Sir Robert Anderson Books: A Guide to All 10 and Where to Start
ProphecyApologeticsBible StudyChristian Life
Sir Robert Anderson (1841–1918) spent his working life in law and police work, ending as head of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. In his spare hours he was a Bible teacher, and he wrote books the way he built a case: gather the evidence, test it, then state the verdict. TheWay Library has ten of his books, all free to read. Two are on Daniel's prophecy, four defend the Bible and the faith against critics and doubters, two set out who Christ is and what the gospel says, one asks why God is silent, and one is about everyday Christian living. For his life story, see who was Sir Robert Anderson.
Where to start
Most readers come to Anderson for The Coming Prince, and that's the right place to begin. It's the book he's known for, and it shows his method at its clearest.
After that, choose by what you need:
- For Bible prophecy: The Coming Prince, then Daniel in the Critics' Den.
- For doubts about the Bible: Daniel in the Critics' Den, then The Bible and Modern Criticism. Pseudo-Criticism and Christianized Rationalism take the same case further.
- For a skeptic, or a Christian who talks with skeptics: A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion.
- For a clear statement of the gospel of grace: The Gospel and Its Ministry.
- For the hard question of why God doesn't intervene: The Silence of God.
- For who Jesus is: The Lord from Heaven.
- For a short, practical book: "The Way": Chapters on the Christian Life.
For the best lines from all ten, see our collection of Sir Robert Anderson quotes. Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from.
Books on prophecy
The Coming Prince
Anderson's study of Gabriel's message in Daniel 9, the prophecy of the seventy weeks. Arguing that the prophetic year has 360 days, he calculates that sixty-nine weeks of years, 173,880 days, ran from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 BC to Christ's entry into Jerusalem in AD 32. The seventieth week, he holds, still lies ahead and belongs to a future "coming prince," the Antichrist. Between the two stands the present age, which he calls a parenthesis of grace. Later chapters link Daniel with the Olivet discourse and Revelation, and long appendices give his chronological tables and his replies to critics.
It is not that there is grace for the penitent or the elect, but that grace is the principle on which Christ now sits upon the throne of God.
The Coming Prince, chapter XI
The key chapters are The Prophetic Year and The Fulfilment of the Prophecy. Read The Coming Prince.
Daniel in the Critics' Den
A shorter book from 1895, written mainly to answer Dean Farrar's commentary on Daniel. Anderson insists the whole dispute turns on one plain question of fact: was the book of Daniel written before the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, or after? He answers the charges of historical error about Belshazzar and Darius the Mede, shows how small details in Daniel have been confirmed, and closes with the seventy weeks as proof that the book is from God.
The accuracy of Daniel in this matter is confirmed in a manner which is all the more striking because it is wholly incidental.
Daniel in the Critics' Den, chapter III
Read it alongside The Coming Prince; the two books support each other. Read Daniel in the Critics' Den.
Defending the Bible
The Bible and Modern Criticism
Anderson's fullest reply to the Higher Criticism, from 1902, with a preface by Bishop Handley Moule. He admits that his own faith in Scripture was once shaken, and he explains how he found his footing again. He traces the critical movement from Germany to England, argues that its case against the books of Moses rested on the false idea that the age of Moses was barbarous, and presses one point above all: the Lord Jesus treated the Old Testament as true, so to reject it is to set His authority aside. Appendices take up "three days and three nights," the genealogies of Christ and other puzzles.
But surely it is a poor sort of faith that depends on the absence of difficulties.
The Bible and Modern Criticism, chapter XIX
It's the most detailed of his books and best for readers who want the whole argument. Read The Bible and Modern Criticism.
Pseudo-Criticism
A 1904 follow-up, and the sharpest of his critical books. Anderson says he has no quarrel with criticism as such. Textual criticism gives us a pure text and Higher Criticism asks how the books came to be, and both are worth doing. His target is a "pseudo-Criticism" that lowered the Bible's claims to please the Rationalists. Writing as a man who had seen wrongful convictions at the Home Office, he treats the reader as a jury and tests the critics' "assured results" on the Pentateuch and Daniel. He takes up Harnack, Friedrich Delitzsch's "Babel and Bible" lectures and George Adam Smith in turn, and prints his letters with Gladstone.
