BOOK FOURExtracts from “The Reconstruction of Belief”By the Rt. Rev. Charles Gore, D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) (Hon. D.D. Edin. And Durham, Hon. D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law) Oxford, Hon. Ll.D. (Doctor of Laws) Cambridge and Birmingham, Hon. Fellow of Balliol and Trinity Colleges, Oxford, and Fellow of King’s College, London) Note:- Because this book
was over 1000 pages in length, the tracts cover a small area of its
pages than was the case with previous excerpts, from other books. In the moral region, very
much more than in the region of beauty, we re encompassed with the
sense of what ought to be. Moral goodness exists, but,
under conditions of continual and sometimes desperate struggle, and
in each individual with more or less of manifest imperfection.
But whatever its struggles and imperfections, goodness, we are
convinced, is what ought to be. It represents the purpose of
the world for free personalities. Whatever else the world may
be, it is, in the region covered by the existence of persons, a vale
of soul-making, a scene for the making of character and goodness
under conditions of severest trial. The prophets, then, because
they are conscious of being thus even violently dealt with and
possessed, claimed to utter with supreme authority a word or message
from God to man. The content of this message is, on the whole,
quite clear in its final outcome. It is a message which
proclaims God as intensely personal and moral, as the one and only
god, the absolute creator and sustainer and judge of all that is,
almighty in the sense that no other God or external power exists to
restrain him. The message of the prophets made, and still makes, a profound difference to mankind. It impinged upon the human soul and conscience in a quite new way, with new motives, new fears, new hopes, new aspirations, new possibilities. This monotheism of the prophets created a new type of character. It claims to introduce into human experience a new source of information about God of the most important kind, such as never could have been derived from the consideration of nature. If the there really was
such a divine education of mankind of which the Hebrew prophets were
the instruments, we must put them, with regard to religion, in a
position analogous to that, which we commonly assign to the Greeks
in philosophy or art, and to the Romans in administration and law,
but profoundly indifferent in respect of the source of their
authority and the method by which they gained their assurance –
the method of positive revelation, given and received. It can
be fully realized by any man who likes to read the prophets, and to
ponder the vivid accounts which the prophets give us of their
commissions, and in general their intense experiences, of the
dealings of God with them; that these experiences gained the world a
new spiritual life and a wholly new moral power. One of the
miracles of history is the fact that Israel, the divinely appointed
instrument of the true religion (as it is contended), though it was
again and again apparently absorbed, or on the way to be absorbed,
in the great nations which trampled it down, such as Babylon or the
Empire of Alexander, was in fact preserved to fulfill its separate
function. On the whole the anticipations of the prophets have
been indeed wonderfully fulfilled. But it is not in
predictions fulfilled that their chief function is to be sought; it
is in their message about God and his nature, his character, and his
purpose – and about man’s capacity, responsibility, and true
hope. Every man must draw his own conclusion as to the nature
or source of the prophets’ inspiration. It can be done only
by a reverent and continuous reading of at least large portions of
their writings. We have to take note both of the individuality
and distinctiveness of the message of each of the prophets and of
the continuity of the teaching through their whole succession.
Then we have to ask ourselves the great question: can we ascribe the
message to any lower source than that to which the prophets
themselves ascribe it? I do not think we can. Of the
source of the communications, as coming really and directly from
God, I dare to feel certain; for the communications to the prophets
had the sort of vivid reality which required them to state what they
“heard” in the form of propositions or messages appealing
to the intellect as well as to the will. That is to say, they
carry inevitably intellectual conclusions. And I am sure that
in the consideration of the truth of the prophetic testimony we must
not leave out of account the effect of their teaching on those who
accepted it. It is impossible not to feel that men who exhibit
a quite new power in life are thereby proved to have got into closer
touch with reality. I believe that the spirit of Jewish
prophecy and that towards which it led – the spirit of
Christianity in its most genuine form all down the ages exhibits
human nature at its best and riches. Something has occurred
for which only the experience of the prophets and the witness of
Christ can account, and without which the mortal treasures of human
nature would be vastly impoverished. The Christian impresses
us as pre-eminently capable in virtue of his faith of dealing with
the circumstances and sufferings and tasks of life in a spirit of
liberty, unperplexed and undismayed. And he draws this power
from what is distinctive about his faith in God. Thus it was
that when the Christian church came out into the Graeco-Roman world,
it proved itself so combative, not merely for some belief in
God, but for its own distinctive belief. It demanded the
belief, which the prophets and Christ had taught it, in God the
absolute creator, who is also the absolute love – in the God and
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ – in the God of whom Jesus Christ
is the living image in human for. Christian humility,
Christian enterprise, Christian love, the Christian sense of
supremacy over all evil influences and powers, the Christian hope,
the assurance of the kingdom, all depended upon – not any form of
theism, but the specific Hebrew belief. If we consider the
moral needs and capacities of ordinary men and women, it is chiefly
among them that the Christian faith – which is the Hebrew faith
perfected – where it is genuine, vindicates the truth of its
premises by the fruits which it shows in life. Man is not a part of God,
but the creature of God. His relation to God is one of
absolute dependence, as for the beginning of his existence so moment
by moment for its continuance. God has been pleased to make
man in his own image and likeness, to admit to his friendship, and
to make him his vicegerent in the world which he inhabits. How, the, if God is the
creator, responsible for the existence of all that is, is his
character for goodness to be maintained in view of the evil and
misery of the world? The answer of the prophets to this
portentous question is, if not complete, yet simple, and it is
expressed or implied everywhere. It attributes the mass of
evil in the world to the lawlessness of rebel wills – to pride,
greediness, ambition, cruelty, selfishness, jealousy, lust; and to
the judgments which those things bring upon individuals and upon
the world, whether as their natural results or as the punishment for
sin which God inflicts. The whole teaching of the
prophets was given for a practical and not a speculative purpose.
It was a ‘word of life”, a message as to how men must live.
It was a life before it was a doctrine. But it was a life
which involved a whole body of truths about God and man: and though
these are affirmed for a practical purpose, they are none the less
affirmed as true. They must be true in fact – and therefore
truths for the intellect – or the life proposed becomes
impossible. Now we have been asking
what are the intellectual propositions which the prophets insist
upon as the word of God, and we have found them to be especially
these: that Jehovah, the God of Israel, is personal; that he is the
absolute being, beside whom there can be none other; that he is in
character perfect holiness, and love; that he is absolutely distinct
from all his creatures as their creator; that he has given to his
creature man, and to other orders of spirits dimly perceived, such
moral freedom and responsibility as admit of their co-operation with
God or of their resisting and thwarting him on the widest scale; but
that as God is God he must fully vindicate himself over all and in
all his creation, if not in this world, then in the world to come, Revelation and Reason
– Reason and beauty and goodness cannot be regarded as merely
qualities of our minds. They belong to the universe of things.
There is an “eternal, not ourselves”, which is at once reason
and beauty and goodness, with which we can hold communion and
co-operate, and this eternal being we can call God. The prophetic creed is (1)
that God is a personal being, making his will known to us, and
demanding of us that we should deal with him as with a person, at
once our unerring judge and our loving father. And (2) that he is,
at the root of things, the sole, absolute, or omnipotent being.
Also (3) that he is the absolute creator of all that is: perfect in
himself “before the world was”. And (4) that he is perfect
moral goodness – that God is love. Then (5) that man is
purely a creature, but endowed with reason and a real, though
limited, freedom, qualifying him for free co-operation with God, but
necessarily capable also of perversion; and that if it has in fact
been perverted on the widest scale, and the moral disorder of the
world is due to this sin. Finally (6) that the purpose of God
is to redeem the sinful and disordered world; that his kingdom –
the realm of obedient wills – already exists and is discoverable
here and now; that it is the business of good men to behave as its
faithful citizens; and that they have a sure goal in view, for in
the end God is to come into his own perfectly in the whole creation.
This is the final kingdom or reign of God, and mankind is destined
to immortal fellowship with God in this world to come, if he has not
by his wilfulness lost his soul and exclude himself from the divine
fellowship. Now, we must be profoundly
conscious that in this discussion of what might conceivably have
been or, in other words, of the nature of divine choice, we are
moving in worlds too high for us. But we have seen reason to
believe that a self-disclosure of God has been granted to us.
“From above”, not as a conclusion of human reasoning, but yet
through human minds, and in such as manner as has necessitated its
expression in intellectual propositions; and these propositions, if
they are necessarily inadequate to eternal realities, must be the
best image of the truth possible under our present conditions of
knowledge. And there is no doubt that this revelation has both
by its first recipients, the prophets, and by its exponents, both
Jewish and Christian, been held to involve the self “complete and
independent existence of God “before the world was”. The strength of
Christianity – its power of appeal to men of different ages and
classes and educations – lies, as seems to me indisputable,
in its being rooted in a person of whom we have adequate,
trustworthy knowledge, or, in other words, upon the substantial
historical truth of the gospels – not their infallibility in
detail, but their substantial trustworthiness. God acts more intensely in
man’s mind and personality than in rocks or beasts. He shows
more of himself in the free moral conscience than in the automatic
action of plants. The second and third
gospels, then, and the Acts of Apostles are by known men – John
Mark, a member of the original apostolic company in Jerusalem, where
he lived in his mother’s home, and then the trusted companion of
Barnabas, Paul, and Peter, and Luke “the beloved physician”, the
companion of St Paul; and these men had the best opportunities of
intercourse with those “who from the beginning were eye-witnesses
and ministers of the Word”, and their narratives are found
extraordinarily convincing. We have, then, here, documents
which, judged by the standards of history, are fully trustworthy;
and they would have been, no doubt, unhesitatingly received were it
not for the supernatural features of which they are full, and the
tremendous claim upon men’s lives and though which they involve.
