A good word from Phil Johnson on three leading historical figures in the church, Cotton Mather, Henry Ward Beecher, and Frank Norris. An excerpt:
Three centuries. Three celebrity pastors. Three completely different ministry philosophies. And yet there are so many similarities. Reading these three books in relatively close succession drove home the point for me that evangelicals historically haven’t been very good at differentiating between men who have character and men who merely are characters.
Read the whole thing.