Love

5.  Doth not behave itself unseemly.  Erasmus renders it – “Is not disdainful;” but, as he quotes no author in support of this interpretation, I have preferred to retain its proper and usual signification.  I explain it, however, in this way – that love does not exult in a foolish ostentation, or does not bluster, but observes moderation and propriety.  And, in this manner, he again reproves the Corinthians indirectly, because they shamefully set at nought all propriety by an unseemly haughtiness.

From: The Commentaries of John Calvin on the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians by John Calvin.  Comment on 1 Corinthians 13:5a.  First published, in French, in 1546.

Love

Reduced to its simplest terms, the existence of love in a human being means that the eye of the spirit has opened to the sunshine of good.  A man has seen that which is good and, seeing it, has delighted in it.  His delight is acceptance, and what is accepted is a gift; he must ask who is the giver and why should anything have been given to him.  The only answer to that question is love.  He sees that the gift of good can be nothing but the expression of love, and that love itself is greater than any or all of the gifts in which its activity is displayed.  If greater, then more to be desired; and, if he can desire, above all things, the gift of love, if he can truly cast out of his heart all that is contrary to love, then love will be given to him, and he will have power to return it to the giver.  In such fruition of a supreme good there is supreme delight, and the delight itself is radiant, “diffusive of itself,” creative.

From: Amor Dei: A Study of the Religion of St. Augustine (The Hulsean Lectures for 1938) by John Burnaby (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938), p. 310.

John Burnaby (1892-1978) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.  Henry Chadwick (1920-2008), the translator of Augustine’s Confessions (1991), was of the opinion that Burnaby’s book is, still, the best intellectual biography of Augustine in print.

Injustice

It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes the happiness or misery of him.  Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right.  It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men. – Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), from his essay, “Chartism” (1839)

Fox’s “Chain of Prayer” – 1

With this post, I’m starting a new weekly feature, appearing each Tuesday. 

I will be posting prayers from Selina Fox’s book Chain of Prayer (full bibliographic details after the quotation).  These are quotations of prayers from all through the centuries, going all the way back to Old Testament times.  Published collections of pastoral prayers used to be common up through the early 20th century (collections of prayers by Spurgeon and Maclaren, for example, were published).  This is the only book I know of which has collected prayers from throughout church history.

This first post is the only place where the complete bibliographic details will be given.  All future posts will, after the quotation, merely cite the author, short book title, and page.

I hope you enjoy this new feature.  Here is the first quotation:

Lord Jesus Christ, Thou didst choose Thine Apostles that they might preside over us as teachers.  So, also, may it please Thee to teach doctrine to our Bishops in the place of Thine Apostles, and to bless and instruct them, that they may preserve their lives unharmed and undefiled for ever and ever.  Amen. – Egbert, Archbishop of York (734-766)

From: A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages: Forty Centuries of Prayer, 2000 BC – AD 1955 edited by Selina Fitzherbert Fox; 7th edition (London: John Murray, 1956 [1913]), p. 141.

Selina Fitzherbert Fox (1871-1958) was the first female to graduate in medicine from the University of Durham in England (1898).  She graduated first in her class, and was the only woman in her graduating class.  A Christian, she spent her life in medical missions.  She died in London on December 27, 1958, at the age of 87.  The first edition of this book was published in 1913, and she continued to update it and add to it until the last edition, the 7th (from which all quotations are taken) was published two years before her death.  All told, the book went through 14 printings in her lifetime.

 

Augustine’s “Point of Decision”

At the end of July, 386, in the garden of the house in Milan where he was living with his mother and with his former pupil, Alypius (a competent lawyer who, in 386, was still shedding Manichee beliefs and, later, became bishop of Thagaste), Augustine finally came to the point of decision.  His health had become poor, with asthmatic trouble on his chest and loss of voice; whether this was a symptom of his malaise or a contributory cause of his decision cannot be determined.  He decided to abandon his teaching post and, therewith, ambitions for a secular career.  The crux was the abandonment of all intention to marry.  Could he bring himself to live without a woman?  From an African friend working in the court bureaucracy, he learned of the existence of a community of ascetics living in Milan and of the renunciation of wealth by Antony, the Egyptian hermit, whose biography had been written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, and was quickly translated into Latin for Western readers.  If they could achieve continence, then he could, also.  Or was his will too weak?

