Month: August 2007

Categories
History Poetry Quotations

Seasickness

No, the title of my post is not an indication that going through the Canal we felt queasy: this is in the nature of the case impossible, because we haven’t been through the Canal yet.

In the Middle Ages, pilgrimages to St. James of Compostella seem to have been a frequent occurrence, perhaps particularly for the English. Here are the trials of such a voyage rather gleefully described. Like Satie’s notes on the performance of his pieces, the words in brackets should not be read aloud.

Men may leve alle gamys

That saylen to Seynt Jamys,

Ffor many a man hit gramys [grieves]

When they begin to sayle;

Ffor when they have take the see

At Sandwyche or at Wynchylsee,

At Brystow, or where that hit bee,

Theyr hartes begyn to fayle.

Anone the mastyr commaundeth fast

To hys shypmen, in alle the hast,

To dresse hem [busy themselves] sone about the mast

Theyr takelyng to make;

With �Howe! hissa!� then they cry;

�What, howe! mate, thow stondyst to ny,

Thy fellow may nat hale the by� [haul by thee];

Thus they begyn to crake [cry]�

�Hale now the bowelyne! Now, vere the shete

Cooke, make redy anoon our mete;

Our pylgryms have no lust to ete,

I pray God yeve [give] hem rest.�

�Go to the helm! what, howe! no nere!�

�Steward, felow, a pot of bere!�

�Ye shalle have sir, with good chere,

Anon alle of the best��

Then cometh oone and seyth: �Be mery,

Ye shall have a storme or a pery.� [squall]

�Holde thow thy pese! thow canst no whery [?],

Thow medlyst wondyr sore.�

Thys menewhyle the pylgryms ly,

And have theyr bowlys fast theym by,

And cry aftyr hote malvesy [malmsey];

Thow helpe [their health] for to restore.

And som wold have a saltyd tost,

Ffor they myght ete neyther sode [boiled] ne rost;

A man might sone pay for theyr cost,

As for oo day or twayne.

Som layde theyr books on theyr kne,

And rad so long they myght nat se.

�Allas, myne hede wolle cleve on [split in] thre!�

Thus seyth another certayne�

A sak of strawe were there ryght good

Ffor some must lyg theym in theyr hood:

I had as lefe be in the wood,

Without mete or drynk.

For when that we shall go to bedde,

The pumpe is nygh our beddes hede;

A man were as good to be dede

As smell therof the stynk!

Categories
Poetry Quotations

Kipling’s Wife

The Female of the Species

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,

He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.


When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,

He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.

But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.


When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,

They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.

‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.


Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,

For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;

But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale�

�The female of the species is more deadly than the male.


Man, a bear in most relations �warm and savage otherwise,�

Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.

Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact

To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.


Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,

To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.

Mirth obscene diverts his anger � Doubt and Pity oft perplex

Him in dealing with an issue � to the scandal of The Sex!


But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame

Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;

And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,

The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.


She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast

May not deal in doubt or pity � must not swerve for fact or jest.

These be purely male diversions � not in these her honour dwells.

She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.


She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great

As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.

And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim

Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.


She is wedded to convictions � in default of grosser ties;

Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!

He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,

Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.


Unprovoked and awful charges � even so the she-bear fights,

Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons � even so the cobra bites,

Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw

And the victim writhes in anguish � like the Jesuit with the squaw!


So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer

With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her

Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands

To some God of Abstract Justice � which no woman understands.


And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him

Must command but may not govern � shall enthral but not enslave him.

And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,

That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Rudyard Kipling


[Of course, St. Paul’s account has something of a different emphasis.]

Categories
Quotations Theological Reflections

The Tallith of the Curse?

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

That the world is frayed is no surprise; that the world could ever become new and whole beyond uncertainty was, and is, such a surprise that I find myself referring all subsequent kinds of knowledge to it. And it suddenly occurs to me to wonder: were the twigs of the cedar I saw really bloated with galls? They probably were; they almost surely were. I have seen those �cedar apples� swell from the cedar’s green before and since: reddish-gray, rank, malignant. All right then. But knowledge does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights. I … will tomorrow steer by what happened that day, when some undeniably new spirit roared down the air, bowled me over, and turned on the lights. I stood on grass like air, air like lightning coursed in my blood, floated my bones, swam in my teeth. I’ve been there, seen it, been done by it. I know what happened to the cedar tree, I saw the cells in the cedar tree pulse charged like wings beating praise. Now, it would be too facile to pull everything out of the hat and say that mystery vanquishes knowledge. Although my vision of the world of the spirit would not be altered a jot if the cedar had been purulent with galls, those galls actually do matter to my understanding of this world. Can I say then that corruption is one of beauty’s deep-blue speckles, that the frayed and nibbles fringe of the world is a tallith, a prayer shawl, the intricate garment of beauty? It is very tempting, but I honestly cannot. But I can, however, affirm that corruption is not beauty’s very heart. And I can I think call the vision of the cedar and the knowledge of these wormy quarryings twin fiords cutting into the granite cliffs of mystery, and say that the new is always present simultaneously with the old, however hidden. The tree with the lights in it does not go out; that light still shines on an old world, now feebly, now bright.

