“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25).
Anne grew up in the prominent Kentucky home of her father George Kinkead, who, during his lawyer years, once successfully represented Abraham Lincoln. He eventually became a judge. Born in Lexington in 1852, Anne had 13 siblings. The Kinkead family attended First Presbyterian Church, and in her youth, Anne embraced the Christian faith.
Born a year earlier in Lexington, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield also grew up in a well-to-do family. They attended Second Presbyterian Church. He excelled in math and science and loved to collect butterflies and moths. On Sunday afternoons, he memorized Scripture. That and his regular training in the Westminster Catechism led to an early profession of faith. His godly mother openly expressed her hopes he might become a minister.
The Kinkeads and Warfields knew each other, both being influential families around town. Benjamin and Anne even struck up a friendship.
As a 16-year-old, the academically oriented Benjamin headed off to the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. Three years later, he graduated at the top of his class. At the urging of his father, he traveled abroad for graduate studies. In 1872, he decided to enter the ministry, surprising his family since he was known to be reticent. Back to Princeton he went, this time to seminary.
Upon graduation, and after resisting the advances of several churches, he connected again with Anne. August 3, 1876, the two became man and wife and set sail for a European honeymoon. Basking in the bliss of matrimony, the newlyweds sometimes walked in the verdant woodlands of the Harz Mountains in Germany. On one outing, lightning crashed very near the couple and traumatized Anne. She was never the same again. Some claim she became an invalid, but the facts point toward her suffering from a debilitating nervous condition. The couple never had children.
B. B. Warfield took a professor’s job in Pennsylvania, and nine years later his alma mater came calling. The couple headed to New Jersey where he served as professor of theology for the next 33 years, eventually becoming known as “the Lion of Princeton.”
Warfield seldom traveled. Anne needed him—sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically. Friends reported he maintained set hours every day to read to his bride. He penned many articles and books and came to be recognized worldwide as a theologian. When out-of-town speaking engagements came calling, no matter the prestige they carried, he declined and stayed home. In one ten-year stretch, he ventured from Princeton only once and that to seek a remedy for Anne’s condition. Two hours was the usual limit he would be absent from her.
Romans 8:28 says “all things work together for good.” How would Warfield understand those words? We need not guess. In a sermon on that text, he stated: “There is nothing that can befall us which is undirected by Him; and nothing will befall those that love Him, therefore, which is not directed by Him to their good.” He added: “The fundamental thought is the universal government of God. All that comes to you is under His controlling hand.”
About the Columnist: Paul V. Harrison has pastored Madison FWB Church in Madison, Alabama since 2015. Previously, he pastored Cross Timbers FWB church in Nashville, Tennessee, for 22 years. He was an adjunct professor at Welch College for 17 years, teaching church history and Greek. Paul is the creator of Classic Sermon Index, a subscription-based online index of over 66,000 sermons, with clients including Harvard, Baylor, and Vanderbilt, among others: classicsermonindex.com.