Whether these features and this claim constitute any good reason for
disputing their trustworthiness depends very greatly upon the amount
of faith present in each individual. The writers of these
gospels must have had the freest access to original witnesses of the
events which they describe. Their intentions were
conspicuously simple and honest. They appear to have no design
except to record things as they happened. It is true that in
their narratives we are presented with a ;person and with events
quite unparalleled in the history of the world. But we have
found, as we have read these records, quite unable to believe that
we have here a work of imagination. The portrait is
convincing. The elements in the narrative – the things done
and the things said – cohere in a wonderful unity. Thus we find
ourselves disposed to take the gospels for what they profess to be,
and to give them an open-minded hearing. A miracle is an occurrence
in the process of nature of something which nature, that is, the
experienced order cannot account for, and which constrains men to
recognize a special or extraordinary action of God calling attention
to a special purpose. And the supernatural is all that
constrains men to believe that nature with its customary order is
not closed or complete in itself, but part of a larger and higher
world of existence from which it is not separated by any
insurmountable barrier. The visible world and its
order and law has so impressed itself on the imagination of men, and
moulded their language as a thing in itself, that we need the word
nature to describe it, and the word supernatural to suggest whatever
may lie in the unknown beyond. But, if a supernatural event
suggests that God is most evident when something happens which is
disconnected and disorderly, then this can be objected to as not
being the real purpose of such events. The supernatural is
God’s gift to mankind, and not a proof of God’s existence. Law, as a burden, is
transcended, but it is not abolished in a world where perfectly free
love expresses itself as perfect order. But freedom of choice,
though it need not involve any actual departure from order, involves
the possibility of it, an d has, in fact, resulted in worldwide
lawlessness. No doubt the free will of men has been absurdly
exaggerated. As a fact, it is strictly limited. There is
no such thing as human independence. All the forces which any
man employs, in choosing or carrying out his choice, are drawn from
beyond himself. It need not be claimed that he can add to the
sum of energy. His conditions again determine the channels
along which he must use the powers which are available.
Nevertheless, in the heart of this world of determinate and
determined forces and laws there lies this mysterious and unique
thing – free choice. As has been already argued, the choice
of the will at the last analysis decides in which direction – in
the form of which kind of action – the energy stored in the human
organism is liberated. Something has happened which mechanism
cannot explain. Nothing can explain it except the frank
recognition of moral will as here directive of physical force.
The soul of man is conscious of a moral purpose above him claiming
to control his action. The purpose of nature,, or the God of
nature, appears to be that he should be “good”, as he can be
only by the free choice of his will. We are thus bound to
think of the great power, within the grasp of which we live and move
and are, as not mere unconscious force, but also as conscious moral
will and purpose – as willing righteousness. Here we feel
ourselves planted on ground from which our reason cannot suffer us
to be dislodged. Nature has behind it and within it a being of
whom the moral will in us and the moral personality is a better
image than either mechanical force or unconscious life. That
is, the recognition that the human personality, which is the highest
form of life known in nature, is a better “image of God’ than
physical forces or chemical combinations. You must think of God a
not inferior to man – as at least rationally willing and choosing
in accordance with a purpose of righteousness in the whole universe
of things. The principle of the order
of nature is now seen to be not blind mechanism, but the perfect
reason and perfectly free will of the supreme The mind of mankind has
utterly misconceived God. Man’s pride has left him out of
account, and despised him. The rejection and crucifixion of
Christ is, of course, the supreme example of such moral blindness.
Is it not a least conceivable that at such a supreme crisis god
should have given mankind, or such portion of mankind as have
“eyes to see”, assurance – such assurance as is given by
Christ’s resurrection from the dead – that at the last issue the
power which rules in the physical world is on the side of
righteousness – that it is the same God as commands in conscience
and speaks through prophets? It is true that the testing of
faith lies in enduring and seeing him who is invisible. This is the
normal task of faith. But surely the father may see that this
testing ordeal must be tempered. Frequent miracles would
destroy the reality of this probation, as they would destroy the
sense of the divine order. But on the supreme occasions, can
the human reason have the audacity to say they may not be necessary? Can we conceive that the
reinforcement of the moral conscience, the sense of the supremacy of
right, which we identify with Christianity, could have occurred
without the resurrection? There is great reserve in the
exhibition of the miraculous in the Bible; there is great limitation
in the evidential function assigned to it. Is it not to deny reason
to God to deny the possibility or credibility of miracle? Is
it not the very mark of rational power, as compared to blind force
of animal instinct? What God is doing when he works a miracle
is not to violate the order of the world in the deeper sense.
He innovates, it is true, upon the normal physical order, but
solely in the interest of the deeper moral order and purpose of the
world. Miracle is, from this point of view, God’s protest
against the monstrous disorder of sin. It is God the greater
recreating what man has defaced. At the last God is to come
into his own – that is the day of the Lord. But he from time
to time gives some foretastes of this final self-vindication, and
they are “miracles”. To admit the credibility or the
actual occurrence of miracles in effect lays no fresh burden upon
science. The sciences of physics and chemistry – and we may
include biology – cannot account for all that is in nature.
They cannot account for the action of free wills or for the
consequent disorder of sin, any more than they can account for
miracles. But neither the actions of free wills, nor the very
rarely occurring miracles, hinder their effective investigation of
nature on the level that lies below freedom. When a
materialist philosophy has attempted to ignore freedom and still to
take all human life into its province – as the old political
economy attempted to deal with industrial life on the basis of a
mechanistic philosophy of human motives – it has always
conspicuously failed. Mechanism can give no account of miracles.
But also it can give no account of freedom or sin – that is, of
human nature. In Christ we see something
new to human experience – a new level reached in creation – such
as it may, be supposed would have occurred in any case, even if sin
had never been. If Christ truly was, what his disciples came
to believe him to be, the eternal word or son of God, himself very
God, made man or “flesh”, there was thereby constituted a new
thing in nature, a new relation of the creator spirit, the spirit of
life, to matter, a new level in the evolution of life, such as would
naturally exhibit new phenomena. From this point of view
“the works” of Christ are natural in this case – the natural
outflowings of the power which he alone, or he first, possessed.
It was “natural” that he, being what he was, should so heal the
sick, should so control nature, should so be raised from the dead,
as is related in the gospels. It is what would be expected in
the case of such a person. When the woman with an issue of
blood touched the garment of Jesus, he perceived that virtue or
healing power – the “power that was in him” – had gone
forth. And on another occasion, where faith was lacking, it
was said that he could do no mighty works. Such phrases
suggest a “natural” faculty which could heal the sick and raise
the dead – a “natural” outpouring of inherent life-giving
power, which a certain lack of response could restrain or inhibit.
Thus the argument is quite valid that – granted that Christ cannot
be reasonably accounted merely as man, but must be interpreted as
God incarnate – he must be expected to exhibit actions natural to
him, which would be “miraculous” from the point of view of the
nature which lies below him. In the New Testament the miracles
done by Christ, are represented as the acts of God who sent him
bearing witness to him. They are attributed to the divine
spirit who indwelt him, and re pictured as done by God in answer to
the prayer of Jesus. In a word, they are abnormal acts of God
done to call attention to his Christ. So specially the
resurrection is the act of God marking out and finally designating
Jesus as his son and as his authorized representative through whom
he is to judge the world. That is to say, our thoughts are in
the main directed by the miracles not to the special nature of
Christ but to the nature of God as transcendent creator, under whose
hands nature is plastic and must fulfill all his will. Miracles
are very rare occurrences. That is of their essence.
They do not occur as a hindrance in the path of the scientific
investigator. His world of fixed laws is before him all the
same, whether personally he believes in certain miracles or no.
All that is asked of him as a scientific man is that he should
recognise the abstraction of his sciences, and seek to impose no
dogmatic barrier against the conception of the possibility or
credibility of miracles – a possibility and credibility which are
really bound up with faith in the God of the prophets and of Jesus
Christ. The credibility of miracles is neither impossible nor
incredible, if the God of Jesus is the real God, if the world is
what the Bible represents it as being, disturbed and distorted by
the rebellion of free wills, and if the redemptive or recreative
purpose of God needs such a manifestation of his power in the
physical world to make it effective, there is no ground for the
assumption that the physical world which science investigates, the
world of constant physical sequence and invariable law, is a
self-complete and closed world, which can admit no influence from
any other world. The evidence is against this theory of a
self-complete enclosure, which cannot account for the action of
human wills. The gospels show the
disciples after the death of Jesus as a dispirited band of men, who
had been gradually disheartened by the seeming failure of Jesus, and
finally utterly discouraged by his rejection and execution. It
plainly appears that the sense of disappointment and failure so
possessed them and dominated them that they could hardly be aroused
from their lethargy. Then the early chapters of the Acts
present to us this same body of men confident and courageous –
with a courage which no hostility could shake. And though they
were not emotional men, abut slow of spiritual apprehension, and
liable to jealousies and misunderstandings among themselves, they
had been transformed all together. It was a transformation
which suggests the impact of some startling fact of common
experience. Their outlook has been changed by the grave of
Jesus having been found empty on “the third day” after his
crucifixion and burial, and afterwards by repeated appearances
of the risen Jesus to individuals among them and to the assembled
group, by which their doubts had been at last wholly dispelled, and
a new and glorious conviction of the divinely certificated lordship
of Jesus had come to posses them all in common. The dominant influence of
Jesus upon the disciples did not lie in anything that he taught
them, whether about himself or about God or about the kingdom of
God, but in “the man” himself – in the impression of
overwhelming authority certainly supernatural and “of God”,
resident in him. It is this that constrains them at the
beginning to leave all and follow him. It is authority which
expresses itself in his works of healing, especially, but not only,
the healing of the possessed. The sense of it is vividly
presented to us in the case of one who was neither a disciple nor a
Jew – the Roman centurion who had been paying attention to Jesus,
and had gained the conviction that he occupied in nature a position
comparable to his own in the army. No doubt, that is to say,
he was “under authority” – the authority of God; but within
the sphere of his activity he could do as he willed with nature, as
the centurion could with his subordinates, “with authority he
commands”, and it obeys him. He speaks, and it is done.
