Friends to the end

One could not but be moved by the story of the soldier who asked his officer if he might go out into the ‘No man’s land’ between the trenches to bring in one of his comrades who lay grievously wounded. ‘You can go,’ said the officer, ‘but it’s not worth it. Your friend is probably killed, and you will throw your own life away.’ But the man went. Somehow he managed to get to his friend, hoist him on to his shoulder, and bring him back to the trenches. The two of them tumbled together and lay in the trench-bottom. The officer looked very tenderly on the would-be rescuer, and then he said, ‘I told you it wouldn’t be worth it. Your friend is dead and you are mortally wounded.’ ‘It was worth it though, sir.’ ‘How do you mean, “worth it” ? I tell you, your friend is dead.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy answered, ‘but it was worth it, because when I got to him he said, “I knew you’d come!
From The Presence of Jesus Leslie Weatherhead the Epworth press London 1930:13

Let me be one with you

“Beyond our ideas of right doing and wrong doing

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, languages, even the phrase ‘each other’

Don’t make sense any more.” Rumi.

Your deeds speak so loud that I cannot hear what you say” African proverb

No Limits to life and love

When we have thus become friends of God by the grace of Christ, love makes us free. "A great thing is love. Love is born of God and cannot rest but in God. He who loves has wings, he rejoices, he is free, nothing holds him. He gives all for all and possesses all in all, because he rests above all things in that supreme unity whence all good flows and proceeds. To love, nothing is burdensome, nothing impossible. Love thinks it may and can do all things. Therefore it is able to do all things. Love is circumspect, humble, and upright; not soft, nor light, not busied in vain things; it is sober, chaste, abiding, calm, and watchful over all the senses. Love watches, and sleeping, slumbers not. In weariness it is not tired, in distress it is not dis­quieted, in fear it is not troubled. It is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, and joyful; strong, patient, faithful, prudent, steadfast, and constant, and never seeks itself. . . .". (Thomas A Kempis).

It is heartbreaking to see so many intelligent creatures looking for 1iberty apart from truth and apart from love. Needs must they then seek it in destruction; and they will not find it. And all over the earth the mystics and saints bear witness to the love which gives liberty. The deliverance for which all men long is only gained at the end of the way of the spirit, when love-a measure­less love, for "the measure of loving God is to love Him without measure" [St Bernard] - has made the creature one spirit with God.

Poetry as an instrument of social change

Shelley knew well that he was two men, a man and a poet. This is a dangerous knowledge, especially when applied to men who are not poets but who think they are. Yet it is certainly true of a poet like Shelley that one of the characters in his double-personality was a man trying out the crude material of his poetry crudely in his life; the other, the poet who purifies, moulds, and transforms this material in his work. The man Shelley had the shrill, excitable voice which jarred on the ears of several hearers (they still complain to posterity about it) : the poet has a voice which wins readers by the thrilling purity 'of its music. The political thinker and activist, Shelley lived out ideas which often seem staring caricatures of themselves in his example : the poet was engaged in a perpetual struggle to express these ideas in vivid and impassioned imaginitive language, so that they might pierce beneath the surface habit of thinking of his readers, to a deeper level where human existences are bound together in love, and thus change men by giving them a new and truer view of their natures, so that they in turn might change society. Shelley wrote-directly and indirectly-a good deal about what he considered the function of poetry to be. There is no better way of examining his own poetry than by con­sidering first of all some of these aims, and then comparing them with his achievement.

The mine of all his views is contained in the famous essay The Defence of Poetry, which contains the challenging and challenged statement that ' poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind'. His argument is that the roots of human institutions lie in the imaginitive life of humanity, so that the animation of this life by poetry will affect institu­tions. He is surely not wrong in making this general claim. The law of the Old Testament is very close to the poetry of the prophets. The self-visioning of England by the English which has sent generations of the young to the ends of the earth, and which has inspired again and again the defence of their island from opponents, is to an incal­culable extent owing to Shakespeare, Milton, and Words­worth. Perhaps it is the incalculableness of the effect of the poet on legislation which makes Shelley's statement objec­tionable to some minds. Or perhaps it is the poet's idea that in this lies the defence of poetry. Herrick's poem about 'a sweet disorder in the dress' may have affected sartorial fashion, but one cannot imagine Herrick defending his poem on these grounds. He was simply occupied in making an object, a poem, without regard to its effect. Shelley certainly represents a tendency of poets to have their eyes not on their poems, but on the effects of their poetry. On the other hand, Shakespeare in his sonnets makes extravagant worldly claims for his poetry, and both Milton and Wordsworth regarded themselves as ' unacknowledged legislators', if not as something much grander. Too much has been made of an effective phrase which is neither so original or so controversial as some critics seem to imagine.