Categories
Controversy Quotations

Studied Misrepresentation

Samuel Johnson, Life of Dryden

[Speaking of Elkanah Settle’s response in kind to Dryden’s attack upon his drama, The Empress of Morocco: in the context provided by Johnson Settle’s response seems very just]

To say that his answer is equal to the censure, is no high condemnation. To expose Dryden’s method of analysing his expressions, he tries the same experiment upon the description of the ships in the Indian Emperor [one of Dryden’s plays] , of which however he does not deny the excellence; but intends to show, that by studied misconstruction everything may be equally represented as ridiculous.

And again we come back to this same point: without honesty, humility and charity controversy acts rather like Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, than like the glorious polemics of Paul which shed light on all areas of theology while arraigning and destroying an host of errors.

Categories
Literary Criticism Practical Notes Quotations

Laurence Sterne’s Morality

Laurence Sterne (the author of Tristram Shandy) certainly had a sense of humor. I have quoted from him before on this blog, and when I was reading volume 5 of Tristram Shandy I laughed as I don’t remember ever having done previously at a book. We may be surprised (but if we are, I think it is a symptom of a problem within us) to find that this man also had a fine moral earnestness. There is the sermon included in volume 2 of Tristram Shandy, which is really rather good and which certainly sparks interest in a republication of the volume(s) of Sterne’s sermons that were published during his lifetime. And there is also this:

Tristram Shandy, v.5 Ch. XVI

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

Of course, this comes in a comic context within the book. But we shall be guilty of great shallowness if we thereupon presuppose that there can be no genuineness to it. Earnestness and humor are not opposed: I think they go together. Consider this fine sarcasm by one of the most wholehearted of men:

[On the Papist interpreters of the passages relating to the power of the keys] So well known are the keys to those who have thought proper to fit them with locks and doors, that you would say their whole life had been spent in the mechanic art.

John Calvin, Institutes, IV.11.2

At that line also, I laughed out loud.

Categories
Practical Notes Quotations

Extravagance.

I think we humans are instinctively conservative �or perhaps timid would be a more appropriate term. While reprobating certain of this person’s ideas, and noting that her understanding of Pascal does not seem to me to be accurate, this is nonetheless an impressive piece against timidity.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time we are also created. In the Koran, Allah asks, �The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest though I made them in jest?� It’s a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest? Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator’s, once having called forth the universe, turning his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened? Was the sense of it there, and God absconded with it, ate it, like a wolf who disappears round the edge of the house with the Thanksgiving turkey? �God is subtle.� Einstein said, �but not malicious.� Again, Einstein said that �nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.� It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly at its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God �set bars and doors� and said, �Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.� But we have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?

Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught me eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six- or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, �Come down to the water.� It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down eons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the waters to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

Categories
Controversy Quotations

External Possession of the Covenant

Rev. Matthew Winzer:

The external administration of the covenant in time to the visible church does not confer spiritual benefits, but only provides the means by which grace is administered. The means belong to all in the visible church. The grace belongs to the elect alone.

Categories
Quotations Theological Reflections

God Doesn’t Stop Halfway Through

Karl Rahner, “He Is the One Who Started It”

[Speaking of Philippians 1:6-11] We are all the work that God the Father has begun in his grace through Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. He has begun the good work in us, we have not. But he has begun it through our freedom, and it is always questionable, as it were�it is always the one great all-embracing question, comprehending time and eternity�whether the work that has been begun will be brought to completion.

And when the apostle asks this question, when he asks whether what he has begun with words and tears, with penance, anguish, and all the power of his apostolic work and suffering will really be brought to completion or whether it will run down and atrophy�when he asks whether these men and women who have now made a start will one day enter into the glory of divine light as children of the light, asks with fear and trembling because no one is certain of his salvation�then he lifts up his eyes to God, his heart is filled with confidence, and he says: I am sure that God, who has begun this work, will bring it to completion.

