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Alexander Whyte Books: A Guide to All 14 and Where to Start

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Alexander Whyte (1836–1921) preached for more than forty years at Free St George's in Edinburgh, and almost all his books began as sermons or Bible-class lectures. TheWay Library has fourteen of them, all free to read: the six volumes of Bible Characters, the second series of Bunyan Characters, his studies of Paul, his sermons on the life of Jesus, his commentary on the Shorter Catechism, and four books on saints he loved: Samuel Rutherford, Lancelot Andrewes, Thomas Shepard and James Fraser of Brea. For his life story, see who was Alexander Whyte.

This guide sorts them so you can find the one you need.

Where to start

Start with Bible Characters: Adam to Achan. Each chapter takes one person from Genesis to Joshua and turns the story on your own heart. You can read a chapter at a time and stop anywhere.

Then choose by what you want:

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

Bible Characters

This is Whyte's best-known work: some 150 character studies, first given to his congregation and his classes. They aren't commentary. Each is a portrait, gathered from everything Scripture says about one person, and then pressed home on the reader. The chapter numbers run on from one volume to the next. Here they are in Bible order.

Adam to Achan

Twenty-six studies from Genesis to Joshua: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Sarah, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Joseph, two chapters on Moses, Pharaoh, Balaam, Joshua and Achan. His chapter on Esau, who had no eyes for eternal things, is one of his best. Read Adam to Achan.

Gideon to Absalom

Twenty-one studies from Judges to David's reign: Gideon, Samson, Ruth, Hannah, Eli, Samuel and Saul, four chapters on David in his virtues, vices, graces and services, then Jonathan, Michal, Solomon, Joab and Absalom. Our copy is scanned text, and the opening letters of many chapters are missing or garbled.

Jonathan is a disciple of Jesus Christ, born out of due time.

Bible Characters: Gideon to Absalom, Chapter XXXIX: Jonathan

Read Gideon to Absalom.

Ahithophel to Nehemiah

Twenty-two studies from David's court to the return from exile: Ahithophel, Mephibosheth, Barzillai, Jeroboam, Josiah, Elijah, Elisha, Naaman, Job, Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Esther, Ezra, Sanballat and Nehemiah. Read Ahithophel to Nehemiah.

Joseph and Mary to James

Twenty-seven New Testament figures, from Joseph and Mary, Simeon and John the Baptist through Peter, Zacchaeus, Mary Magdalene, Pilate and his wife, Herod and the penitent thief to Thomas, Barnabas and James, the Lord's brother. Whyte says James is the one in whose place he most often imagines himself. Read Joseph and Mary to James.

Stephen to Timothy

The last volume: thirty studies from Acts and the letters. After Stephen, Philip, Cornelius, Eutychus, Felix, Festus, Agrippa, Luke and Onesiphorus, twenty chapters look at Paul from every side, and the book ends with Apollos, Lois and Eunice, and Timothy. Read Stephen to Timothy.

Our Lord's Characters

Thirty-three studies of the people in Christ's parables and in the letters to the seven churches: the sower, the man who found treasure, the friend at midnight, the importunate widow, the prodigal son, the Pharisee and the publican, the rich man and Lazarus, the slothful servant, the good Samaritan and the angels of the churches. His chapter on the Pharisee is unforgettable.

All good books are really good books to us, just in the measure that they speak to us about Jesus Christ.

Bible Characters: Our Lord's Characters, Chapter VII: The Merchant Man Who Sold All That He Had

Read Our Lord's Characters.

Christ and Paul

The Walk, Conversation and Character of Jesus Christ Our Lord

Thirty-five sermons following Jesus from the holy child at Nazareth and the temple at twelve, through His baptism and temptation, to His teaching, His zeal, His life of faith, His homelessness, His table and holidays, His use of the Bible and His meekness. Whyte dwells especially on Jesus as a believing man. Our copy is scanned text, and the first letter of each sermon is missing.

No man can keep looking all his days at Jesus Christ without in the end becoming wholly like Him.

The Walk, Conversation and Character of Jesus Christ Our Lord, Chapter XIII: A Teacher Come from God

Read The Walk, Conversation and Character of Jesus.

The Apostle Paul

Sixteen portraits of Paul: student, apprehended by Christ, in Arabia, preacher, pastor, man of prayer, chief of sinners, with his thorn, sold under sin, evangelical mystic, and Paul the aged. Five sermons on Pauline texts and an essay on Walter Marshall, "the most Pauline of divines," complete it. The Paul chapters also appear in Stephen to Timothy, so you only need one of the two for them. This copy has scattered scanning errors. Read The Apostle Paul.

