‘Saints remind us of Jesus. They see Jesus in every
human being – asserting, quite simply, that all are created in
the image of God [so] there’s something of Jesus in everyone…
They delight in doing humbler tasks for others – unseen often,
but known to God. They have a cavalier disregard for status, wealth
or power.’ [1]

Because the best-known ‘saints’ preceded the Reformation,
Protestants (not Anglicans) generally ignored them – until the
1940’s and 50’s, when W.E.Sangster (a Methodist) on one side of
the Atlantic, and A.W.Tozer on the other brought them into mainstream
Protestant and Evangelical reading. A generation later came Richard
Foster’s writings, the Upper Room ministries (Nashville), then
erudite ‘spiritual theologians’ like (Presbyterian) Eugene Peterson.
Today Protestants – including Evangelicals – are visiting Roman
Catholic bookshops to find out more about these special people.
Conservative publishers (like Multnomah and Zondervan) are publishing
lives of the saints. Terrific!

So you want a tome or two to start with? Try these
two devotional books: Michael Marshall’s _Saints Alive_, London:
Triangle, 1992, and Bruce Shelley’s _All the Saints Adore Thee_,
Michigan: Zondervan, 1988.

Bishop Marshall is one of the two Michaels (the other:
Michael Green) let loose by the Archbishop of Canterbury upon
the Churches of England in the U.K. for the decade of evangelism.
Following a study of Isaiah 6:1-8, he provides Scripture studies,
brief biographies of 36 European saints, then a practical application,
for devotional reading over six weeks.

Marshall combines an evangelical love of Scripture
with a higher-church sophisticated theology and hagiography. Two
down-to-earth quotes: ‘As problems are solutions in disguise,
so also tragedies, seen in the new light of repentance, can even
turn out to be blessings in disguise’ (p. 60). ‘The only difference
between a rut and a grave is that a grave is just a little deeper
than a rut’ (p. 121).

Shelley is/was professor of church history at Denver
Seminary – a bulwark of American ‘conservative evangelicalism’.
He throws his net wider, including moderns as disparate as C.S.Lewis,
Oswald Chambers, John Baillie, and even Watchman Nee. He summarizes
the life and ministry of each ‘saint’ (52 of them), followed by
one or two excerpts from their writings.

Think on these: ‘He who is altogether righteous will
accept from us even the thirst for righteousness’ (George Matheson,
p. 174). And A.W.Tozer: ‘What does the divine immanence mean in
direct Christian experience? It means simply that God is here.
Wherever we are, God is here. There is no place, there can be
no place, where he is not…’ (p. 216)

Let these begin to whet your spiritual appetite.
You’ll be hungry/thirsty for more!

[1] ‘Creative Spirituality’ in Rowland Croucher,
_Recent Trends Among Evangelicals_ (Melbourne: John Mark Ministries,
1995).