Pacific Hope

"I preached ... as a dying man to dying men."

Baxter captured as well as anyone the worldview focus of Christian discipleship. He understood that all of life must be faithfully integrated because Christ is the Lord of all of life. J. I. Packer writes, "The sheer brilliance of Baxter's achievement in crystallizing a proper form for the life of faith on a canvass as broad as life at a very high level of intelligent, Bible-based, theologically-integrated wisdom, and with unfailing compressed clarity, is dazzling to the mind. Baxter had a high view of "the unity of human life before the Lord." Packer says that there is no world-denial with Baxter. Instead, what Baxter calls for "is the sanctification of all life through bringing all its manifold activities into the unity of a single overmastering purpose - loving God, and laying hold of eternal life in its fullness. That can be put the other way round, by saying that what Baxter calls for is a branching out of the converted Christian's heart's desire, to know and love and please God, into biblically informed and situationally appropriate action in every department of life."

"The Gospel dieth not when I die: the church dieth not: the praises of God die not: the world dieth not: and perhaps it shall grow better," he wrote near the end of his life. "It may be that some of the seed that I have sown shall spring up to some benefit of the dark unpeaceable world when I am dead."

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