The core of Shelley's belief about poetry lies in the fol­lowing passage from the same essay:

We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economic knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought, is concealed by the accumul­ation of facts and calculating processes. . . . We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know.

'Imagining that which we know.' By this, Shelley means creating in poetry a language of the imagination which may include the enormous advances in specialized knowledge of the modern age. Thus poetry may become a meeting place of the forces most affecting a modern society. Such poetry would be at the same time modern and traditional. Poetry would be continuously revolutionized by the new life of modern men, and at the same time it would retain that traditionalist position at the centre of social forces, which it has had in the great ages of literature.

So that in Shelley's view poetry should be an instrument which translates specialized branches of knowledge and specialized activities of modem life into one symbolic language where all these separate activities meet within the life of the imagination. But at the same time, Shelley remembers that the poet is an individual with particular tastes decided by his own personality, that is by his indivi­dual capacity for love:

Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens that faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither.

This, written, in 1821, shows how far Shelley had travelled in the eight years since he wrote the didactic Queen Mab. Of all his work, the one in which he was most successful in fulfilling his own poetic ideal is undoubtedly Prometheus Unbound. For here he creates poetry enclosing in its references the whole range of his considerable knowledge. He pursued his own vein of fantasy without inhibition, and without forcing himself into didactic channels; and the subject he chose-the liberation of Prometheus (humanity) from his enchainment by Jupiter (tyranny of rulers and beliefs)- is ennobling and beautiful in the highest degree. The famous lines with which the Third Act ends show Shelley's poetry functioning according to his ideal vision of his poetic function:

None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear

Gazed on another's eye of cold command,

Until the subject of a tyrant's will

Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,

Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines

Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;

None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart

The sparks of love and hope till there remained

Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,

And the wretch crept a vampire among men,

Infecting all with his own hideous ill ;

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk

Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,

Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy

With such a self-mistrust as has no name.

And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind

As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew

On the wide earth, past; . . . . . . . .

This passage-and the whole speech by the Spirit of the Hour, from which it comes-is one of those rare examples ­found rarely also in Wordsworth-in which a poet's theories about the function of poetry suddenly fuse with his inspira­tion. The structure of the thought has an extreme sim­plicity which is illustrated with rich complexity. It con­trasts the negation of a certain kind of life with its opposite, the assertion of another life. The overthrow of Jupiter by Prometheus in the poetic drama is supposed to have freed the positive virtues of living from the freezing social lies which are negative. Here Shelley creates in his poetry the microcosm of a change within society which is supposed to transform the world; and within the same imaginative act he is able to draw vividly upon his impressive knowledge of science, as well as of classical mythology, to illustrate the change.

A daily mantra

“Let me contemplate the adorable splendour of Him who created the earth, the air, and the starry spheres, and sends the power of comprehension within the minds.” Gayatri Mantra.

Oldman and youth.

Barley and wheat fields he possess'd, and well,

Though rich, loved justice; wherefore all the

flood

That turn'd his mill-wheels was unstain'd with

mud,

And in his smithy blazed no fire of hell.

He walked his way of life straight on, and plain,

With justice cloth'd, like linen white and clean;

And ever rustling toward the poor, I ween,

Like public fountains ran his sacks of grain.

Good master, faithful friend, in his estate

Frugal, yet generous beyond the youth,

He won regard of woman; for, in sooth,

The young man may be fair, the old man's great.

V. Hugo.

A fathers joy.

Two fathers gave their Sons some money. One father gave his son £300 and the other gave his son £150. When the two sons counted up their money, they found that between them they had only £300. How do you explain this?