According to the narrative in the eighth book of the Confessions, written fourteen years later, he picked up his copy of St. Paul, opened it at random and, in the manner of those who sought guidance for the future from Virgil, took guidance from the first text he saw – the concluding words of Romans 13, contrasting sexual wantonness with the calling to “put on Christ.”  He described his decision in exquisite literary language, with echoes from the poet Persius, a striking phrase from Plotinus, and a symbolic allusion to the fallen Adam in the garden of Eden.  He recounted how he heard, as it were, a child’s bidding him to “pick up and read” (tolle, lege).  How much of the narrative is plain prose and how much is literary or rhetorical decoration has been a matter of controversy.  That there is a literary element is certain.  It is also certain that, in Milan, at the end of July, 386, he made a decision to abandon marriage and secular ambition and to be baptized.  He resigned his city teaching post.

The conversion was no sudden flash, but the culminating point of many months of painful gestation.  He himself was later to compare the process of conversion to pregnancy…

From: Augustine: A Very Short Introduction by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 26-27.

Henry Chadwick (1920-2008) was an English church historian, whose specialty was the patristic period.  His older brother, Owen Chadwick (born in 1916) is also a church historian.  Henry Chadwick’s elegant translation of Augustine’s Confessions was published in 1991.

For the Lord’s Day (96)

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.  It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.  If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household?  (Matthew 10:24-25)

Ministering to the Sick

Mon. 8.  We set out early in the morning and, the next evening, came to London.  Wednesday, 10th, I visited one that was in violent pain and consumed away with pining sickness, but, in everything, giving thanks and greatly rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.  From her, we went to another, dangerously ill of the smallpox, but desiring neither life nor ease, but only the holy will of God.  If these are unbelievers (as some of the still brethren have lately told them), I am content to be an unbeliever all my days.

Thur. 11.  I visited a poor woman who, lying ill between her two sick children, without either physic or food convenient for her, was mightily praising God, her Savior, and testifying, as often as she could speak, her desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.

John Wesley (1703-1791), journal entries for September 8, 10, and 11, 1740.

Charles Darwin on God

He was definitely an unbeliever:

I can, indeed, hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for, if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished.  And this is a damnable doctrine.

**

A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe is, to our finite minds, omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time.

**

A man who has no assured and no present belief in the existence of a personal God or a future existence with retribution and rewards can have, for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem, to him, the best ones.  A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly.  A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards and compares his various feelings, desires, and recollections.  He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of the wisest men, that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely, the social instincts.  If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth.  By degrees, it will be more intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his highest impulses which, when rendered habitual, may be almost called instincts.  His reason may, occasionally, tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but, he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost judge or conscience.

From: Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution by Gertrude Himmelfarb (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), pp. 318-319.  These are direct quotations from Darwin’s writings.

God is Near

He encourages himself from the consolatory consideration that God, when He sees His own people sore pressed, comes forward seasonably to afford them succor, even as Paul, on this subject, says, “Be not over-careful, the Lord is at hand, let your moderation be known to all men” (Philippians 4:5).  The concluding sentence of the verse is to this effect: that God never forsakes nor disappoints His people in their necessity because He is true to His promises and, in them, assures us that the welfare of His people will always be the object of His care.  That, therefore, we may be fully persuaded that the hand of God is always ready to repulse the assaults of our enemies, let us retain a settled belief of the truth that He does not, in vain, promise, in His word, to be the guardian of our welfare.

From: Commentary on the Book of Psalms by John Calvin.  Comment on Psalm 119:151.

Meditating on God’s Law

Here is: 1. David’s inexpressible love to the word of God: O how I love thy law!  He protests his affection to the word of God with a holy vehemency; he found love to it in his heart which, considering the corruption of his nature and the temptations of the world, he could not but wonder at, and at that grace which had wrought it in him.  He not only loved the promises, but loved the law, and delighted in it after the inner man.  2.  An unexceptionable evidence of this.  What we love, we love to think of; by this, it appeared that David loved the word of God that it was his meditation.  He not only read the book of the law, but digested what he read in his thoughts, and was delivered into it as into a mould: it was his meditation not only in the night, when he was silent and solitary, and had nothing else to do, but in the day, when he was full of business and company; nay, and all the day; some good thoughts were interwoven with his common thoughts, so full was he of the word of God.

From: Commentary on the Whole Bible by Matthew Henry.  Comment on Psalm 119:97.