We accept the Hebrew Scriptures, not by grace of the Critics, but in virtue of the imprimatur of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pseudo-Criticism, chapter IX
Christianized Rationalism and the Higher Criticism
Anderson's 1903 reply to Adolf Harnack's famous lectures, What Is Christianity? In thirty-two short sections he lays out what Harnack keeps and what he throws away: the birth stories, the miracles, the resurrection, the atonement and John's Gospel. What's left, he argues, is not the Lord of the New Testament but a kindly teacher with no new message, and he traces that loss back to the methods of the Higher Criticism. The closing sections rest the Old Testament on Christ's own word and speak of the cross as the great crisis of the world's history.
And let the fact be kept plainly in view that our acceptance of the Old Testament as a divine revelation is based upon the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christianized Rationalism and the Higher Criticism, Section XX
The short sections make it easy to read a few at a time. Read Christianized Rationalism and the Higher Criticism.
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion
Anderson first put this out without his name while he headed the CID, and he calls it "work for a high-class detective." He writes as a doubter for men of the world and turns his doubts on unbelief itself. How did life begin? Do Darwin's theory and Herbert Spencer's system hold up? Do we have a revelation, and is Christianity divine? He answers A. J. Balfour and Leslie Stephen's "An Agnostic's Apology," then ends with a plea to honest skeptics and plain advice on how to read the Bible.
True scepticism connotes intellectual caution, but agnosticism is intellectual suicide.
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion, chapter VIII
Give this one to a friend who thinks faith means switching off the mind. Read A Doubter's Doubts.
Christ, the gospel and the silence of God
The Lord from Heaven
A Bible study on the deity of Christ, with a note by Handley Moule. Anderson wrote it first for young missionaries shaken by Muslim objections to the Sonship of Christ. He explains what "son" means in Scripture, why the Lord called Himself the Son of Man, and what the title Son of God claims. Then he gathers the witness of Matthew, John, James, Hebrews, Paul and Revelation, often from the way they speak of Christ as much as from direct statements.
Any one, therefore, who refuses the truth that the Lord Jesus is God, must acknowledge two Gods.
The Lord from Heaven, Preface to the Second Edition
The Gospel and Its Ministry
Anderson's handbook of the gospel, from 1893, written to help Christians and preachers state it clearly. He complains that opinions have taken the place of convictions, and he sets out to give convictions drawn from Scripture. Ten chapters treat grace, the cross, faith, repentance and the Spirit's work, election, substitution, righteousness, sanctification and reconciliation. He clears away the idea that faith and repentance are hard hurdles on the sinner's road, and notes at the back take up James on works, cleansing by blood, Christ's priesthood and the meaning of "atonement."
He who preaches a mixed gospel robs God of His glory, and the sinner of his hope.
The Gospel and Its Ministry, chapter II
This went through many editions and is the best single book for Anderson on grace. Start with the chapter on grace. Read The Gospel and Its Ministry.
The Silence of God
Anderson's most personal book. It starts with the cry of people crushed by sorrow: if God is there, why does He never act? Why has heaven worked no public miracle since the apostles? He weighs the purpose of miracles, traces how they marked the apostolic age and then ceased, and warns of Satan as the deceiver behind false religion. His answer, in the final chapter, is that heaven's silence is the silence of grace. God has spoken fully in Christ, and His silence is the pledge that the offer of mercy still stands.
But of all the questions which immediately concern us, there is not one which the Cross of Christ has left unanswered.
The Silence of God, Chapter XIII
Start with chapter XIII if you want the answer first. Read The Silence of God.
The Christian life
"The Way": Chapters on the Christian Life
Anderson's short, practical book, from 1905. It takes its title from the first name for the faith, "the Way," which Paul used before the governor Felix. The heart of the book is Titus 2:11–13: grace teaches us to live soberly, righteously and godly. Other chapters treat the fear of God, being pilgrims in the world, who is a Christian, the hope of Christ's return and the state of believers who have died.
Salvation is a gift — God's gift, bestowed on the principle of grace, received on the principle of faith.
"The Way": Chapters on the Christian Life, chapter IV
If you want Anderson the pastor rather than Anderson the debater, read this one. Read "The Way".
A note on these editions
Several of these books were restored from scans of old printings. The Silence of God has the most misread words, especially in the large capitals at the start of chapters, and a few stray page headings remain in the text. It's fully readable, but expect some rough spots.
Why read Anderson today
Anderson asked hard questions and didn't flinch from them: Is the Bible true? Is Jesus God? What is the gospel? Why doesn't God act? He answered as a man who had weighed evidence for a living, and who had also met the grace of God for himself. Begin with The Coming Prince, and keep The Silence of God for the day you need it. All ten books are on the Sir Robert Anderson author page, and our guide to books on the second coming shows where his prophecy books fit among the classics.