While there arc two fathers and two sons, there are only three people — grandfather, father and son. The grandfather gave his son £300. Out of this £300 the father gave his son £150. Thus between the father and the son two Sons — they have only £300.

Music sweet music

When Handel was engaged upon the Oratorio of the Messiah, he was found with his face resting upon the table, his form shaken with sobs. Before him lay the score open at the place where it is written, “He was despised, he was rejected”.

Music unveils for us part of the general harmony of nature, and we feel ourselves partakers of it. This emotional response is found in a piece of music like Beethoven's Fidelio which engenders that feeling of harmony of sisterhood and brotherhood. Plato puts among the principal results of music, that it begets love in the heart, a sympathy with one another and with what is good and true. And Schopenhauer develops the same thought: "The unspeakable inwardness of all music, by virtue of which it brings before us a heaven so near yet so far, arises from the quickening of the inner nature which it produces."

Shakespeare tell us how the opposite feeling of estrangement is the result of a lack of love for music-

" Nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,

But music for the time doth change its nature.

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus."

Psychotherapy is discovering the inestimable value of music as a means of stabilizing mental health patients and great music can rouse nations to noble causes as seen by Live Aid etc., Let's have some more sweet music for world harmony and peace!

Bruce Springsteen evokes this in that famous song loved by all peace makers .. 'We shall overcome'...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNaXve485MA

In birth a baby shrills a sweet melody of arrival, at death, as all hospice workers know, the last sense to go is our hearing...

How easy it is for labels to stick!

You probably heard the story about the man who went to a catholic priest and said “Father, I want you to say a Mass for my dog”. The priest was indignant. “What do you mean, say a Mass for your dog? “It’s my pet dog” said the man. “I love that dog and I’d like to offer a Mass for him”. The priest said, “We don't do Masses for dogs here. You might try the denomination down the street. Ask them if they might have a service for you.” As the man was leaving, he said to the priest, “Too bad, I really loved that dog. I planned to offer a half-million pounds stipend for the Mass.” And the priest said, “Wait a minute, you never told me your dog was catholic!”

Tennyson

When the dumb hour, clothed in black,

Brings the dreams about my bed,

Call me not so often back,

Silent voices of the dead,

Toward the lowland ways behind me,

And the sunlight that is gone!

Call me rather, silent voices,

Forward to the starry track,

Glimmering up the heights beyond me,

On, and always on!

These lines were dictated by Tennyson shortly before his death. In the new golden treasury a note is appended: “if a friendship of near half a century may allow me to say it, those solemn words, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, give the key to Alfred Tennyson inmost nature, his life and his poetry.”

We can build our future on past achievements

If we tried
To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure
The future would not stand.

Newton repeated the ancient remarks that a successor sees farther than his predecessors because he stands on their shoulders.

After two Great World wars should we not be able to see clearly today that wars just cause unnecessary pain and sorrow to BOTH sides of any conflict? Overcome evil with good, that is the ancient lesson for peace. Why have we not learnt this simple lesson yet?

Maximum capacity

An ancient and valuable fragile Chinese vase had been found by the villagers. There was an argument in the teahouse as to its exact capacity. During the wrangling, the Mulla entered. The people appealed to him for a ruling.

‘Simple,’ said Nasrudin. ‘Bring the vase here, together with some sand.’ He had the vase filled with layer after layer of fine sand, packing it down with a mallet. Ultimately it burst.

‘There you are,’-he turned to the company triumphantly-‘the maximum capacity has been reached. All you have to do now is to remove one grain of sand, and you will have the precise amount needed to fill a container like this.’

Mullah Nasudin

Our light can shine bright for peace and love.

A famous Christian preacher tells the story of a blind man who was found sitting at the corner of a street in a great city with a lantern beside him. Some one went up to him and asked what he had the lantern there for, seeing that he was blind, and the light was the same to him as the darkness. The blind man replied— “I have it so that no one may stumble over me.”

His conclusion? Reading the bible is one thing but we need to remember that hundreds read US!