That is the impression. His authority in working what we call
miracles and what the gospels call “powers” is paralleled by his
moral authority. He taught as he worked, “as one having
authority” of a divine kind in himself. So as “the man”
he claims to forgive the sins of the paralytic and, to prove his
right to do so, he heals his disease. And in teaching he does
not generally, though he does at times, refer beyond himself –
“This is the word of the Lord”, or “thus saith Scripture”.
Even in revising the divinely-given law of Sinai, it was enough to
say “but I say unto you”. Many moderns seems quite to
underestimate or almost to ignore this overwhelming impression of
authority. The disciples are being led to believe that in the
physical world, though he will do nothing to help himself, he can do
anything to help those in need, or themselves, his companions.
Such was doubtless the impression of his feeding of the five
thousand out of so miserably inadequate a supply, or rescuing the
disciples suddenly, when they roused him out of sleep in the storm
at sea. They were growing to believe that he would be equal to
all the emergencies which might occur. And in the moral sphere
his word was enough. They could not question it. And
though he did not seem to know everything, yet he had a strange
power of reading men’s hearts; and at times he spoke as if he were
the final judge of men, not only in view of their public acts but of
their secret lives. In certain of the parables this assumption
that he is the final judge is plain. But it is implied
elsewhere. We think of such a saying as “many shall come to me on
that day … then will I protest unto them, I never knew you”.
Here what is implied, both in St Matthew and St Luke’s version, is
that nothing matters to a man at last except the judgment of Jesus
on him, and that judgment goes to the heart of the reality and
cannot be misled by appearances or professions. So elsewhere
we hear that to deny him and be ashamed of him here in this world
means to be disowned by him at last, and that that is the final
disaster. He is the ultimate judge. Whatever he taught, he
taught as if it were certainly true, and as if the fountain of truth
was in himself. “No man knoweth the father save the son”.
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass
away”. Secondly, there was not in his language the least
trace of a sense of sinfulness, or even possible unworthiness, such
as has possessed at all times prophets and seers. There was an
exclusiveness about his claim on men, as it he were not merely one
of the representatives of God but in some profound sense the only
one. In himself , he seems to brook no rival. “Come
unto me”, he says, “and I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you and learn of me.” Now all this time questions
were pending in the minds of the disciples as to who he was.
There was some secret, some mystery, about his person. There
were names, “Son of Man”, “Son of God”, “Christ”, which
were in their ears and would have to be explained. But while
all this process of questioning was going on, something deeper was
happening. Beyond all possibility of question, and seemingly
by his own deliberate intention, Jesus, so far as they yielded their
faith to him, was taking the place of God in their souls. Within the
sphere of their personal lives, he had been showing them the values
of God, as the object of their absolute faith, their infallible
refuge and informer and protector and guide. The conception of
the Messiah which Jesus caused to grow in the minds of the disciples
was quite remote from the expectations of his contemporaries.
According to Jesus’ teaching, the Messiahship had its basis in his
humble and patient manhood, and it was to have its centre in his
rejection and suffering and crucifixion, and it was to find its
consummation in his lordship in heaven and in his coming to judge
the quick and the dead. But the disciples had at present no
ears for the note of glory beyond humiliation and through it.
They could only attend to the announcements of utter shame and
rejection and death. He bade them accept this utter seeming
failure, and all that their patriotic hearts held dear, as something
inevitable and necessary for the kingdom to come. It was too
much for them. It stirred in their minds a despondency and
repulsion which overcame even their loyalty and their faith in him.
There is hardly any tragedy in history which moves us more than the
failure of the disciples. But it was a temporary tragedy.
Their failure became an element in their strength and power.
Their faith in Jesus lived again, and took form and glory after
their recovery. Quite apart from their
ideas about the person of Jesus their master, which were no doubt
vague and uncertain, quite apart even from the new conception of the
Christ which Jesus had planted in their reluctant souls to bear
fruit after their temporary failure, there was another and deeper
impression which they could not shake off. They had been
keeping company with one who, deliberately as it seemed, had come to
occupy towards their souls a place of authority which is practically
God’s place. He had come to have for them the values of God.
We can conceive nothing further from the method of Jesus than that
he should have startled and shocked their consciences by proclaiming
himself as God. But he had done something which in the long
run would make any other estimate of him hardly possible. It would seem that all the
effort of Jesus was directed, in the latter part of his
ministry, to the training of the twelve, and especially to the
preparation of their minds to welcome the principle of sacrifice,
and withstand the shock of the cross. To the heart of the disciples
the course which Jesus, who they had confessed to be the Christ,
had, as it appeared, so deliberately chosen, seemed doubtless an
intolerable betrayal. The most tragic feature in the whole
situation is the failure of the twelve, yet we must not be scornful.
The doctrine which they were required to embrace was a very new one.
It is not easy to realize the depth of the requirement which our
lord made upon his disciples’ hearts and minds when he bade them
not only contemplate his own seeming failure and death, but also
anticipate the doom which he so solemnly pronounced upon their
nation and city and temple, and be prepared to witness its
accomplishment even with joy, as the necessary prelude of the
kingdom of God. The real strain on faith lay in the spectacle
of the present seeming weakness of God and of good, which no
prospect of further reversal seemed able to counterbalance. But a few weeks after the
crucifixion and entombment of Jesus, the company of “the
brethren”, numbering one hundred and twenty persons, and centering
upon the twelve, are preened to us in the beginning of the Acts in a
wholly different frame of mind. They are now radiant and
confident, and re prepared to face an even worldwide mission,
apparently of a most desperate kind, and to challenge the world,
with a clear understanding at least of the ground of their mission.
Nothing can satisfactorily account for their sudden, complete and
corporate change of mind, except a certain series of facts, some of
which are recorded in detail by the evangelists, and which are
summarized at an earlier date by St Paul – that is the finding of
the tomb of Jesus empty on the third day, and his repeated
appearances afterwards, with a humanity strangely changed in
physical condition, but still the same – which had assured them,
beyond possibility of mistake, of his actual resurrection from the
dead. Such a rapid, simultaneous conversion of such
unimaginative men as we know the twelve to have been from the state
of mind as described in the gospels, both before and after the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ, to the state of mind described in the
beginning of the Acts, could not have occurred except by the impact
of indisputable facts of experience, such as those to which they
attributed their newly-won convictions. …. The Church is
the representative of the Kingdom of God on earth here and now;
which is “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”.
So the ethics of the New Testament are predominantly social
ethics – the ethics of brotherhood; its discipline is
primarily moral discipline. The aim of the church is to show
here and now the true human fellowship realized in Christ. It is
bound to make war. In the name of Christ, on all injustice as
much as on all impurity. It must take all human life for its
province. It must develop its philosophy, its art, its
principles of social economy. It exists in the world, but not
of the world, and that means that it must vigorously and combatively
maintain the true principles of human brotherhood and human life –
that is, against the social aims and practices of the selfish,
avaricious, and lustful world. It has to labour for the
establishment of the kingdom of God in the name of Christ and the
power of his spirit here and now. But neither Christ nor
experience warrants us in believing that we are to see the
extinction of the power of evil within the present world order.
Progress is an exceedingly fitful and chequered process.
