How to bring men to Christ — Reading Notes

A Question-and-Answer Architecture

The book’s structure is built around anticipated objections. Each chapter begins with a heading like “Dealing with the Complaining” or “Those who doubt the divinity of Christ,” then proceeds through a numbered list of scriptural citations. Torrey does not simply quote verses; he embeds them in a rhetorical framework. For the complainer who accuses God of injustice, he supplies Job 40:2 and Romans 9:20, but also a prefatory remark: “Do you know of how enormous a sin you are guilty in accusing God of being unjust and cruel?” This pattern—identify the objection, rebuke or reframe it, then read the passage—recurs throughout.

The effect is a manual that feels like a flowchart. The worker is trained to listen for specific complaints and to respond with a predetermined scriptural counter. Yet Torrey also allows for flexibility: a note under the divinity-of-Christ section advises that “often times there is no need to take up specific questions as about future punishment until the inquirer has first settled the matter whether he will accept Christ as his Saviour.” The sequence of topics is itself a pedagogical tool.

Recurring Images of Medicine and Warfare

Two metaphors dominate the book’s language: medicine and combat. The preface describes the Bible as containing “medicine for every sin-sick soul,” and the author’s earlier Vest Pocket Companion is advertised as arranging “the remedies according to the maladies.” This therapeutic frame positions the worker as a spiritual physician who must diagnose before prescribing.

Alongside the medical imagery runs a martial vocabulary. Torrey speaks of “driving it home” that a skeptic’s position makes Christ a “blasphemous impostor.” Passages are “pointed” or “very pointed,” and the worker is urged to press the inquirer with logical force: “either He was Divine or the most blasphemous impostor that ever lived.” The combination of healing and confrontation creates a distinctive tone—the worker is both gentle diagnostician and relentless advocate.

Movement from General Principles to Specific Cases

The book’s opening chapter, “The General Conditions of Success,” establishes a foundation of prayer, faith, and personal holiness before the worker ever engages an inquirer. Only after this preparatory section does Torrey move to the case-by-case chapters. This movement from the general to the particular mirrors the structure of many nineteenth-century practical manuals, but Torrey gives it a distinctive urgency: the general conditions are not optional prerequisites but “conditions of success,” implying that failure in personal work stems from neglect of these foundations.

Within each chapter, the movement is again from diagnosis to remedy. For example, the section on those who doubt Christ’s divinity first lists scriptural evidence (divine titles, offices, worship), then concludes with a series of logical consequences: the denier is “a liar and an antichrist” (1 John 2:22-23), and without belief in Christ’s divinity, “no one … will be saved” (John 8:24). The structure trains the worker to move from evidence to verdict, from information to decision.

The Role of the Inquirer’s Voice

Although Torrey writes primarily for the worker, the inquirer’s voice is repeatedly implied through the objections that structure each chapter. The complainer says God is “unjust and cruel”; the skeptic questions future punishment; the indifferent dismisses the need for decision. Torrey does not reproduce extended dialogue, but he scripts the worker’s responses as if in conversation. The effect is a manual that simulates a real encounter, training the worker to anticipate and counter specific verbal moves.

This technique gives the book a dramatic quality. The worker is not merely learning propositions but rehearsing a script. Torrey’s parenthetical asides—such as “(Note. It is best as a rule before taking up specific difficulties …)”—further reinforce the sense of a live coaching session. The inquirer remains a shadowy figure, defined only by his objections, while the worker is the active agent who must master both the Bible and the art of timing.

Torrey’s manual is best read as a performance script rather than a theological treatise. The worker who follows its structure will move through a series of scripted encounters, each designed to guide the inquirer from objection to surrender. Readers interested in the history of evangelical practice will find here a detailed record of how personal evangelism was conceived at the turn of the century—as a blend of diagnosis, argument, and urgent persuasion. The book rewards attention to its silences: what it does not say about the inquirer’s interior life is as telling as what it prescribes.

There’s something tender in Torrey’s old case studies, how he maps each doubter’s path so patiently. It reminded me of a rainy afternoon spent with The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke — Reading Companion, where the same quiet persistence hums beneath older voices. Both feel less like instruction, more like a hand resting briefly on your shoulder.