Good reason for not missing the obvious

Buddha has a delightfully sarcastic dialogue in which a poor soul shot by a poisoned arrow becomes intensely interested in all kinds of things about the arrow, the wood of which it was made, the kind of bow that shot it, what bird’s feathers winged it, even the complexion of the archer, was he dark or fair, anything and everything that touches it, however remotely. He keeps talking and thinking round and round about the arrow, and learns everything about it; - but never pulls it out and dies.

You tug it out, cries Buddha, before the poison soaks through your system. After that we can discuss it, but not till then.

My Creed

Hope evermore and believe!

Go from the east to the west, as the sun and the stars direct thee,

Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth.

Not for the gain of gold; for the getting, the hoarding, the having,

But for the joy of the deed; but for the duty to do.

Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action,

With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth!

Go with the sun moon and stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit

Say to thyself: it is good: yet is there better than it.

This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;

Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it

Arthur Hugh Cough 1819 -1861

For Kaytei my faithful friend of peace

There is a Chinese story of an old farmer who had an old horse for tilling his fields, One day the horse escaped into the hills and when all the farmer’s neighbours sympathised with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck His reply was, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, be fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg they let him oft Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

Our destiny lies in our hands not in the stars

When Jason in search of the Golden Fleece had to sail past the Syrens, he plugged the ears of his mariners with wax that they might not hear their enchant­ments and seductions. This was the attempt to inhibit the natural desire for pleasure; the forfeiture of a satisfaction they would rather have enjoyed in order to pass on to a better satisfaction farther off. But Ulysses had a higher way. When he sailed past, he had Orpheus on board, and commanded him to play up his best; and the enchanting strains of purer music made his crew deaf to the coarser songs of the Syrens. This is deliverance by displacement: not the inhibition of our desires, but the education of them; making the soul deaf to the lower voices by listening to the higher. Here, then, is the door of escape from these great temptations - a door that is open to each of us. "Cease to do evil” is not enough: we must "learn to do well"; and, indeed, we cannot cease from the one habit without super-inducing, or displacing it by, the other. If, therefore, the tedium and monotony of life begins to creep over your soul, and you are tempted to the foolish excitements of gambling or drink for relief, switch the mind into a higher direction. Generate an interest in something-in anything. Learn the violin, study botany, German, butter­flies, bees, beetles-anything that will occupy the mind with new interests. Buy books, or join a library. Throw yourself into some piece of benevolent or Christian work that will deliver you from lassitude, ennui, disappointment. Who cares for a disappointed or dissatisfied man?

Not even himself. He is a mere ghost, with no blood in the veins, no hope, no initiative, no future. If a man will deliver his soul from these hideous vices, it can only be as Perseus delivered Andromeda from the monster-by fighting it from above, poised in the air on wings that kept him above the plain upon which the monster grovelled. We must fight these monsters, sustained upon the wings of great ideals.

Flag

Greetings. While I was trying to access this blog on Saturday night with my mobile in error I 'flagged' this blog. I tried to contact Google but had no luck in finding where you report such errors and how you can 'un-flag' a blog. No luck.

So please be aware.

It does not seem its possible to reverse such human mechanical errors with Google help. I spent hours trying to contact them but with no success.

Hope that peace will come in Iran and the middle East!!!

Dedicated to Noah in all his innocence

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Rabindranath Tagore

For Tommy Patch

Lord, end this long war,

And of a meteor make a star.

Move on from mere thoughts to action!

“Do noble things, do not dream them all day long.” [ Res non verba]

““Do with all your might what God gives you to do; today” John Ruskin

Christ and other faiths

John 10:16 And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.

This is the basis of the understanding developed by Keshab Chunder Sen [November 19, 1838 - January 8, 1884 an Indian Christian scholar] who argued that Christ is more than a local manifestation, but that he is for others in the widest sense. Here from Romain Rolland’s Ramakrishna [p122] are Sen’s own words taken from this page.

Honour Christ would never be "Christian” in the popular acceptation of the term…. Christ is not Christianity…. Let it be your ambition to outgrow the popular types of narrower Christian faith and a merge in the vastness of Christ!”

“Other sheep have I” on this verse he writes.

“We belong to no Christian sect. We disclaim the Christian name.

