cannot be thrown off. Many a young fellow has broken
loose from the restraints of a Christian home, who in the end found early
impressions too insistent to be disregarded, and lived to thank God for the
prayers and training of a Christian mother.
When I was only eleven
years old I made a profession of faith in Christ. Looking back it was a very
feeble and shallow start that was made. As I grew up to manhood many a time I
was tempted to give up the profession of Christianity, but something held me
back. Infidel doubts assailed me. Any attack on the Bible distressed me and
shook my confidence. Such questions as, Why does God allow evil? Why does He
allow the Devil to work such mischief in the world? Why was I born in sin and
shapen in iniquity, crowded into my mind and shook my foundations.
But
all this only in the end led me to take a stronger hold on Christ as my
Saviour. It is said that a young sapling gets firmer hold of the soil as the
result of fierce winds loosening the roots. When the storm is over, the
loosened roots have room to push farther out, and take a firmer grip. The life
and safety of a tree lie in the fact that there is as much out of sight below
the surface as there is above ground. The taller the tree the longer and more
far-reaching the roots.
So it is with the Christian. Nothing will
stand the assault of the enemy save a true heart-knowledge of the Lord as
Saviour, a true faith-grip of the Gospel of the grace of God. There must be an
out-of-sight hold on divine realities before there can be effective Christian
life and testimony.
One thing that helped me at that time was
discovering that the advocates of infidelity were usually men of evil life.
Just as I might turn from a drink offered in a filthy cup, so the individuals,
who sought to overturn the faith of the Christian, were mostly repulsive. On
the contrary, the earnest Christians that I knew and listened to impressed me
with their saintly lives and the inward peace and joy reflected on their faces.
In my early days the professing Churches were, very generally
speaking, fundamentally sound. There was a large proportion of evangelically
minded clergymen and ministers, who kept the Gospel flag flying. Infidelity at
the same time was blatant and aggressive, but its activities were outside the
Churches. Higher Criticism and Modernism had not entered them to any great
extent.
Infidelity had for its champions such men as Charles Bradlaugh
in Britain and Colonel Ingersoll in the United States. Bradlaugh was a man of
colossal size, of great intellectual force, a magnificent speaker. He became
M.P. for Northampton, where a statue to his memory is to be seen today. Colonel
Ingersoll was a man of imposing personal appearance and the silver-tongued
orator of unbelief. Such as they appealed to the worst side of humanity. Their
addresses were popular with the unthinking and the vicious. Ignorant of the
true meaning of the Bible, they poured abuse and scorn upon it. They had
nothing to put in its place. Their evil work was destructive. There was nothing
constructive about it. Their influence tended to weaken the morals of their
admirers, to loosen the solemn sanctity of the marriage tie, in short to remove
from the human mind those restraints from evil that the Bible so happily
exerts: This aspect of infidelity rendered it repulsive to me. I wanted
something elevating and productive of good. But things have changed and for the
worse. In my young days the attack was from the outside. Today it is from the
inside. There is little need for aggressive atheism. Modernism and Higher
Criticism are carrying on the evil work within the professing Church. "Satan
himself is transformed into an angel of light . . . his ministers also . . .
transformed, as the ministers of righteousness" (1 Cor. 11: 14, 15). Clergymen
and ministers, who have on solemn oath promised to uphold the Word of God, are
undermining it in many a pulpit. They pocket stipends for the work of upholding
the Gospel of God, and are traitors in the camp, wolves in sheep´s
clothing. Professors of Theological Colleges are poisoning the minds of young
men preparing for the ministry. Alas! How many of them are unconverted, blind
leaders of the blind.
I was reading the other day of a servant of God
asking in utter astonishment a famous theological Don of Oxford University,
"What do you believe?" This followed on a conversation when the Don declared he
could not believe in the Virgin Birth, in the physical resurrection and
ascension of our Lord, nor could he believe the things recorded of Him in the
Gospels, especially those in the Gospel of John. And this man, alas! has the
moulding of the minds of young men preparing for the ministry. Is it any wonder
that there are many young ministers who are infidels in all but name, destitute
of spiritual power, with no influence to help anyone on the heavenly road?
We appeal to our readers, especially young men and women, to give the
Bible a fair trial. Read it, study it, and seek earnestly the truth.
A J Pollock wrote two well-known books: ´The Amazing
Jew" and "Things which must shortly come to pass", some lesser known books, and
over fifty small books showing the error of different cults and notions such as
cremation and baptismal regeneration (some of his younger friends therefore
called him Anti-Algie!). A J Pollock was born 14 October 1864 and married 8 May
1901 Elsie Madeleine SETON. He and F B Hole were married to natural sisters, F
B Hole was cousin to Hamilton Smith.
One who knew him recalls a remark
of AJP in a Bible Reading, "a certain young man being the best dressed because
he was ´clothed with humility´", 1 Peter 5: 5. He also points out
that he was the author of a number of good gospel hymns including
"Ransomed saints your voices raise", modelled on "We have heard a joyful
sound", and
"Peace was procured by Christ, the Son of God,
When on
the cross He shed His precious blood,
Which brought a pardon, perfect, full
and free
To guilty, rebel sinners such as we.",
He edited the
Gospel Tidings hymnbook, and ministered widely including a visit to the USA in
1898, and Scandinavia, India, Spain and Germany.
Another recalls AJP
telling them how as a boy of about fifteen Mr Darby visited Mr Pollock´s
family home (his father was a banker in Newcastle upon Tyne), when a plate was
not laid for young Algie, Darby shared his with him, and on learning Algie was
studying, AJP recounted that he was encouraged, ´Mind you take the Gold
(medal)´.
He had three sons Alan, Erskine and Seton (a solicitor
of Reading, with whom he stayed in old age) and one daughter who qualified as a
doctor and became a surgeon doing several thousand operations in India where
she later died just as she had arranged to come home to nurse her father in old
age.
AJP edited the magazine "The Gospel Messenger", previously edited
by Dr. W T P Wolston.
He died in 1957.