Our Comfort in Dying

A review of Our Comfort in Dying (Sola Fide Publications, 2021), R. L. Dabney and Jonathan W. Peters, ed.

Dabney “was fearless and faithful in the discharge of every duty. . . . [He] was a Chaplain worth having.”  –Col. Robert E. Withers, Commander, 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment, 1861

In the current American dystopia, the life and ministry of an Old School Southern Presbyterian minister such as Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) is likely to be dismissed out of hand by many – though it will be to their shame – regardless (or perhaps in part because) of his towering intellect, unshakable convictions grounded in the Bible and its principles, and prescience regarding ideological afflictions (among them feminism and socialism) that came to fruition in later generations.[1] But for more mature students of history and culture who are willing to examine a man’s life in the context of his own time and place and whose reliance was on the whole counsel of God, a newly released work – with the main title, Our Comfort in Dying – may be highly recommended as an addition to one’s devotional and Southern history shelf at home. Comprehensively and beautifully edited by Jonathan W. Peters, including citations with enriching detail (such as excerpts from letters of soldiers who heard Dabney preach in their camps), the work makes available 20 of Dabney’s sermons, all of them preached in Virginia, most of them between May 1861 and June 1863.

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