Whoso believes in God and accepts Christ as the son of God has fellowship with Christ in the lord…. how explicit to is that well-known passage “And other sheep I have ". We, the gentiles [Indian] of the new dispensation, are of the other sheep. The shepherd knows us…. Christ has found us and accepted us….. That is enough…. is any Christian greater than Christ?”

After reading a passage from Luke He prayed "that the Holy Spirit might turn their glossy material substance into sanctifying spiritual forces so that upon entering our system they might be assimilated to it as the flesh and blood of all the saints in Christ Jesus".

Sri Ramakrishna taught Vivekananda how to regard mankind in a more generous and truer light of weakness and of strength (and not of sin and or virtue). The beloved the Divine mother fills him. “Fait voluntas tua”

A Muslim [unknown] scholar reflects on interfaith.

I should become one with you

And you would become one with me.

I should be the body,

You would be the soul.

Then no one would be able to say

That I am different from you,

Or that you are different from me.

Old article on Mission

Modern Though & Mission

By T.E. Slater

Bangalore A paper read before the Madras and Bangalore Missionary Conference

It cannot be denied that we are living in apparently revolutionary times; and that during recent years some great and start­ling changes have taken place in the theological world. New or neglected-truths have with unusual rapidity been brought to light. The allied studies-literary criticism and historical research; the studies of com­parative religion and comparative language, have been pursued with the greatest ardour, correcting and broadening our ideas of the Bible and Christianity. Physical science, by its marvellous conquests, has put men in possession of truths regarding the universe and its laws, which have modified to a considerable extent our conceptions of Nature, and with them our theological systems. Modern- spiritual philosophy, with its “inner light," its spiritual discernment of the heart, has relaxed the hand of autho­ritative dogma, and given a new voice to the Christian Gospel; while the rise of the modern democracy, with its new conscious­ness of the strength of the people, its reverence for all that is highest in man, has been enlarging our conception of redemption, and changing the complexion of much of our Church life. These movements, which we may characterize as those of critical science, comparative science, physical science, spiritual science, and social science, have been reflected in much of our national poetry, and in many great thinkers, preachers, and writers of modern times. Wordsworth and Tennyson, Browning Whittier, Coleridge, Neander, Thomas Erskine, McLeod Campbell, Ewing, Maurice, Robertson, T. H. Green, Stanley, Kingsley, Beecher, Bushnell, Baldwin Brown, not to mention a strong array of living teachers, represent one vast current of modern spiritual thought.

The consequence is that many old beliefs have been breathed upon by the "time spirit"; and their influence on the minds of the present generation is quietly passing away. Opinions, to question which half a century ago would have been branded as disloyalty to Christ, are to-day set aside as untenable by many Christian thinkers. People in the West have been breathing a new atmosphere during the last twenty or thirty years, and can no more hold as uncontested truth all that their fathers held before them than can the Hindus of the present day. Now, nothing whatever is to be gained, but much harm is done, by shutting our eyes to these facts. Surely we should discern the “signs of the times," and take an interest in what many of the best and most spiritual minds are thinking about and feeling after, as distinct from what are merely tendencies. Why should modern religious thought be inferior to medieval? Its scientific thought certainly is not.

(1) New Light on the Bible

Among other things, and foremost, we have to recognise the fact that the Bible lies within the field of this fresh light: that investigation must penetrate even the sacred domain of religion. And it seems to show a sad lack of faith to cry out against it, or to be fearful of the issue. It is still worse when a worldly policy would stifle inquiry; as in the case of the minister who refused to examine critical questions lest his opinions might have to undergo changes that would terminate his "usefulness" to his congregation; and of another who de­clined to attend to discussions of escha­tology lest it should constrain him to burn a part of the capital he had amassed in his stock of sermons!

Happily, the cry for reality is loud and deep; men must make clear to themselves what it is they believe, and why. It is a matter of vital interest to many who have not parted with evangelical Christianity to know how the new truth coheres with the old. And that I take to have been the sig­nificance of the Summer School of Theology that met at Oxford in 1892. It must have been a noble and an assuring sight to look on expert scholars and devout Christian men who, through the methods of modern study, had found a sure foundation for the facts of the old faith; who could freely assert the rights of historical criticism, and at the same time maintain a thoroughgoing faith in the supernatural. Ground for jealousy and alarm exists only when criticism is pursued with the express desire to eliminate the supernatural. There are critics and critics – rationalistic and rational; unscientific and scientific; destructive and constructive; atheistic and Christian.