And we too may say this, frail and helpless as we are, we whose Christianity is always running down and atrophying, we whom the stream of daily life is always threatening to swallow up, extinguishing whatever light and power, life and glory have begun to emerge in our Christianity. Instead of studying ourselves we ought to say: he who has begun this work�and it is not we who have begun it, not we in our weakness, even in our freedom�God, in the glorious power of his grace, will bring it to completion. And that is our bold assurance, our splendid sovereign confidence. He says: it is right for me to feel thus about you all, because, he says�and here something entirely personal and genuinely human comes into the power and grandeur of God’s work�because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

[Don’t ask me how Rahner reconciles this with Canons XV and XVI of the Council of Trent’s Canons on Justification, because I don’t know]

Categories
Piety Quotations

A Pious Attitude Towards God’s Providence

I think the blog has been a little under-supplied with Calvin lately, so here is a little something to partially remedy that weakness.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.17.8,9

[On the attitude of the pious in light of God�s providence. –RZ]

If any thing adverse befalls him, he will forthwith raise his mind to God, whose hand is most effectual in impressing us with patience and placid moderation of mind. Had Joseph kept his thoughts fixed on the treachery of his brethren, he never could have resumed fraternal affection for them. But turning toward the Lord, he forgot the injury, and was so inclined to mildness and mercy, that he even voluntarily comforts his brethren, telling them, �Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.� �As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good,� (Genesis 45:5; 50:20.) Had Job turned to the Chaldees, by whom he was plundered, he should instantly have been fired with revenge, but recognizing the work of the Lord, he solaces himself with this most beautiful sentiment: �The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,� (Job 1:21.) So when David was assailed by Shimei with stones and curses, had he immediately fixed his eyes on the man, he would have urged his people to retaliate the injury; but perceiving that he acts not without an impulse from the Lord, he rather calms them. �So let him curse,� says he, �because the Lord has said unto him, Curse David.� With the same bridle he elsewhere curbs the excess of his grief, �I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it,� (Psalm 39:9.) If there is no more effectual remedy for anger and impatience, he assuredly has not made little progress who has learned so to meditate on Divine Providence, as to be able always to bring his mind to this, The Lord willed it, it must therefore be born; not only because it is unlawful to strive with him, but because he wills nothing that is not just and befitting. The whole comes to this. When unjustly assailed by men, overlooking their malice, (which could only aggravate our grief, and whet our minds for vengeance,) let us remember to ascend to God, and learn to hold it for certain, that whatever an enemy wickedly committed against us was permitted, and sent by his righteous dispensation. Paul, in order to suppress our desire to retaliate injuries, wisely reminds us that we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with our spiritual enemy the devil, that we may prepare for the contest, (Ephesians 6:12.) But to calm all the impulses of passion, the most useful consideration is, that God arms the devil, as well as all the wicked, for conflict, and sits as umpire, that he may exercise our patience. But if the disasters and miseries which press us happen without the agency of men, let us call to mind the doctrine of the Law, (Deuteronomy 28:1,) that all prosperity has its source in the blessing of God, that all adversity is his curse. And let us tremble at the dreadful denunciation, �And if ye will not be reformed by these things, but will walk contrary unto me; then will I also walk contrary unto you,� (Leviticus 26:23, 24.) These words condemn our torpor, when, according to our carnal sense, deeming that whatever happens in any way is fortuitous, we are neither animated by the kindness of God to worship him, nor by his scourge stimulated to repentance. And it is for this reason that Jeremiah, (Lament. 3:38,) and Amos, (Amos 3:6,) expostulated bitterly with the Jews, for not believing that good as well as evil was produced by the command of God. To the same effect are the words in Isaiah, �I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things,� (Isaiah 45:7.)

