Turning our liberty into licentiousness

There is so little of the Author of Christianity left in his own religion, that an apprehensive believer is ready to exclaim, with the woman at the sepulchre, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’ The locality of Hell and the existence of an Evil Spirit are annihilated, or considered as abstract ideas. When they are alluded to, it is periphrastically; or they are discontinued not on the ground of their being awful and terrible, but they are set aside as topics too vulgar for the polished, too liberal for the learned, and as savouring too much of credulity for the enlightened.

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Knowledge is to be found

Man gropes about as though walking in darkness. His way is beset on all sides with problems that press in upon him and clamour for a solution. To these problems man can often turn but an uncomprehending glance, for he has no knowledge to apply to their solution. Professing to know and also to be wise, nevertheless he does not know, and hence his decisions and judgments are not those of wisdom and knowledge. With God, however, knowledge is to be found, as well as the ability to apply this knowledge. God is all-knowing and God is all-wise. To be able to address such a God is a blessing indeed.

~ E. J. Young, on Psalm 139 v.2

 

Content, happy, strenuous, untiring

... just because we are not doing God’s work for Him, but He is doing His own work through us; just because we do what work He appoints to us; not we but He is responsible for the harvest. All that is required of stewards is that they be found faithful ... Let us then labour on in whatever sphere God gives it to us to labour, content, happy, strenuous, untiring, determined only to do God’s work in God’s way; not seeking to intrude into work to which He has not appointed us, and not repining because He has given us this work and not that. Each one to his own labour, and God the rewarder of all!

~ B. B. Warfield

Beset on all sides with problems

Man gropes about as though walking in darkness. His way is beset on all sides with problems that press in upon him and clamour for a solution. To these problems man can often turn but an uncomprehending glance, for he has no knowledge to apply to their solution. Professing to know and also to be wise, nevertheless he does not know, and hence his decisions and judgments are not those of wisdom and knowledge. With God, however, knowledge is to be found, as well as the ability to apply this knowledge. God is all-knowing and God is all-wise. To be able to address such a God is a blessing indeed.

~ E. J. Young

 

To serve man, or even to serve myself

We certainly do not honour God when we bury or when we neglect to improve as far as we may, whatsoever talent he may have bestowed on us, whether it be little or much. In natural things as well as in spiritual it is a never-failing truth, that to him who hath, that is to him who occupies what he hath diligently and so as to increase it - more shall be given. Set me down therefore my Dear, for an industrious Rhymer so long as I shall have the ability, for in this only way it is possible for me, so far as I can see, either to honour God, or to serve man, or even to serve myself.

~ Letter from William Cowper to Lady Hesketh, 15th May 1786

We should like an independent fortune, but it cannot be

This is a beggar’s life; here’s nothing but alms. We don’t like it. We want some stock; if we could get it, we should like an independent fortune. But it cannot be. The Spirit of Jesus will witness of nothing, and glorify nothing but the Saviour’s all sufficient grace; and therefore he sets himself against all our greatness and goodness - that he who glorieth may glory only in the Lord Christ.

~ William Romaine

Piety maintains no natural war with elegance

Piety maintains no natural war with elegance, and Christianity would be no gainer by making her disciples unamiable. Religion does not forbid that the exterior be made to a certain degree the object of attention. But the admiration bestowed, the sums expended, and the time lavished on arts, which add little to the intrinsic value of life, should have limitations. While these arts should be admired, let them not be admired above their just value: while they are practised, let it not be to the exclusion of higher employments: while they are cultivated, let it be to amuse leisure, not to engross life.

~ Hannah More

Review: "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp

This book is about Ann Voskamp’s quest for self-fulfillment. 

Married, with six healthy children, and living on a farm, she is not happy. And she wants to be happy. She wants to feel loved, known and understood. She wants to feel the beauty of life and joy in every moment. 

We might question whether she has the right to expect such total harmony on this side of heaven, imperfect sinner that she is. We might say that she put her shoulder to the harness long ago, through marriage and child-bearing, and she ought to plough the furrow she has chosen. But Ann Voskamp does not question her right to happiness. Indeed, she cannot question it because her salvation depends upon it.