We have heard a great deal of late years about the “higher criticism," which undertakes to inquire into the age and author­ship of the books of the Bible, and to pass judgment on the historical character of their contents. The fierce and hostile criticism to which the Scriptures have been subjected during the present century is but a reflection of the spirit of scepticism in regard to ancient history and writing in general; for the ancient his­tories of Greece and Rome, as well as of Israel, have been relegated to the region of myth. But the historical fabric which the “higher criticism" claimed to have destroyed is being reconstructed by the archaeologist and decipherer. The lands of the Bible have been explored, and the patient spade has rebuked, the hasty pen. The past has yielded up its dead. The discovery of the monuments of Egypt and Assyria and other Oriental lands has done for the Old Testament records what the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann did for the early traditions of Greece; has witnessed to the existence of writing in the ancient world, and to the substantial accuracy of the historical statements of the Bible.

Thus the destructive work of the higher critics, disfigured as it has been by a spirit of arrogance and scepticism, has not been barren of results. It has elucidated points that had previously been neglected, and has caused the text of the Old Testament to be minutely examined in a way that cannot but be helpful to the cause of truth; just as, the New Testament, given back to us from more than this; it has given place to the work of a very different school, which is broad and open. and not narrow and dogmatic. The spirit of rational, scientific criticism is, above all things, a spirit of reverence. It accepts a Divine revelation, given gradually, and culminating in the Incarnation. Its method is constructive, not destructive. From this we have nothing to fear. The faith "once for all delivered unto the saints" is our most precious legacy and nothing is more worthy of being earnestly contended for. Only what is unworthy of belief will be shaken and destroyed. Let the position be reverent and inquiring; open to the light; welcoming fresh knowledge; ready to shift its ground should good reasons appear; humble, flexible, progressive; and the cause of truth must gain.

It is this desire for honesty and truth in theological as in scientific matters which lies at the bottom of that very general desire in creed-holding churches for a re­statement of Bible doctrine - a revision of venerable “Confessions," such as may correspond to the facts of Christian history and of man's spiritual nature - which is one of the most notable features of our time. For it is alike the prerogative and the instinct of Christian intelligence thus to revise and revitalise its beliefs in the light of new knowledge and new tests; so did the leaders of the Protestant, Puritan, Methodist, Oxford, and Evangelical move­ments. The out breaking of the indwelling “Word" in men must speak or sing in new and quickening strains. Medieval concep­tions that have so long crushed the life of the Church are giving place to a broader, freer, kindlier faith; and the fresh current of liberal theology is renewing the spirit and power of many communities. The expansive movement of the modern Church really starts from a "renascent theology”; the new practice is the result of a fresh grasp of the old faith. While the move­ment is in process, restlessness and discon­tent there will inevitably be; but it is the uneasiness and impatience of the early spring as it breaks loose from the chill spell of winter, and hastens to greet the glory of summer.

For the greater part of the Middle Ages the Bible was subjected to no inquiry at all; but directly the great event called Protest­antism came, and light began to shine in the darkness, the inquiry was assured. Strange as it may seem, the terrible process known as the" higher criticism " originated with Martin Luther, who first ventured to treat the Bible - much in the way George Fox treated it - in "a natural, simple, truthful way;" and so with his quiet candour unhesitatingly rejected from the Canon the Epistle of James and the Book of Revelation as of "no theological import­ance." But Luther was a bold exception.

The Reformers and Puritans, as a body seeking for some infallible authority to set over against the disputed authority of Rome, not unnaturally fell back on the more Jewish acceptance of the holy oracles. These, they held, were infallibly inspired from cover to cover. And the Church has suffered, mentally and morally, ever since. An infallible standard is a sure temptation to a mechanical faith. In­fallibility always paralyses.

