This is cherry-picking Spurgeon at his very
best!
The term “cherry-picking” is often
used pejoratively—I don’t use it that way here. Zach Eswine has
mined Spurgeon’s sermons with the sort of care for detail a private
investigator might employ in evaluating a target’s email. Spurgeon
was both a sufferer of depression as well as a comforter of the
depressed: he knows well of what he speaks. As Eswine demonstrates,
the nineteenth-century “prince of preachers” provided a
treasure-trove of wisdom regarding depression.
Like Spurgeon’s own experience of
depression, Eswine’s book is for two audiences: counselors and the
depressed, as is made clear from its organization. Part One has to do
with understanding the dark pit of depression. Sufferers will find
that they are reading an author who understands their despair.
Eswine’s use of metaphor and his commentary on the Scripture’s
use of metaphor turns his writing into a thing of sensitive beauty,
although counselors might itch for him to get from description to
prescription (an impatience the author warns us about).
Part Two, “Learning How to Help Those
Who Suffer from Depression,” contains almost as many cautions for
those seeking to help the depressed as it does positive directions
for soul care. Chapter 7, “Helps that Harm” illustrates things
not to do when caring for the depressed.
Eswine provides good advice for weary
souls who find themselves in the black night of despair in Part
Three: “Learning Helps to Daily Cope with Depression.” In his
chapter “Natural Helps” the author makes a case for the judicious
use of medicine, as well as other remedies such as laughter and times
of rest. His chapter on suicide is gentle but firm.
This is an eminently usable volume: it
is accessible to the average reader, it is full of excellent advice,
heavily footnoted for those who wish to do extra study, and it’s
brief (only 143 pages). It’s the sort of thing you can give a
counselee or read yourself as a counselor. Eswine has done the world
of Biblical Counseling a favor with this book; I recommend it highly.
Five stars.
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