Biography
Marcus Rainsford was born in 1817, in Dublin, Ireland, in an Anglo-Irish family. He grew up in the years of the Irish famine and the growth of the evangelical movement in the Church of Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied the classics and divinity. He was converted in his youth under the influence of the evangelical preaching of the time. He felt a call to the ministry and was ordained in the Church of England. He served as a curate in several parishes in Ireland and in England.
In the 1840s and 1850s, he was a pastor in Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, and then moved to London. He became the minister of Belgrave Chapel, in the fashionable district of Pimlico, a position that he held for a long time. He was a man of impressive appearance, with a strong voice. He drew large crowds, and the chapel became known as a center of evangelical preaching. He was known for his clear expositions of the Bible and for his tenderness. He was a friend of the leading evangelicals of the day.
His most famous work is a series of sermons on the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter of John, which was published in 1873 under the title Our Lord Prays for His Own. It was a work of deep devotion and careful exposition, and it has been called one of the finest studies on this chapter. It is still in print. The sermons are marked by a warm and reverent spirit and by a close attention to the text. He explained the meaning of the prayer verse by verse and applied it to the lives of the believers. He showed how the prayer reveals the heart of the Savior. The book has been used by many pastors and students.
He wrote other books, including The Fulness of Christ, The Doctrine of Justification and The Believer's Hope. He wrote in a plain and graceful style. He also was a skilled writer of hymns. He contributed to the evangelical hymnbooks of the day. He was a supporter of the missionary movement and a speaker at the Keswick Convention and other conferences.
He held to a strongly evangelical view of the faith. He was in favor of a literal reading of prophecy and expected the second coming of Christ. He was also a man of broad sympathies who worked with other evangelicals across denominational lines. He did not shrink from controversy, and he took a stand against the Tractarians in the Church of England. He wrote against the Oxford Movement and defended the Reformation settlement.