About

Rev. J. P. Struthers (1851-1915) was Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland minister in Whithorn (1878-82) and Greenock (1882-1915).

Principal James Denney described him as the only man of genius he was ever intimately acquainted with. Alexander Smellie said he was ‘one of the most Christlike men I have ever known’. In the estimation of William Barclay, ‘he could have filled any pulpit in Britain’. According to T. H. Walker he was ‘Perhaps the most gifted preacher of his time in the West of Scotland and a veritable man of genius’.

It was the verdict of his own denomination that ‘Great and consecrated qualities were so mixed and balanced in him that we are not likely ever to look upon his like again’.

As Moderator of Synod in 1884, Struthers had said of his denomination “Perhaps they had never directly produced one really great man”. In Struthers himself, however, they surely had.

A quarter of a century after his death, Alexander Gammie wrote:

Tales will still be told of Struthers, and his incorrigible humour, his quaint sayings, and his quixotic deeds, but what some will remember most of all will be how his heavy, sombre features were transfigured and his face became lustred with a strange light as he preached the love of God to men.

The Free Church minister Thomas Cassells described the uniqueness of his preaching as follows:

in declaring the love of God for men, there was none like him in all broad Scotland…I question if in many generations there has been so unique an interpreter of the Bible.

Cassells elaborated:

He brought to [the Bible] a careful, exact scholarship, but other men have done that; he brought also a living zeal for the Gospel and the Kingdom, but so have other men; but he brought also an imagination, which circled in a wide orbit round the poles of humour and austerity, and this was his unique gift.

As a result:

the Bible became in his hands a living thing, like Moses’ rod. It became a serpent to sting the conscience and arouse the soul. He would take a text and turn it and combine it with others, and one would see in it deeps and gleams and beauties, that few other preachers could reveal.

This website is maintained by Stephen Steele, minister of Stranraer Reformed Presbyterian Church. He can be contacted here.

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