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Music Saves No One

The evening news closed with the obituary of "Holocaust-survivor" Alice Herz-Sommer, whose story features in a short film, soon to be noticed in the Oscars. The Lady in Number 6 provided clips of the deceased pianist, suitable for an evening news bulletin. In one of these excerpts, Mrs. Herz-Sommer said that music is her religion before correcting herself - music is her god.

If this lady had not been through World War II, we would gasp at such a sentiment. But we do not gasp. We are asked instead to admire her courage, optimism and humanity. The fact that she managed to survive through music and by music is deemed a victory.

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The Murder of Christian Morality: The Orient Express

If I murder you, that is a sin. Once upon a time no one would argue with the death penalty being appropriate. Now things have changed. The murderer is sick and needs understanding. Think what a traumatic experience it was to commit a murder! Poor lamb, they say. And lawyers like Clive Stafford Smith suggest that since a life has already been lost, it is not worth spoiling another too - namely that of the murderer.

This shifting in the "cultural norm" of morality (not God's law, which is unchanging, but the perception of what is generally agreed amongst people) dictates the stories we can tell. Think of the most recent adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. It's a simple story: a child was brutally killed and the murderer got away with it. Everyone who loved the child boards the same train as the killer and they murder him. In the original story, Poirot is sympathetic and holds the truth of the death a secret. It might be rough justice, but it is justice nonetheless and if the police cannot fathom who did it, he will not tell them.

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The Theology of Song

"We Anglicans, like many other Christians, learn a fair amount of our theology through the hymns we sing"

~ N. T. Wright in For all the Saints? Remembering the Christian Departed (Continuum 2003) page xiv

This is the true reason for the deposition of the Book of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs in the Holy Scriptures from its pre-eminent position as the appointed music of the Church. Their theology does not suit our theology. The Rev. William Romaine stood against the tide in his own generation, when the pragmatist said that the hymns of Charles Wesley were necessary because people were so ignorant of any knowledge of God.

The nature of the worth we proclaim moulds us. If we praise God's tolerance at expense of his justice and if we praise God's love in the absence of his mercy, then we sing from a different hymn-sheet. This does not mean that Christians cannot write good songs. But they are not fit for God's worship. Our theology is too poor and the Lord God knew it in giving us songs for his worship. He leads us as children. If we stand on the table and pronounce that we are tall enough to look grown up and can now write songs for ourselves, we only show how childish we still are.

Tohu and Bohu

Before creation, there was Tohu and Bohu - confusion and emptiness.

Each day of creation banished tohu and bohu more and more.

Light established clarity, where darkness brought confusion.

Light revealed the subsequent creations - plants, birds, fish animals - and a world so far from empty as to be full of goodness.

The creation of man was the final abolition of confusion, for man was commanded to rule Eden. With the order for all creatures and life to be fruitful and multiply, the world was to be less empty, every day, every year, everywhere.

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Tavener: Man’s Requiem to himself

“After the funeral service for Diana, Princess of Wales, choir singers from all over the world hurried to find copies of Song for Athene, which was sung at that service, so that they too could enter that ethereal, comforting, deeply personal and uniquely imagined sound world.”

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/sir-john-tavener-appreciation-bob-chilcott

John Tavener certainly did invent his own world, one in which it was possible to reconcile contradictions of belief. The man who struggled to express “universalism” in his music was born into a Presbyterian family. Those beliefs could have shaped him into a great Christian composer. Instead, he abandoned them to ride the waves of Catholicism, then the Orthodox church, and latterly to invoke Hindu and Muslim ideas within his pseudo-Christian framework.

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King Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan was an ambitious composer. He wanted to put pride into English music by promoting new English operas. The idea was straightforward - three English composers at a time would be commissioned to produce an opera each and these would be performed in the same theatre as a block. It might have succeeded if Sullivan had not been the only composer of the three to produce an opera. The other two left a gap that had to be filled somehow and the only solution was to use an existing European opera. Already the ideal had died. Sullivan's contribution - Ivanhoe - ran until everyone who wanted to hear/see it had done so. This was not a failure on Sullivan's part, but it was treated like one and - when the production closed - so did the dream.

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