Who Was H. A. Ironside? Bible Teacher and Pastor of Moody Church
Henry Allan "Harry" Ironside was a Canadian-American Bible teacher who lived from 1876 to 1951. He had almost no formal schooling, yet he became one of the best-known Bible teachers in North America. He preached from his teens until his death, served as pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago from 1929 to 1948, and wrote more than a hundred books and booklets, including commentaries on much of the Bible. People still read him because he explains Scripture in plain words and keeps bringing it back to Christ and His finished work.
Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.
A boy who wanted to be sure
Ironside was born in Toronto on October 14, 1876. His father died when Harry was a small child. In Toronto his father had been known as "The Eternity Man," and his marked Bible became the boy's treasure. His widowed mother prayed over him often, asking God to save him early and make him a street preacher like his father.
When he was about ten the family moved to Los Angeles. He read the Bible through many times and even started a Sunday school for the neighborhood children. But he had no assurance that he was saved. A visiting evangelist asked him straight out whether he was born again, and he had no answer. For months he tried to forget the question.
In February 1890, at thirteen, the question caught up with him at a party. That night he went home, knelt with his Bible open to John 3:16, and trusted Christ. He describes it in Holiness: The False and the True. He expected a rush of feeling, and none came. So he rested on what God had said:
God could not lie.
Holiness: The False and the True, My Conversion to God
The Salvation Army and the search for perfection
Soon he was preaching with the Salvation Army, and he became known as the "boy preacher." He worked as an officer in a dozen towns and cities in California. The Army taught that a believer could receive a "second blessing" that would remove the sinful nature, and Ironside sought it with all his heart. He claimed it, lost it, and claimed it again.
After about five years, worn out in body and discouraged in soul, he went to a rest home for officers. There he found that the people who talked loudest about perfect holiness showed it least. For a month, he says, he could answer "I do not know" to every question about the faith. Then a dying young officer he admired confessed that she had never found the blessing either. They began to read the Scriptures together, and the light came. He learned that holiness was not something to find in himself:
I had been looking at the wrong man — all was in another Man, and in that Man for me!
Holiness: The False and the True, The Struggle Ended
Within a week he had left the Army. Around 1896 he joined the Plymouth Brethren, the movement his parents had belonged to, and he stayed in fellowship with them for most of his life.
Evangelist and writer
In 1898 he married Helen Schofield, the daughter of a Presbyterian pastor. They made their home in Oakland, California, and from there Ironside traveled and preached, often night after night, on street corners, in halls and at Bible conferences. Money was often short, and he told stories of God supplying their needs at the last minute.
He began writing early. His Notes on the Prophecy and Lamentations of Jeremiah appeared in 1906 and Notes on the Minor Prophets in 1909. His Lectures on Daniel the Prophet were first given in public with a large chart. In 1914 he opened a small publishing business, the Western Book and Tract Company. He read the Bible from a dispensational and premillennial point of view, and he did much to spread that way of reading prophecy in America.
Moody Church
In the 1920s Ironside preached more and more in the East and Midwest, often for the Moody Bible Institute, and he was a frequent visiting lecturer at Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1929 the Moody Church in Chicago asked him to serve as pastor for a trial year. He stayed until 1948. Week after week he taught through books of the Bible in a large auditorium, and many of his commentaries are these sermons printed. Wheaton College gave him an honorary doctorate, and he also served as president of the Africa Inland Mission.
His five addresses on The Mission of the Holy Spirit come from these years. They show his gift for making doctrine practical:
He who would live in practical deliverance from the power of sin must, therefore, feed upon the Word of God.
The Mission of the Holy Spirit, Three Words That Transform Human Lives
Last years
Helen Ironside died in 1948, a few months after their golden wedding anniversary, and he resigned from Moody Church soon after. He married again in 1949. Though his sight was failing, he set out for a preaching tour of New Zealand in late 1950. He died there, in Cambridge, on January 15, 1951, and was buried in Auckland.
What he taught
Ironside's message was simple. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith in Christ's finished work, and the believer can be sure of it because God has said so. Holiness is found in Christ, not in a second experience. The Christian grows by feeding on the Word, walking in the Spirit and keeping his heart taken up with Christ. He loved the prophets because they show God's faithfulness to His people even in their failure:
Man in his best estate is altogether vanity; but grace abounds over all our sin and failure.
Notes on the Minor Prophets, Postscript
He also called Christians back to the Bible itself. Writing on Nehemiah, he said:
It was the recovery of the Word that brought about the Reformation of the 16th century, and every true awakening since has been based upon Bible study and Bible practice.
Notes on the Book of Nehemiah, The Great Bible-Reading
Why he's still read
Ironside wrote for ordinary Christians, not for scholars. He explains each passage plainly, applies it to the heart, and points to Jesus. His commentaries have been reprinted again and again, and many pastors still keep them close at hand.
Where to start
TheWay Library has seven of his books, all free to read. Start with Holiness: The False and the True: the first half is his own story, and the second explains what the Bible teaches about sanctification. Then read The Mission of the Holy Spirit, five short addresses. For Bible study, take up his notes on Nehemiah, Jeremiah or the Minor Prophets, or his lectures on Daniel. The Four Hundred Silent Years fills in the history between the Testaments.
Our guide to H. A. Ironside's books describes all seven, and our collection of H. A. Ironside quotes gathers his best lines. For more on his subject, see the best Christian books on holiness. All his books are on the H. A. Ironside author page.