There is no security against the collapse of civilizations and
churches. The powers of evil do not seem too be worn out or to
be weakened – only to take new shapes. There appears to be
the most fearful waste of the best human efforts. It seems to
me that Jesus Christ would prepare us for all this by the
apocalyptic, other-worldly hope. He would have us believe that
no good effort for the cause of truth and righteousness will ever
really be lost. The fruits of what we have thought and done
and suffered are gathered into the treasury of God in the heavenly
world unseen, and one day we shall see them with our eyes. It is impossible to read
the gospels and not feel that Jesus Christ did not appeal to men
primarily or chiefly as an example they could follow. They
felt him to be in some formidable sense above them – teaching and
working with a quite extraordinary authority – drawing them with a
tremendous claim as from above – claiming, controlling, saving,
judging. Above this there can be no question, if the gospels
are in any sense historical. And it is no use fashioning a
Christ of our own fancy. We must not, of course, minimize the
reality and value of his human example, for he left us an example
that we should follow. This cannot be too strongly or
constantly insisted upon. When Jesus was living as
man among men, it appeared that neither his teaching nor his example
was effective with his first disciples. He was altogether too
high for them – too unworldly. They failed under the strain
he laid upon them and deserted him. What recovered them was
their hardly won faith in his resurrection, which convinced them of
his supernatural sonship, and their consciousness of the divine
spirit – his father’s spirit and his own – received as a
distinctive gift at a memorable moment. Thereby they realized
Christ as their living lord who from heaven was inspiring, guiding,
governing and enriching them with an inward power. So it was
that his outward example, their memory of which is recorded in the
gospels, become something quite different from the mere example of a
departed hero. The example living in their memory was the
pattern of humanity, or “the way”, in accordance with which he
was moulding them from heaven by his spirit. It was only “in
Christ” that they could follow Christ. But it was only
because he was something more than man – something in respect of
which they would have felt it madness to equal themselves with him
– that he could be living in them and they in him – that he
could thus have access to their inmost souls, and remake them, and
“dwell in their hearts by faith”. And this has been true for all successive generations of Christians. The example of Christ has been of supreme importance. He called himself the son of man. That pattern of glorious manhood – glorious in all its relations, and not least in its matchless self-control – has appealed to men in each successive generation as presenting an ideal before which all cynicism is put to flight. Here is the man whose life is altogether worthy of fullest admiration. If he is the real man, there remains no manner of doubt in our hearts that the life of a man, even under extremist conditions of failure and suffering, is altogether worth living. But in its supreme perfection it would seem to us, as it seemed to the first disciples, an example of despair. It postulates for life forces which powers which we seem to lack. And, in fact, he appears in the gospels as claiming a mastery over other men’s lives which it is not for a mere man to claim. But he did not end by setting an example. He died, but he is still alive. That is the point of the Christian belief. It concerns “one Jesus who was dead”, whom Paul, and all Christians since, have “affirmed to be alive”. Yes, alive in the heavens – the same son of God who came down from heaven to redeem our nature from within by himself taking it, and exalting it into the glory of God; and who thus alive in heaven is alive in us also by his spirit, moulding us inwardly into the pattern of the life he showed us outwardly in word and work. There is no possibility of question that this is the way in which Christ’s example has in fact appealed to men in the succession of generations. They have studied “the life”, “the way”, in the pages of the gospel, as described in his words and as lived in his conduct, and also as reflected in countless saints who were his true disciples; and however low the level at which they may have started. To become his disciples and to imitate him, however degraded and polluted they have felt their manhood to be, they have not despaired, because they believed in him, not only as their pattern of manhood, but as their redeemer. In his name, they have known themselves to be set free from all the guilt of the past and to be given that incomparable blessing, the forgiveness of their sins – that is, the opportunity, constantly renewed, of a fresh start free from the burden of the past. From him again they have received that without which example and absolution would have been alike useless – the gift of the spirit. Poured into them out of his heavenly manhood to purge and strengthen and renew them inwardly after the pattern which in his human life he had shown them outwardly. No one can doubt that this
has been the way in which Christ has expected his influence and made
his example effective down the centuries like the example of no
other man. This sort of influence has a sort of analogy in the
influence of other men over their fellows. But in his case
there has been an “influence” or “inflowing” of him into all
those who have accepted him as their master which has been quite
distinctive. Of no mere man could it be said that he could
thus gain effective entry into the very centre of the personalities
of all other men, so as to renew them from the roots of their being
by his spirit, and make them “in him” new men.. That is a
recreative act which, in the full sense in which it has been
experienced from the first, can assigned to none other than him
“in whom we live and move and are”. The uniqueness of
Christ’s self-sacrifice consists in this, that one who existed in
the nature of God consented to abandon this (to us) inconceivable
glory of life, in order to accept the conditions and limitations and
sufferings of real manhood. This act of self-sacrifice is
strictly unique, and it is so only because the person who sacrifices
himself is very God – not closely united to God but personally
God. His acts are strictly God’s acts and his love God’s
love. Intellectually considered,
nothing is more essential to a full faith in Christ than his
recognition of his essential finality. This means that he is
not only the greatest prophet and the most conspicuous saint and the
noblest leader of humanity who has ever lived; for if that were all,
obviously we could “look for another” as great as he, possibly
greater than he. And if Jesus be a human person, one among
millions of human persons, whom the divine word united to himself
and even (finally) absorbed into himself, there is no reason in the
nature of things why the process should not be repeated. It
is, in fact, only the highest example of what occurs in its measure
in every good man. There may be another Christ, even
conceivably a higher and more enlightened one. There is no
real ground for asserting the finality of the Christ, unless he be
personally God in manhood. Then, and then only, must he be
essentially and necessarily final. For there can be no
disclosure of God in manhood or of manhood in God even conceivable
which should be completer or fuller (at least under the conditions
of this world) than is given us in him who is the word made flesh.
Nor in the nature of things can there be another such. There
can be no other such person as the only-begotten son of God. The divine son in becoming
man must have accepted, voluntarily and deliberately, the
limitations involved in really living as man – even as sinless and
perfect man – in feeling as a man, thinking as a man, striving as
a man, being anxious and tried as a man. Jesus does not indeed
appear in the gospels as unconscious of his divine nature. He
knows he is son of the father. He “remembers” how he came
from God and would go back to God. But he appears none the
less as accepting the limitations of manhood. This was no
failure of power. God is love, and love is sympathy and
self-sacrifice. The incarnation is the supreme act of
self-sacrificing sympathy, by which one whose nature is divine was
enabled to enter into human experience. He emptied himself of
divine prerogatives so far as was involved in really becoming man,
and growing, feeling, thinking and suffering as man. All that
appears evident is that it was the eternal son who was manifested in
human nature as Jesus of Nazareth, and that within the sphere and
limit of his mortal life he appears as restricted by human
conditions; and we thankfully accept this supreme example of
humility and self-sacrifice, without attempting to relate it to what
lies outside our possibilities of knowledge. Just as we
believe that now in the heavenly places Christ is still truly man,
but that the manhood is all radiant with God head: so in his earthly
state we should believe that Christ was really God and so knew
himself, but that Godhead was submitting itself to the limitations
of manhood. We feel that the gospels present us with one who
is, and knows himself to be, always and in all things the son of
God, but who is throughout existing, acting, and speaking under the
conditions and limitations of manhood. The disciples were led to
expect from Jesus, the Christ, the outpouring of the spirit of God.
And a few days after he had finally left them, the Holy Spirit
actually came, taking them as it were by storm, and possessing their
souls with an almost intoxicating force. And the spirit dealt
with them like a person controlling them, and guiding them, in the
most unmistakable ways. So we see in the Acts and Epistles how
the thought of God was modified by their experiences, and the name
of God became to them the threefold name of the father and of the
son, or Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost. On the whole I hold it as
unquestionable that the church at the end of the apostolic age is
found believing, as a result of its experience of Jesus and of his
spirit, in three distinguishable agents: (1) God, whom they now know
as the father; (2) Jesus, the Christ and lord, whom they believe in
as the son or word of the father, who for their sakes had been made
man, and in that manhood glorified and spiritualized had gone into
heaven and had sent down upon the church (3) the Holy Spirit, his
own spirit and the father’s, to be their helper, strengthener,
guide and intercessor; and their thought of the one God includes
that of the three “persons”. The three are by no means separate
persons. There is, it seems, in the three but one being, one
mind, one activity. The divine being is one – one substance,
one mind, one will. But this divine being exists in three
persons, each of whom is whole God, in each of whom the divine mind
and all the divine attributes exist personally. God appears to be as
dependent upon the world for self-expression as the world is on him.
He realizes himself in the world. Perhaps he only attains
self-consciousness in the self-consciousness of men. The religion of the
prophets of Israel and of our lord gave a profound stimulus to human
life just because it represented God as a person, perfect and
complete in himself, having the characteristics of a person, wisdom,
justice and love in a supreme sense; having a will and purpose for
men, who were made in his image, but alive in himself before ever
the world was, the creator of all that is and the judge of all
rational beings. We find ourselves intellectually paralysed
when we try to give any meaning to this idea of one self-existent
being, alive in himself with the fullness of life before the world
was. For life, as far as we can see, involves relationship,
and rational or moral life the relationship of persons. How
can we think of an eternal will without an eternal effect or product
of this will, or of an eternal consciousness without an object of
this consciousness adequate to itself, or of an eternal love without
an eternal object of love? How can he live and love along> A glimpse into God’s
eternal life seems to have been given to me, and the relief to the
intellect is great. Now we can see how God can be alive with
the fullest life we can conceive of – will and reason and love –
because his own being involves in itself a relationship of persons.
In the eternity which we cannot with our finite intellects conceive,
he was productive, and found his object of knowledge and object of
love in his eternal word or son and in the Holy Spirit. The nature of man is the
most complex unity in the world known to us. If I seek to rise
to the source and penetrate to the ground of all life, and find this
source and ground to be a living God perfect in himself, the upward
soaring train of though leads me to postulate that this eternal
being must be something quite different from a monotonous unity.
When I admit the disclosure of Trinity – that is multiplicity in
unity – it is only what I should expect in the perfect and
absolute being. And I can dimly conceive how there in the
eternal word and the spirit was the counterpart, under the
conditions of eternity and perfection, of all that wealth of life
which is gradually evolved on a lower plane in the process of
creation. The moving world and the unchanging, immobile God
seemed not merely to belong to different grades of being, but to be
in no possible relation to one another. Does not creation
involve movement? Does not God move in the moving world which
he sustains in being, and live in its life? But now I am
delivered from all this horrible imagination of a God who is
absolute immobility. For God is eternally alive – eternally
moving out into self-expression. He has the whole movement of
absolute life within himself. Thus to create and to begin to
live and act on the lower plane of gradual and progressive creation
is no unnatural thought to associate with a God who eternally is
life in himself, because there is in him what is dimly descried as
the eternal generation of the son and the procession of the spirit. The Bible is the record of
a gospel of redemption. It is a proclamation of good tidings
from God. It holds out to man the highest and most glorious
possibilities in Christ Jesus. But it does so on the
assumption that in humanity as it stands there is something
radically perverted, in view of which it needs for its salvation
something quite different from more example or encouragement to make
the best of itself – it needs fundamental reconstruction by him
who originally created it. There is no doubt that our
lord is very far from representing human nature as he found it as
wholly corrupt. He showed a vivid appreciation of what we
should call natural goodness, which he found in those whom the Jews
regarded as outcasts at least as much as within the chosen people.
