Daily Inspiration Quote by John Strachan

Earnestness is doing a lot of quiet work here: Strachan isn’t just praising pastoral care, he’s sketching a politics of belief. The “Apostle” becomes a model administrator of conviction, someone whose job is not to innovate but to stabilize. “Confirm the Christian converts” implies a community still in motion, still persuadable, still vulnerable to drift. That single verb carries the anxiety of an early church (and, by extension, Strachan’s own) haunted by backsliding, competing teachings, and the messy fact that conversion doesn’t end argument - it begins it.

Calling it “that Gospel, which he had so faithfully preached” tightens the frame even more. The Gospel is not presented as a field of interpretation but as a settled deposit, authenticated by the preacher’s “faithfulness.” The subtext is institutional: legitimate doctrine flows through authorized messengers, and continuity matters as much as content. Strachan, an Anglican cleric in a period when Protestant denominations were multiplying and colonial societies were negotiating identity, reads scripture with the instincts of a gatekeeper. He wants apostolic certainty to serve as a template for ecclesial order.

The rhetorical move is strategic humility. He doesn’t foreground his own authority; he borrows Paul’s. Yet the effect is the same: belief should be anchored to the original proclamation, and “great earnestness” becomes a moral argument for obedience. It’s a soft-spoken demand for doctrinal loyalty, dressed as affectionate concern for the converts’ spiritual security.