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A. C. Dixon Books: A Guide to All 5 and Where to Start

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A. C. Dixon (1854–1925) was a Baptist pastor in Baltimore, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago and London, and the first editor of The Fundamentals. Nearly all his books began as sermons, and they read that way: short paragraphs, plenty of stories, and a call to decide at the end. TheWay Library has five of them, all free to read, written over sixteen years, from his Baltimore pastorate to his first year at the Moody Church. For his life story, see who was A. C. Dixon.

This guide tells you what's in each one and where to begin.

Where to start

If you're new to Dixon, start with The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution. It's his shortest book and his most practical, and it's a fine thing to hand to a new believer.

After that, choose by what you want:

Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of A. C. Dixon quotes.

For new Christians

The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution (1906)

Eight chapters on what a new believer needs to know: the Holy Spirit, the church, the Bible, prayer, temptation, money, amusements, and a portrait of the ideal Christian. Dixon begins with the Spirit, he says, because a young Christian's greatest need is the Spirit's power for service. The chapter on the Bible gives his own story of finding assurance in God's promise instead of his feelings. The chapter on prayer is the longest, and the one on temptation follows Abraham's half-truth in Egypt.

Money is one of our best friends and worst enemies. The love of it is the root of all evil; the use of it the root of all good.

The Young Convert's Problems and Their Solution, Money

It reads in about two hours. Read The Young Convert's Problems.

Sermons

Milk and Meat: Twenty-Four Sermons (1893)

The title echoes Hebrews 5: "milk" for new believers and inquirers, "meat" for growing Christians. The early sermons are plain gospel: the new birth, the way of life through the Lamb of God, spiritual sleep, the gospel feast. Others apply the gospel to the city and call for revival. Then come sermons for believers: comfort for the weak from "My grace is sufficient for thee," God stirring the nest, giving, treasures in heaven, constraining love, a growing faith, Christ's words from the cross, and Christ as God's ideal of character.

Character reaches out and touches those near us; prayer reaches out and touches all the world in the sweep of its power.

Milk and Meat, Dew and Lion

This is the best single book for hearing Dixon preach. Good sermons to begin with are The New Birth, Comfort for the Weak and Voices from Calvary. Read Milk and Meat.

Christian life and conduct

Present Day Life and Religion (1905)

Eleven sermons that apply what Dixon calls the ethical test, the "rightness and oughtness of things," starting from Abraham's question, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The first three argue that prayer, the atonement, and heaven and hell are all morally right. The rest turn to daily life: honesty in business, marriage and the home, how to judge amusements, the theatre, dancing, cards, novel reading and secret societies. Some of his verdicts belong to his own time, but his questions are still worth asking.

When the rule of gold displaces the Golden Rule there is always loss.

Present Day Life and Religion, Ethics of Business

The chapter on the ethics of the atonement is the most substantial. Read Present Day Life and Religion.

Lights and Shadows of American Life (1898)

Thirteen Brooklyn sermons, each looking at the bright and dark sides of one part of American life: homes, workers, money-makers, boys and girls, amusements, the Sabbath, politics, cities, the Bible, churches, dangers, women, and the nation's destiny. It mixes social comment with gospel appeal, and it gives a vivid picture of what a city pastor saw in the 1890s.

Jesus Christ alone can make men truly righteous, and is therefore the Saviour of the state as well as of the individual.

Lights and Shadows of American Life, Our Politics

Read Lights and Shadows of American Life.

Defending the faith

The True and the False (1890)

Nineteen sermons in two parts. The first calls five witnesses for the truth of Christianity: Jesus himself, history, experience, the admissions of enemies, and reason. Here Dixon tells how Gilbert West and Lord Lyttelton set out to disprove the resurrection and Paul's conversion and were converted by the evidence. Short sermons on Christ the Life, the Light and the Way close with "What Shall I Do with Jesus?"

No testimony can be stronger than the favorable testimony of an enemy.

The True and the False, The Enemy as a Witness

The second part, ten sermons, is a sustained Protestant critique of the Roman Catholic Church: on Christ and Mary, miracles, the Mass, the papacy, civil liberty and confession. It ends by asking what is good in Roman Catholicism and how to reach Catholics with the gospel. Readers who want Dixon's apologetics can read the first nine chapters on their own. Read The True and the False.

A note on these editions

All five books were restored from scans of the original printings. Lights and Shadows of American Life has the most damage, with misread words in quoted verses and at the start of chapters. The True and the False has words run together in places, and The Young Convert's Problems has the printed margin notes mixed into some paragraphs. The meaning is clear throughout.

Why read Dixon today

Dixon is clear, quick and practical. He preaches the new birth and the cross without apology, and he isn't afraid to say how the gospel should shape a person's money, home and free time. Begin with The Young Convert's Problems, then go on to Milk and Meat. If you'd like to read the series he edited, see our guide to The Fundamentals. All five of his books are on the A. C. Dixon author page.

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