He values “the cup of cold water” and every act of natural
kindness. He welcomes men who show a right disposition of mind
as “not far from the kingdom of God.” Also he is
extraordinarily gracious to the outcasts. The “publicans and
harlots” of society are assured of ready forgiveness. He
came, he said, not to call the righteous but sinners. His main
emphasis is on the sins of “the righteous”, that is, of those
who were so regarded and so regarded themselves. Sins of
violence and lust were, of course, regarded as sins and stamped with
reprobation in respectable Jewish society. But Jesus was at
pains to bring to light the even deeper sinfulness of spiritual
sins, hypocrisy or self-righteousness, avarice, pride, contempt,
hatred, spiritual blindness and prejudice, and above all
unmercifulness and the neglect of active goodness. “Inasmuch
as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my brethren …
depart from me:. Such sins of the spirit he represents as even
more dangerous than disreputable sins. “The publicans and
the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.” When our Lord
announced the joy of heaven as lying more in the reclamation of the
lost than in the righteousness of “the ninety and nine righteous
persons who need no repentance”, he was speaking to the Pharisees
and Scribes who murmured at his receiving sinners and eating with
them. On the whole it must be acknowledged that while our Lord
infinitely deepened the sense of God’ willingness to forgive, and
refused to regard the outcasts as “hopeless cases”, he also
deepened and broadened the sense of sin. He appears to assume
its universality. This it is quite natural that, when our Lord has
in view the kingdom of God which he is inaugurating, he should
declare that none can be fit for it without a fundamentally fresh
start. “Verily I say unto you, except ye turn and become as
little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of
heaven.” And this fundamental turning appears to be
inseparable from discipleship to himself, which means a very
thorough faith in him as the divinely commissioned redeemer.
Therefore he demands of men a deep reconstruction. “Except a
man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” “Except a
man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God”. Certainly this is the spirit in which the
first church in Jerusalem understood its message. It was no
announcement to men of a glory which was already theirs, if only
they would open their eyes to discern their true nature.
Enlightenment was not enough. They needed to embrace by faith
a “salvation” now first offered them – offered in a new
“name” which was the only name of salvation – and the gateway
to this salvation was Baptism, which conveyed to them that they
could not otherwise receive, the forgiveness of their sins, and
prepared them for the new gift of the spirit. I do not think the New
Testament can be accused of any pretension to expound the secrets of
divine justice for the satisfaction of our intellect. It
does what is much better, it assures us of the character of God and
thus enables us to feel quite confident that he will deal in justice
and love with every human soul he has created. But it exists
to record a gospel – a salvation for men, publicly proclaimed, and
divinely covenanted; and the gospel is based on an assumption that
what humanity needs is something other than development or
enlightenment. It needs fundamental reconstruction – a fresh
start, a new birth, forgiveness and renewal – and of all this
there is only one source – the prince of the new life, the saviour,
the redeemer Jesus Christ: and this fresh start is offered so to
speak, objectively, as membership in the new community, to those who
seek this great deliverance as sinners who need to be saved. The kind of estimate of
human nature which we find in the New Testament, both in its
optimism and its pessimism – that is, its glorious estimate of
what humanity is intended by God to be and is capable of becoming,
and its dark estimate of what it has in fact, by rebellion against
God, made itself to be – was not out of harmony either with the
general sentiment in the period of the Roman Empire when
Christianity first spread, or with the general sentiment of the
Middle Ages. In both periods it was natural to men to feel
that the world was a very evil world, that nothing that men could do
for themselves would make it better, and that they must look for
redemption to God and a spiritual world above. But what
asserted itself was a sense of human power – the power of man to
redeem himself by his own initiative, especially by the instrument
of knowledge in general and the science of nature in particular,
which was at his disposal and which he could manipulate in the cause
of his own advancement. This is the gospel of the kingdom of man.
And this gospel has seemed beyond question to make the language of
the Bible sound out of date – as if it disparaged the “God in
man” which is the only kind of God congenial to this modern
spirit. It is certain that the optimism of Christianity, its
glorious appreciation of human capability and destiny, is bound up
with its pessimism – with its profound sense that mankind has set
itself by its own sin on the wrong road and needs redeeming by God,
who alone can redeem it as he first made it, and can give it the
light and stimulus and direction by which alone it can recover
itself and realize itself afresh. I have tried honestly and
freely to know myself and to study human life all around me and in
the record of history; and I know no interpretation of human life
which is adequate both to the rays of glory which I see there and
the encompassing gloom, except the estimate of the Bible. Man
is made to be a king, but he is “a discrowned king”: and no one
can put him again on the way of honour except his God who made him
and would redeem him. The Christian idea of sin
was not developed as a philosophy by reflection, but appeared as
part of a teaching about God and man which claimed to be a divine
message given that men might know how to live. Nevertheless it
involves a philosophy in that it places the seat of sin in the will
and finds its essence in disobedience or violation of a law known to
be divine. So the Bible looks out upon a disordered and miserable
world and finds the secret of the disorder and misery simply in the
refusal of God by men. There is no sin which is
not the breach of law by a rebel will, and nothing else in the world
which breaks the law of its being except sin. For there is
nothing as God made it which is not good and meant to serve a good
end. There is no evil substance. The grossest sins are
but the misuse of faculties good in themselves. And however
much evil habits may have engrained vice into our nature, let but
the will be again replaced in love to God and obedience to his will
and the whole nature can be recovered. Faith means the surrender of
our being to God in Christ; and when that is gained God can work
freely upon us to accept and to renew. The spark of the
divine, which is the soul of man, is imprisoned at present in the
body with its corrupting passions and influences, and is subjected
to the mysterious tyranny of the material world. What it must
hope for is to be released from the body and delivered from the
material world, and so be free to resume its place in the pure being
of God. To believe that matter is evil and the source of sin,
or as something eternally existing and intractable – is to despair
of the world and our present life in the body. And the
Christian’s determination to plant and promote the kingdom of God
in the world and to consecrate to God every element in nature,
including his own body, depends on the belief that there is nothing
bad in the world but a bad will, and that man’s body as well as
his soul are the subjects of divine redemption. Progress no
doubt represents the divine purpose, but the reason why progress has
been so broken, so fragmentary, and so liable to reversals and
catastrophes lies just in the thwarting, disturbing, destructive
power of sin, from which neither education nor refinement of itself
has the power to redeem. The Bible teaches that man
was created free to correspond with a good purpose of God for him:
and his advance towards the realization of his heritage of
sovereignty in the world might have been inconceivably more glorious
and unimpeded than it has been but for his constantly renewed and
perpetuated disloyalty to God and disobedience to the law of his
being. It is to this that his misery is due. And as he
was made for constant dependence upon God, so he cannot hope to
rescue himself out of his bondage, but only to be rescued by
God when he will return to him in penitence and surrender. Sin, or disobedience to God
and the law of our being – essentially and always is a fall.
Indirectly it may be through sin that we make discoveries about
ourselves and the world. So sin may be a condition of
progress, but not a necessary condition. We could have gained
the fruit of the tree of knowledge without sin, for sin is always a
perversion and a loss. It puts us in a wrong relation to
ourselves and to our fellows and to God. Everywhere, in all
its forms, and in every case sin is lawlessness and therefore is a
fall. We are fallen by our iniquity. Thus Adam and Eve stand
for every man and woman, and the story of their fall is the true
story of humanity and of what has been its ruin in every individual
case. And over against the old Adam, which is sinful humanity,
stands the last Adam, which is the sinless humanity. Thus in
Jesus Christ I see humanity both restored to its true basis and its
true relations, and not only restored but perfected in God.