At the same time, the Christian will not overlook inferior causes. For, while he regards those by whom he is benefited as ministers of the divine goodness, he will not, therefore, pass them by, as if their kindness deserved no gratitude, but feeling sincerely obliged to them, will willingly confess the obligation, and endeavor, according to his ability, to return it. In fine, in the blessings which he receives, he will revere and extol God as the principal author, but will also honor men as his ministers, and perceive, as is the truth, that by the will of God he is under obligation to those, by whose hand God has been pleased to show him kindness. If he sustains any loss through negligence or imprudence, he will, indeed, believe that it was the Lord�s will it should so be, but, at the same time, he will impute it to himself. If one for whom it was his duty to care, but whom he has treated with neglect, is carried off by disease, although aware that the person had reached a limit beyond which it was impossible to pass, he will not, therefore, extenuate his fault, but, as he had neglected to do his duty faithfully towards him, will feel as if he had perished by his guilty negligence. Far less where, in the case of theft or murder, fraud and preconceived malice have existed, will he palliate it under the pretext of Divine Providence, but in the same crime will distinctly recognize the justice of God, and the iniquity of man, as each is separately manifested. But in future events, especially, will he take account of such inferior causes. If he is not left destitute of human aid, which he can employ for his safety, he will set it down as a divine blessing; but he will not, therefore, be remiss in taking measures, or slow in employing the help of those whom he sees possessed of the means of assisting him. Regarding all the aids which the creatures can lend him, as hands offered him by the Lord, he will avail himself of them as the legitimate instruments of Divine Providence. And as he is uncertain what the result of any business in which he engages is to be, (save that he knows, that in all things the Lord will provide for his good,) he will zealously aim at what he deems for the best, so far as his abilities enable him. In adopting his measures, he will not be carried away by his own impressions, but will commit and resign himself to the wisdom of God, that under his guidance he may be led into the right path. However, his confidence in external aid will not be such that the presence of it will make him feel secure, the absence of it fill him with dismay, as if he were destitute. His mind will always be fixed on the Providence of God alone, and no consideration of present circumstances will be allowed to withdraw him from the steady contemplation of it. Thus Joab, while he acknowledges that the issue of the battle is entirely in the hand of God, does not therefore become inactive, but strenuously proceeds with what belongs to his proper calling, �Be of good courage,� says he, �and let us play the men for our people, and for the cities of our God; and the Lord do that which seemeth him good,� (2 Samuel 10:12.) The same conviction keeping us free from rashness and false confidence, will stimulate us to constant prayer, while at the same time filling our minds with good hope, it will enable us to feel secure, and bid defiance to all the dangers by which we are surrounded.

Categories
Piety Practical Notes Quotations

The Gospel is for the Whole Man

One of the marks of a diluted Christianity is that it leaves out some element of human nature: it fails to understand that as Jesus was true and complete and entire man, then all that He assumed is redeemed, if we may reverse the theological argument used in some relatively early doctrinal controversies. I believe this truth is well protected by understanding the whole man to be acting in different ways; but however you want to distinguish the differing faculties or operations or constituent elements of humanity, the fact is that the Gospel applies to all of them. Sometimes this dilution is unconscious: by exalting one aspect we, perhaps unconsciously, depreciate others. This is one reason why it is good to read from a wide range of writings, and to read simple as well as subtle writers. With that in mind, here are some words from the first Bishop of Liverpool that serve me as a reminder that in Paul’s great analogy of the body, no part is concluded to be unnecessary. It would seem that in any area whatsoever, atomistic approaches are at best of limited utility, always a temptation, and at worst virulently destructive.

J.C. Ryle on Matthew 13:51 in his Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Matthew

The first thing which we ought to notice in these verses is the striking question with which our Lord winds up the seven wonderful parables of this chapter. He said, ‘Have ye understood all these things?’

Personal application has been called the soul of preaching. A sermon without application is like a letter posted without a direction: it may be well written, rightly dated, and duly signed; but it is useless, because it never reaches its destination. Our Lord’s inquiry is an admirable example of real heart-searching application: Have ye understood?

The mere form of hearing a sermon can profit no man, unless he comprehends what it means: he might just as well listen to the blowing of a trumpet, or the beating of a drum; he might just as well attend a Roman Catholic service in Latin. His intellect must be set in motion, and his heart impressed: ideas must be received into his mind; he must carry off the seeds of new thoughts. Without this he hears in vain.

It is of great importance to see this point clearly: there is a vast amount of ignorance about it. There are thousands who go regularly to places of worship, and think they have done their religious duty, but never carry away an idea or receive an impression. Ask them, when they return home on a Sunday evening, what they have learned, and they cannot tell you a word. Examine them at the end of a year, as to the religious knowledge they have attained, and you will find them as ignorant as the heathen.

Let us watch our souls in this matter. Let us take with us to church, not only our bodies, but our minds, our reason, our hearts, and our consciences…. �Intellect, no doubt, is not everything in religion; but it does not therefore follow that it is nothing at all.