Bunyan and the saints

Bunyan Characters, Second Series

Twenty-six lectures from Whyte's Edinburgh pulpit on people in the later part of The Pilgrim's Progress: Ignorance, Little-Faith, Atheist, Hopeful, Temporary, Mercy, Old Honest, Mr. Fearing, Feeble-Mind, Great-Heart, Valiant-for-Truth, Standfast, Madam Bubble, Christiana, Beulah and the river of death. Mr. Fearing and Feeble-Mind are a comfort to timid believers.

For the truth does not stand in points, but in principles.

Bunyan Characters, Second Series, Chapter XLIV: Valiant-for-Truth

Read Bunyan Characters. For Bunyan's book itself, see our guide to The Pilgrim's Progress characters.

Samuel Rutherford and Some of His Correspondents

Two chapters on the Scottish Covenanter Samuel Rutherford, his life and his "extremes" of feeling, then portraits of twenty-two people he wrote to, from Lady Kenmure and Marion M'Naught to the Gordons of Earlston, James and William Guthrie, George Gillespie and his own parish. Whyte draws a lesson from Rutherford's letters to each. Our copy is scanned text with errors, especially at chapter openings. Read Samuel Rutherford and Some of His Correspondents.

Lancelot Andrewes and His Private Devotions

A short life of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester and one of the King James translators, followed by a selection from his Private Devotions. Whyte is frank about Andrewes's flattery at the Stuart court and unimpressed by his sermons, but he holds that no man ever prayed as Andrewes did. He explains how Andrewes built his prayers from Scripture, above all the Psalms, and from the early church, then gives the prayers themselves: morning prayers for the seven days of the week, evening prayers, prayers for many seasons, and communion meditations. It's a book to pray from, not only to read.

It is enough for one man that he can pray as Andrewes alone can pray, but let no beginner in the pulpit go to Andrewes to learn how to preach.

Lancelot Andrewes and His Private Devotions, A Biography

Read Lancelot Andrewes and His Private Devotions.

Thomas Shepard, Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard

Twenty-five addresses on Thomas Shepard, the Puritan minister of Cambridge in New England. After three introductory chapters, each address takes one confession from Shepard's private journal, such as "The more I do the worse I am" or "My mind is a bucket without a bottom," and turns it on the hearer. Other chapters take up being "salted with suffering," the prodigal's best robe, and the heart that makes the theologian. Our copy is scanned text, and the first letter of many chapters is missing. Read Thomas Shepard.

James Fraser, Laird of Brea

Twenty-eight addresses on the Memoirs of James Fraser of Brea, the Covenanter laird and minister whose life story Whyte says held him more than any other. Each chapter takes a phrase from Fraser: his sullen temper, the four false steps he took toward conversion, his conversion at a communion week in Edinburgh, and his conviction that a Christian's whole life is a continual conversion. Whyte also praises the treatise on faith Fraser wrote as a prisoner on the Bass Rock. Like Thomas Shepard, our copy is scanned text with the first letters of chapters missing.

It is just having hitherto gone on the wrong road to turn round and henceforth to go on the right road.

James Fraser, Laird of Brea, Chapter III: Four False Steps That I Took Toward My Conversion

Read James Fraser, Laird of Brea.

Doctrine

A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism

Whyte's notes on all 107 questions of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, from "What is the chief end of man?" to the Lord's Prayer. Each answer comes with its proof texts and a chain of comments from theologians and saints such as Bengel and Thomas Goodwin. He built it from years of Bible classes, and it's still a good book for teaching the faith.

Justification is an act of God's free grace; adoption is an act of God's free grace; sanctification is the work of God's free grace.

A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism, Question 35: What Is Sanctification?

Read A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism.

A simple reading plan

  1. Adam to Achan, a chapter a day.
  2. Our Lord's Characters, alongside the Gospels.
  3. The Walk, Conversation and Character of Jesus, slowly.
  4. Bunyan Characters, with The Pilgrim's Progress open beside it.
  5. Lancelot Andrewes and His Private Devotions, a prayer at a time.
  6. Then the rest of Bible Characters as you read through the Bible, with Thomas Shepard or Fraser of Brea when you want to look hard at your own heart.

All of Whyte's books in the library are on the Alexander Whyte author page.

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