And I apprehend the true character of my redemption only when I
grasp it as a radical transference of my fundamental allegiance, and
so of my whole being, from the stock of the old Adam to that of the
new. We can regard mankind as constituting one race which can be dealt with, whether barbarous or civilized, as having certain fundamentally identical spiritual capacities – that is, intelligence (as distinct from instinct), the moral conscience, and some measure of moral freedom, capacity in some Measure for enlarging fellowship and progress, and capacity for God. Man is an individual with the responsibilities of an individual, and progress towards the ideal will deepen and intensify his individuality. But that mysterious and elusive thing he calls himself carries within it elements and qualities which are inherited and not personal, and which make him the representative of something much wider and much older than his individual self. In his unconscious mind he carries (so it appears) instincts and memories which are racial and not personal. If this is so, it would be very bold to deny that there may be, or must be, some inheritance of sin, in its weakening and perverting effect upon the spiritual nature, in those roots of our being which lie below the beginning of personal consciousness. Jesus and SufferingAll that came upon Christ in the way of suffering came simply from his life of obedience and sympathy. He never sough pain, as if to witness pain would please the father, or taught men to seek pain, except so far as service and self-discipline involve it. All that he suffered came simply out of his obedience to his father’s mission, and of his speaking the truth and rebuking sins out of his standing stoutly against wickedness in high places, and out of his boundless sympathy with men. This constituted his mission. “He rode out because of the word of truth and meekness and righteousness”. And as the world was, it brought him to his death. He let sin take its course, and show its real nature in this supreme example. The sins which crucified Christ wee the normal sins of men; in exactly the same sense as all the world over the sins of men are vicariously borne by their victims. The father simply sent the son into the world, and under the normal action of its moral laws, and did not interfere.During his visit to Ireland in Sep/Oct 1979, Pope John Paul the second said: “Love your enemies. In the long run love always bring victory. Love is never defeated. If it were not so, humanity would be doomed to destruction”. It was announced today 17
Oct 1979 that Mother Teresa had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Surely the most deserved award of all time. The following is an
extract from the Book “The New Revelation” by Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle (1859-1930) But what is always fresh and always useful and always beautiful, is the memory of the sweet spirit who wandered on the hillsides of Galilee; who gathered the children around him; who met his friends in innocent good-fellowship; who shrank from formal approaches and ceremonies, craving always for the innermost meanings; who forgave sinners; who championed the poor and the outcast, and who in every decision threw his weight upon the side of charity and breadth of view When to this you add those wondrous psychic powers, you do, indeed, find a supreme personality, who obviously stands nearer to the highest than any other. When one compare the general effect of his teaching with that of the more rigid churches, one marvels how, in their dogmatism, their exclusiveness, their pomp and their intolerance, they could have got so far away from the example of their master, so that as one looks upon him and them, one feels that there is absolute deep antagonism, and that one cannot speak of the church and Christ, but only of the church or Christ.. Music is moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness; gaiety and life to everything. Nothing can come out of nothing, any more than a thing can go back to nothing. Marcus Aurelius (121-80 B.C. Roman Emperor) Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mould and chisel and compete a character. Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth, (1749-1832). German poet and thinkerGod has made apostles and saints out of men and women that the world would have thrown away as rubbish; Peter, the weak and wayward; Mary Magdalen, the defiled; Zaccheus, the worldly; Thomas, the despondent; Paul, the persecutor and blasphemer. What God could do in the first century he can do, he is doing, to-day. Love comes and grows
through serving , not through being served. We lead but one life here
on earth, we must make that beautiful. And to do this, health
and elasticity of mind are needed; and whatever endangers or impedes
these must be avoided. Fear is a hindrance to all
virtue. I have grown to believe
that the one thing worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life;
that the world is a very beautiful place; that congenial labour is
the secret of happiness. Our life is what our
thoughts make it. After all, the kind of
world one carries about in one self is the important thing, and the
world outside takes all its graces, colour, and value from that. In art, the highest success
is to be the last of your race, not the first. Anybody,
almost, can make a beginning: the difficult is to make an end – to
do what we cannot be bettered. George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Nobel Prize winner 1925 Today is your day and mine,
the only day we have, the day in which we play our part. What
our part may signify in the great whole we may not understand, but
we are here to play it, and now is our time. This we know.
It is a part of action, not cynicism. It is for us to express
love in terms of human helpfulness. This we know, for we
have learned from sad experience that any other source leads towards
decay and waste. To maintain a fault known
is a double fault. Love is not getting, but
giving; not a wild dream of pleasure, and a madness of desire – oh
no; love is not that – it is goodness and honour, and peace and
pure living – yes, love is that – that is the best thing in the
world, and the thing that lives the longest. How can he grant you what
you do not desire to receive? People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. This life is the childhood
of eternity. To bless God for mercies is
the way to increase them. He enjoys much who is thankful for a little. A man’s worth should be
reckoned by what he is, not by what he has. Flowers are the smiles of
God’s goodness. Ill will is never easy. Happiness is a web with
many threads of pain in it. There is no sense in always
telegraphing to heaven for God to send a cargo of blessing unless we
are at the wharf to unload the vessel when it come.
“The child shall be given
facilities to enable him to develop physically, mentally and
socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of
dignity. We shall have the right to adequate nutrition,
housing, recreation and medical services.” Psalm 91 (v14 to end) Trust in God Because they love me, I will save them, And will protect those who know me as Lord, When they call upon me, I will answer; I will be with them in time of trouble; I will rescue them and honour them. I will reward them with a full life, To enjoy the abundance of
my salvation. Virtue is a disposition or
habit involving deliberate purpose of choice. If this were not
so morality would be a sham. We are punished by our
sins, not for them. Christian
Science "
Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. V.C. Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Him who is light, who is beyond darkness. To know him, and him alone, is to pass beyond death – There is no other way. He is the whole, other than he, is naught, Greater or smaller there is nothing other, Still as a tree, unshaken in the heavens, His living being fills the universe. Swetaswatara Upanishad
Edmund Burke 1729-1797 The
griefs of love they last for evermore. Sympathy, perseverance, observation, tact, resourcefulness, explicitness, dexterity, discrimination. 1. How did the universe begin from nothing? 2. How could the universe exist without beginning? With
hearts, and hands, and voices; Who
wondrous things hath done, In
whom his world rejoices; Who,
from our mothers’ arms, Hath
blessed us on our way With
countless gifts of love, And
still is ours today. O
may this bounteous God Through
all over life be near us, With
ever-joyful hearts And
blessed peace to cheer us. And
keep us in his grace, And
guide us when perplexed, And
free us from all ills In
this world and the next. All
praise and thanks to God The
father now be given, The
son, and him who reigns With
them in highest heaven; The
one, eternal God, Whom
earth and heaven adore; For
thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.
Martin Rinkart, 1586-1649
Cr. By Catherine Winkworth, 1829-78 On
the way to Once again, Back to where we started from. Mother, aunt Ann and you no longer there, All I can do is drive and stare. Stare at the hills we knew so well, The villages and downs, and woodland dell. As the beauty of For you and your company my heart cries. As I got older and my memories fade, My last visit to our homeland I think I’ve made. For all things eventually come to an end, And the rest of my life I’ll probably spend Down in the south where I went long ago, Eager to find a new life, and so With a wave of my hand back there I’ll go. And memories are all that remain. 14.6.81 W W Gibson
Father’s
Cemetery is
in “Pozieres The Hong Kong
Monday
15th June 1981 7
year’s War, Belle Isle 1761 American
War of N.W.
Frontier of
Allan,
see page 42 of manuscript
Alexandra
Princess of Roll
of Honour Of Officers,
warrant officers Non-commissioned
officers, and men Who
fell in The
Great War 1914-1919
Alexandra, Colonel-in-Chief
April 3rd 1921
“If
I had the money I would buy this Victoria Cross for the
This Victoria Cross was sold to someone unknown for £32,000 Added Note: The Victoria Cross was bought by medal collector Sir Ernest Harrison OBE, chairman of Racal and Vodafone. Harrison later presented the medal to the Ggeen Hoewards Museum in Richmond, North Yorkshire. Ten years later, he purchased, for the Green Howards, the Normandy hut which Hollis had attacked. Allan Gibson In
memory of Capt. Geo.B. Purvis, 5th Bat. Green Howards. Killed
Messines Ridge. June 8th
1917. Surmounted
by her coronet (the crown at the top), and bears the date 1875. The
new badge Surmounted
by her coronet. And still
bearing the date 1875. We
are indebted to the editor of the Yorkshire Post for permission to
reprint the following article which appeared in his newspaper of 21st
April 1979:-
I
see him in the mountainside, I
see him in the rustling trees, I
see him wherever I abide. I
see God in the starry skies I
see him in the cliffs so bare, I
see him in the quiet sighs That
murmur in the placid air. I
see God in the caring hand That
teaches out with gentle touch. Surely
God is in our land We
need his help so very much. For
no one can ignore his call, That
we should recognise his earth, With
all it contains both large and small, As
meant for us to know its worth. There
is an epitaph on the tombstone written by Once
an infidel and libertine, A
servant of slaves in Was
by the rich mercy of our lord And
saviour Jesus Christ Preserved,
restored, pardoned And
appointed to preach the faith He
had long laboured to destroy. Near
16 years as curate of this parish; And
28 years as rector of St. Mary. Woolnoth. Could
or would have shed his blood? But
our Jesus died to have us Reconciled
in him to God: This
was boundless love indeed; Jesus
is a friend in need. While
I am a pilgrim here, Let
thy love my spirit cheer: As
my guide, my guard, my friend, Lead
to my journey’s end.
John Newton Audrey
(Jessop)
(Died 5.10.1981)
Her friend, Bill. 71 Raglan Court, Wembley
For the
fallen Through
dust of conflict and through battle flame; Tranquil
you lie, your knightly virtue proved, Your
memory hallowed in the land you loved. Proudly
you fathered, rank on rank, to war, As
who had heard God’s message from afar; All
you had hoped for, all you had, you gave To
save mankind – yourselves you scorned to save. Splendid
you passed, the great surrender made, Into
the light that never more shall fade; Deep
your contentment in that blest abode, Who
wait the last clear trumpet – call of God. Long
years ago, as earth lay dark and still, Rose
a loud cry upon a lonely hill, While
in the frailty of our human clay Christ,
our redeemer, passed the self-same way. Still
stands his cross from that dread hour to this, Like
some bright star above the dark abyss; Still,
through the veil, the victor’s pitying eyes Look
down to bless our lesser calvaries. These
were his servants, in his steps they trod, Following
through death the martyred son of God: Victor
he rose; victorious too shall rise They
who have drunk his cup of sacrifice. O
risen lord, O shepherd of our dead, Whose
cross has bought the and whose staff has led, In
glorious hope their proud and sorrowing land Commits
her children to thy gracious hand.
Sir John S. Arkwright With
memories of far away, The
heroes go marching by With
thoughts of comrades who quietly lie In
foreign fields where poppies grow, The
flower which we know Is
the symbol of brave hearts and true, Hearts
which were stilled for me and you. Let
us remember as long as we can How
they fell to the very last man, To
secure for us all A
richer heritage ‘ere we fall, Asleep.
8 Nov. 1981 Suffering
can become a means to greater love and
greater generosity. Mother Teresa Praise
him, all peoples! His
love for us is strong, and his faithfulness is everlasting. O,
Praise the Lord!
