The Stennett Family: Never Deviated, Never Compromised

Some of my reading time yesterday included a chapter from a work on the British Particular Baptists. The specific chapter was writted by B. A. (Benjamin Ashworth) Ramsbottom, editor of The Gospel Standard. He briefly covered four generations of the Stennett Family which I found fascinating. Four generations of ministers and devoted servants of the Lord from one family (Edward, Joseph, Joseph the younger, Samuel)! Actually, in 1950 Oscar Burdick wrote a dissertation on the Stennett family and included a fifth generation Stennett (Joseph V)! How I long for my family's history to be such servants even beyond five generations.

Mr. Ramsbottom's final two paragraphs provide an excellent summary of the chapter.

So we give thanks to God for the Stennetts, especially because of their faithful witness to the truth. They never deviated, they never compromised. Some of them were called to suffer, some of them had the greatest allurements to draw them aside, but they never deviated from the truth.

Their witness stretches over a period of a hundred and fifty years: first, the Civil War; then Commonwealth times, the times of the Puritans; then days of persecution; then times of toleration; then the Age of Reason, in which there was awful spiritual decline in Great Britain; finally the Evangelical Revival, and afterwards. Their witness stretched over all those times--a period of a hundred and fifty years. Learned, refined, honorable, above everything else godly, they were faithful to the truth as in Jesus. They never deviated, they never compromised.