John Keats Longing
for God A
Psalm by David when he was in the desert of Judaea
To
whom I must give credit. And
say to you “well done”, For
you deserve great merit For
all the achievements you have won. I
wish for you a happy day, And
that many nice things may come your way. May
all your dearest dreams come true, And
may you find delight in all you do.
From Dad Christmas 1981 Once
more we welcome God’s only son. For
our redemption he was born, For
our happiness he comes on Christmas morn.
That
the cruelties of war may forever cease, To
greet him church bells merrily ring, And
children their sweet carols sing. To
our saviour; and him, promise never to forsake. For
he wants to free us all from grievous wrong, So
let us salute him with a triumph song.
Each
one of us his resolution makes, That
no more will bad habits remain, Never
again will things be quite the same.
Waiting
to enter as the new year starts. Let
us banish the many faults we had, And
try to bring in the good, and expel the bad.
23.12.1981
Juliana of Norwich He
came to us in lowly stable, Watched
by his mother with adoration. No
one thought then that he would be able To
make in us a transformation. His
sweet presence radiated tender love, He
gave us the example we were seeking, He
brought God’s glory from above, And
with our God he arranged a meeting. He
said that the meek would inherit the earth, That
we could all find God in our native land, That
we would, each one, be
judged by his worth, And
that our future is safe in God’s guiding hand. Shall
we, then, pay heed to his gospel call, And,
like him, make God our constant guide. Let
us make sure that whate’er befall, We
will pronounce our saviour with devotion and pride.
23.12.1981 We
live and laugh and love and cry, And
memories produce a sigh. To
God who lives in heaven on high, Our
hopes our thoughts should ever fly. O
give us grace his ways to try, Till
in his arms we gently lie.
4.7.1985 1900
– began his career as a psychiatrist at the Burghulzli Mental
Hospital, Zurich, and the psychiatric clinic of Zurich University. 1907
– met Freud, and friendship developed, which lasted for several
years. 1909
– obtained Hon. Degree from Clark University, Massachusetts. 1911
– became first president of the International Psychoanalytic
Society, which he himself founded.
His work became known as analytical psychology, or sometimes as
complex psychology. From
1913
– he devoted himself increasingly to research into the nature and
phenomena of the unconscious, and the problems of psychological
behaviour in general. 1921
onwards
– he spent a considerable time in North Africa; and later among the
Pueblo Indians in Arizona and New Mexico; and the natives of Kenya:
studying for himself the behaviour and mental processes of primitive
people. He also visited
India, England, and various European countries.
(He spoke four languages well, and two others fairly well).
He was a prolific writer, and his works have been translated
into nearly all European languages. 1930
– acquired Hon. President of the Deutsche Arztliche Gesellschaft fur
Psychotherapic. 1932
– literary prize of the City of Zurich. 1933
– Presidency of International General Medical Society for
Psychotherapy. 1936
– Harvard University awarded him the most eminent living scientists
Hon. Degree. 1938
– became Hon.D.Sc. at Oxford University. 1943 – Hon. Membership of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. There are also forward-looking or “prospective” dreams. It seems, indeed, as if space and time are creations of our consciousness, and are relative to us. The unconscious does not work according to these concepts. There is the case of a woman who was shortly going to move to a new and unknown district, who dreamt correctly all about the house she would live in, down to the smallest detail, even including the reason why its present owners were leaving it. Such dreams are not uncommon. Dreams can become not only sources of information, but also sources of creative power. Emotional energy or urge 2. Thinking, which gives meaning and understanding. 3. Feeling, which weights and values. 4. Intuition, which tells us of future possibilities, and gives us information of the atmosphere which surrounds all experience.
Carl Gustav Jung
William Shakespeare By Simone Weil In unknown brilliance dost thou shine. We, and the countless multitudes yet unborn All belong to thee, and will be forever thine. Where are the secret places of your dwelling? What great power lies beyond this space and time? We look to your son, our saviour, for the telling Of your nature, and your might sublime. For who else can possibly let us know About that majestic centre of all creation? Who else can positively show What lies in store for every nation? Our saviour has said in words both exacting and clear, That for our future life our God has prepared a great adventure. Another kind of existence, free from sorrow, pain and fear, A life of untold happiness, endless joy and infinite splendour. But to earn and worthily deserve that spiritual life, We must toil and struggle and strain To overcome all the misery and sin that is rife, And help straighten out our self inflicted pain. For great is our creator’s joy and delight, When his followers we earnestly seek to become, When we are modestly submissive, and praiseworthy in his sight, And when for his kingdom on earth we constantly long. He is eagerly and earnestly waiting to welcome us all, Into that wondrous place that is prepared in the skies, We all await with certainty this unfailing call To us, to take that immense and exalted journey to his paradise. Alternative last verse to the ode to our eternal God He is waiting to welcome all his friends, Waiting to receive us into his dwelling place, His loving concern and care for us never ends, One day we shall meet him, and see his face.
W.W. Gibson
14 April 1982 P.J. Bailey (1816-1902) Almighty, but humble and merciful. Strong, but kind and gentle. Elevated, but lowly in nature. Owner of All, but gives freedom to all. Above all, but holds out the hand of friendship to all. Immortal, but willing to help us adjust to our limits of time. These are my own thoiughts, from God 24.5.1982 W W Gibson (my
reaction to the Falklands dispute) Land
of my birth. To
be born of you Is
to me of great worth. Land
of hope and glory! Will
always be my story. Mother
of the free. I
shall forever be Enchanted
and enthralled with thee. For
in my heart there lies The
deepest pride for this my home. And
from this vale of earthly paradise; From
this abode I ne’er again shall roam, What
shall I gain by leaving you behind? Only
a great yearning in my saddened mind, A
longing to be back to you, sublime, To
stay with you till the ceasing of my time. For
you have forever filled me with content, To
you from God was I undoubtedly sent, And
back to God I will quietly go, Back
to a place I don’t yet know. I
know, only that God must love you so, All
his many blessings to you must surely go, For
he has made you into a land both great and free, A
peaceful sanctuary set in the crystal sea. My
country, you are a haven of delight, Inhabited
by those who brought you might. Let
no one misunderstand their tranquil manner They
will always be true to their glorious banner. When
my time comes to say goodbye to this dear land, I
shall only one more thing demand, That my country remain as it has always been, A place where the loss of freedom is never, never seen. 21-6-1982 W W Gibson David prays for forgiveness It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
Seneca (AD 5-65) (Isaiah
lived in Jerusalem in the 8th century B.C.)
G.A. Studdert Kennedy (by his friends)
31 October 1982 Love
is patient, love is kind, Love
to each other does us bind, Love
has no limits to its power, It
produces beauty, as a flower. Love
is not jealous or conceited, It
never gives up, is never defeated. It
does not approve of selfishness or pride, Anything
distasteful lit seeks to hide. Love
is granted to us all, We
all possess it, be we great or small. It
is given free of all conditions, It
frees us all from our inhibitions. Love
shows the face of caring and concern, Of
other people’s distress it seeks to learn. It
keeps no record of misdeeds that are done, It
seeks to forgive and amend the things that are wrong. This
love from God does not complain, From
making trouble it will always refrain. It
approaches all people with goodwill and grace. Within
each one of us the love of God can find a place. Love
sets no limits to its faith and hope, It
accepts any weaknesses and learns to cope, A
steadfast belief in goodness it is never without, And
of its sincerity there is never any doubt. With
love, being ill-manned is not permitted, And
being happy with evil is never remitted, Only
with truth is happiness acquired, Only
in the absence of sins is true love fired. Love
must be wanted above all desires, In
the search for love, the virtuous man never tires, Love
should be put first in everyone’s life, Without
love, unrest and disturbances are rife. The
greatest sacrifice that love can make Is
when a life is given for someone’s sake. No
greater love than this can ever be found As
when a soldier falls dying to the ground. Without
love, our spiritual growth will not exist, Without
love, even evolution is at risk. Without
love, all our efforts for good are in vain, Without
love our moral progress is on the wane. Love
is constituent of the
spirit, It
must be nurtured every passing minute. God’s
hand must play a vital part In
bring out that love from every willing heart. Love
is God’s greatest gift to man, It
is the most important part of the heavenly plan. We
must welcome love wherever it may be found And
on finding it, spread it happily around. Let
us then trust, hope and endure. Let
us remain ever upright and pure. When
we reflect on the skies above, Let
us remember that god is love.
16.11.1982 The searching, hoping, all in vain. Four close walls and corners eye, My only friends as there I lie. The small window open to the world, But no one sees me weeping and curled. A dark and cold; a hopeful night? The odd one out? Be bold, be bright. Then hope arises, fears pass by, A chance of happiness before I die; Such love and kindness, not known before, My wife, my son, there’s nothing more.
During the Wasted years. Until your heart, And love, Lifted all my tears.
(in memory of mother) Full of kindness and care As she held her leg rocking With pain and despair. My heart cried in anguish, Her thin body suffered so, Such courage and bravery Never let me feel low. Such happiness I could give her, A child to love and so dear, Would make the nights that she suffered Bring loving smiles through a tear. If there’s a heaven above, Full of peace and no pain My mother will be there, Her life not in vain. beautiful
poetry Allan, it is full of understanding and concern.
Dad. (A new life with Chris) Natures seasons have gone Thank you for blessing me With a wonderful son.
Beautiful blossoms in spring. The flowers in summer, Warming memories they bring. But passion flowers have passed, All the daisies have died; Yet with my love for you My heart never cried. Now another year lies ahead, And a future with love Like a mirror of our memories Passes today like a dove. His
face is soft, His
hands are small, He
falls a lot. He’s
strong and determined, He
has a cheeky smile. He’ll
crawl for ever His
hands patting down, He
learns so quickly, He
feels and prods. His
tender ways, His
loving touch, He’s
all we’ve god, He’s
all we want; He’s
our little boy, He’s
loved a lot. With
big blue eyes and soft brown hair. What
a joy to see him play and crawl As
he chases after his orange ball. His
lovely soft face and such a happy smile When
he tries to walk and crumples down in a pile. Each
day can we ask for anything more? Our
lives are richer in every chore, He
means so much to us in every way, We
thank God for our son on his special day. When
going on a shopping spree; Fighting
and angry, and wanting more, We
are so greedy, thoughtless and free. Think
of the poor souls suffering so, In
mind and body and lifeless soul. Does
nobody care? Yet it must be so, Such
starvation and death through riceless bowl.
Sir John Bagot Glubb ( B.1897) Sadness
is a lonely man Racked
with pain and little hope. Reached
for God to ease his mind. With
life’s ordeals he cannot cope. Leaving
behind the family’s woes, His
loneliness is now complete. With
solitude his constant friend His
burden walks an empty street. Happiness
is hard to find. Who
listens to a worried man? Turns
again to family ties, From
once before he turned and ran. O
brave return, and great ordeal, He
faced the past, but present now. Not
understood, but welcomed home, To
ease his frown and worried brow. But
ease it not, nor never will. Why
let all the worry be in vain? Its
others he was thinking of, Why
should they suffer all his pain? Yet
suffer too and helpless are, Those
who love and cannot share. When
understanding, but not understood, They
seek more than just to care. Many
thanks Allan for your care
and understanding. This
poem shows me how much you have thought about me.
Love Dad. Come
to me, O God; I weep for thee, In
all the world, thee only would I see. I
beg for the light and knowledge of thy guidance, I
plead in desperation for thy nearness and assurance. For
as long as I would breathe, I ask this, That
I may hereafter live in joy and bliss. May
the blessedness of the saintly heart be mine, And
may my thoughts towards thee forever incline.
W.W. Gibson 14.5.1983
Phaedrus AD20
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Thomas A Kempis (Augustinian monk)
(1380-1471)
Author of the Imitation of Christ He
reaches out with tender care, All
our troubles and trials to share, He
seeks to enter every broken heart, Ready,
always, his constant love to impart. Will
you answer, then, his urgent plea? Enter
his presence on bended knee? Will
you come with deference into his company? His
mysterious grandeur for yourself to see? He
loves the humble, the gentle, the mile, With
the penitent heart he will eagerly abide. Anyone
seeking his encouragement and help, Should
reach out in longing, losing all thought of self. Every
opportunity to succour he will seize, With
the wayward one, he will kindly persuade That
he should reform his ways, and seek the master’s aid.
W.W. Gibson
20.5.1983 Hope
to the young
Security
to the old And
comfort to the sick. And
show me the treasures of your heaven, Let
me newly make a start, Bring
to my mind your spiritual leaven, And
in your creation let me play a part, Under
your tender care. Allow
me not a backward step. Show
me, only the way to go. Many
times I have quietly wept, That
I may ward off the deadly blow, That
from your way I may have crept In
deep despair. But
never have you let me falter, Always
by my side you stayed. And
when I was apt my ways to alter Your
closeness caused me to dissuade. You
were ever near; my guide and shelter, Listening
to my prayer.
W.W. Gibson
3.8.1983
R.L. Smith
Plato “To
get to the tree tops, we must aim for the stars.”
25.8.1983
H.G. Bohn (1796-1884) W.W. Gibson 5th Nov 1983
(A seeker of the Truth) Mat (18-22), Mark 5 (25-34), Luke 8 (43-48) I
will sing the wondrous story Of
the Christ who died for me; How
he left his home in glory, For
the cross on Calvary. I
was lost; but Jesus found me – Found
the sheep that went astray; Raised
me up and gently led me Back
into the narrow way. I
was bruised; but Jesus healed me: Faint
was I from many a fall; Sight
was gone, and fears possessed me; But
he freed me from them all. Days
of darkness still come o’er me; Sorrow’s
paths I often tread; But
the saviour still is with me By
his hand I’m safely led.
Francis Harold Rawley, 1854 John Hick (Professor of Theology in the University of Birmingham) All
creation was set alight, Humanity
was faltering in God’s sight, The
time had come to put things right, To
rescue us in our plight. For
our God it was time to fulfil, His
promise of that friendship and goodwill, Which
was needed in order our hearts to fill With
understanding of what may make us more at peace, more tranquil. More
close to him still. That
we needed his help it could not be denied, “Bring
us your presence”, the people cried! “Come
to us quickly and dwell at our side”! “Open
up the curtain wide”! “Do
not ever from us hide”! And
he sought us in our dwelling place, Came
to all shades of kindred and race, Showed
us all, his human face The
face of modesty and grace, Meek,
and virtuous and chaste. W.W. Gibson 17.3.1984 Carlyle (1795-1881) Where
are you now? Return
to me, Dear Heavenly Father My
God, absolve me from all unkind thought, My
friendship at a dear price you bought. Throughout
my life, my full support you sought, Was
your help and kindness all for naught? Great
was my delight and gladness when you came to me, And
so overwhelmed when I was able to see That
you were really there, and willing to set me free, Able
to persuade all my troublesome doubt to flee. Alas,
from your presence I allowed myself to stray, Perhaps,
in remorse, I’ll return again some day, Return
with no conditions, and without delay, Determined,
for all time, with you to stay. O
God, you are my life, my bliss, my ultimate end, Allay
all my uncertainty, and be my friend, You
indwelling spirit, to me, quickly send, For
on this spirit I’ll always completely depend. For
now I know I cannot live without you, Each
day I search my mind for what is true, Search
for the possible ways that I can renew The
feelings I once had, the joys I knew. W.W. Gibson 17 June 1984
Very true 2. No man can believe in God deeply and unshakeably unless he has first accepted the moral primacy of sacrifice; and of loyalty to love and its demands as the absolute and universal law of life. 3. Jesus strikes us today very forcibly as a man who was free: free from conventional restrictions and prejudices, free to follow truth and goodness to the full, free to give himself in love to the real needs of other men. Such freedom emphatically indicates as its psychological basis a complete and unshakeable confidence. Jesus never made any mystery of the source of that confidence, since it formed the constant and central theme of all his preaching: that God is sovereign over all men and all things at all seasons, and that his sovereignty is that of a good and loving father. 4. The purpose of becoming man in Jesus Christ was not to enable God to suffer, but to bring that suffering into such a relationship with man that man could know it, respond to it, and co-operate with it, and so find his own fulfilment in freedom. This is the great affirmation by which Christianity is marked off from all other answers to the riddle of life: the once for all historical embodiment of the personal God in a particular human individual. Not the perfect obedience of a human being to an abstract principle, not the exaltation of such a being to eternal fellowship with God as his ideal son; but the incarnation of the creator in a truly human life, decisive for the whole future and past of the human race. 5. A religious order may get its results, not by overcoming the problems of human, life, but by avoiding them. An
inner voice is telling me, “Seek
and you will find, you
too can have my company my
presence in your mind”. An
unknown power is prompting me, “Make
haste and let me in, open
to me your heart, and see that
I change everything”. A
warming love is urging me, “Come
unto me in peace, Come,
and I will set you free, And
help your trouble cease”. A
guiding hand impels me, “Come
and be at rest, take
my yoke and forever be uplifted
and refreshed.”. A
holy influence speaks to me, “I
give you the rightful way to live, the
way that brings eternity, this,
to you, I freely give”. Calm
and restful in repose, I
gratefully thank my lord, That
he has deemed to come to close In
gesture and in word. W.W. Gibson 25 October 1984 The Believers of the early Christian community share their possessions, and witness to the risen Jesus (extracted from Chapter 2 and 4 of the Acts of the Apostles) Dick
Sheppard- 1880-1937
(Vicar of St Martin-in-the-fields) (for 12 years) writes
this tremendous passage about God’s love
Come,
Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, With
all thy quickening powers; Kindle
a flame of sacred love In
these cold hearts of ours. In
vain we tune our formal songs, In
vain we strive to rise; Hosannas
languish on our tongues And
our devotion dies. And
shall we then for ever live At
this poor dying rate? Our
love so faint, so cold to thee. And
thine to us so great! Come,
Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, With
all thy quickening powers; Come,
shed abroad the saviour’s love, And
that shall kindle ours. Amen. Isaac Watts, 1674-1748 (while I was listening to Chopin) He
fills me with tender grace, In
my inmost mind I see his face. He
prompts me to kindly thoughts and helpful acts, And
brings out of me the burdened tasks. O
Lord, I truly and reverently ask That
in this world I may find my rightful place. And
in humble retreat With
you to meet And
worship at your feet. W W Gibson We
live and laugh and love and cry, And
memories produce a sigh. To
God, who dwells in heaven on high, Our
hopes, our thoughts, should ever fly. O
give us grace his ways to try, Till
in his arms we gently lie.
29.1.1986 And
they listened to his words with rapture, No
one had ever spoken like this. He
talked of God, salvation, and the hereafter, Filling
them all with joy and bliss. There
were so many hearts to win, So
many burdened with the guilt of sin, So
many searching, ever searching, For
knowledge of their heavenly king. And he said:- “Come
to me, and I will give you rest. I
am the way, the truth, and the life Take
my yoke upon you, and be greatly blest, Follow
me, and find freedom from all your strife.” 19.1.1986 W W Gibson |
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