Now the higher criticism has done good service in "delivering from rabbinism," or enslavement to the letter of a holy book mis­interpreted and idolised, in making the real Bible to supersede an unreal. We now understand better what the Bible is.

Renan, in his autobiography, tells us that he was brought up to believe that Chris­tianity was bound up with the infallibility of Scripture; so that when he found that there were statements in the Bible irrecon­cilable with fact, he had no choice but to abandon Christianity, for he knew of no middle position between accepting the whole and rejecting the whole. If he had been taught differently, he would probably have remained a Christian. Such is the history of scepticism in many minds. The Bible is "infallible as a guide to Christ­ - infallible in its substance though not in its form, as a whole, though not in each particular part, in the spirit though not always in the letter." The truth lies in the drift, in the totality of meaning. Literal and mechanical accuracy in minute details was evidently not aimed at, and has not been attained.

We are familiar with the complexity and difficulty presented by several of the narra­tives of the Old Testament - the different accounts given, for example, of the Crea­tion, of the Flood, of the Exodus, of the Ten Commandments. These difficulties vanish if we accept one of the proved results of Biblical criticism, which has made a most valuable contribution to our knowledge of the Bible. I refer to the composite character of the Pentateuch and other parts; that we have several historical documents of different ages combined, whose materials have been drawn from diverse sources. If we separate, for example, what are called the Elohistic or Priestly and the Jehovistic or Prophetic sec­tions in the Book of Genesis, the story of the Flood becomes clear and intelligible. And so with other apparently inconsistent accounts. Such an hypothesis may, of course, affect the authorship of certain books, and the old belief that Moses wrote the Pentateuch in its present form may have to be given up; but it is certain that most fruitful consequences for a right in­terpretation of the Old Testament follow from such a discovery. Early Hebrew his­tory is very much like other history, and must be interpreted in the same way. Old Testament traditions have grown and varied as they have done elsewhere. And the actual facts which lie at the basis of these traditions must be ascertained by applying the principle of historical inquiry to the component materials sup­plied to us.

Of course the voice of scholarship is not unanimous on many points, and not until it is we may well take up a position of conservative caution; but we cannot shut our eyes to what is going on, and we must value truth above the most cherished convictions. And one of the most valuable results of Biblical criticism has at any rate been not merely a deliverance from a blind, slavish idolatry of the mere letter of Scripture, but that indifference to the Bible has become impossible. There has been a remarkable growth of Bible study in recent years. The old Book has more readers than ever; while "Helps" to the study of the Bible are sold by the million.

Comparative Religion.

(2) Another study that has been zealously and devotedly pursued, and that has affected theological and missionary thought, is that of Comparative Religion. It is through the medium of comparison that modern knowledge chiefly grows; and if theology is to become a modern science, we must widen the sphere of religious thought. This view of religion is thoroughly Pauline, besides being in harmony with the best ages of Christendom. We are indeed but recovering a noble standpoint long lost by the Christian world. And what has the study taught us? That we must not limit the idea of religion to any special time or place or creed: that no religion is wholly bad, that none has a monopoly of the truth. We have been taught to discover points of agreement in different forms of faith; and to attach a new significance to the deep and beautiful words of John: Christ, "The true Light which lighteth every man coming into the world.” and to Christ's own words: "I am the Light of the world." We need not now place the Christian Scriptures in sharp antagonism to other sacred books, seeing that truth is a unity, and that our Gospels have an affinity and relationship not only to the Hebrew, but to other non-Christian writings - Christianity being the complement and correction of pre-Christian faiths.

The study of comparative religion is already aiding missionary work, especially in a land like India. The unique position hitherto given to our Scriptures has produced the impression that Christianity is a local religion connected with the Hebrew Shastras, but having no affinity with those of other races. I believe this impression partly explains the slow progress of Indian missions. But the interest of the people will be awakened as they come to see that in Christ and Christianity their own highest truths are transfigured and fulfilled. I was delighted to see advertised lately a little book by an Indian native missionary entitled "Christ in the Vedas," which attempts to show how the true doc­trines of incarnation and sacrifice were shadowed forth in those ancient times. This is a fruitful line of thought too little pursued by our Indian Christians, and one of India's greatest needs is a sanctified native Christian scholarship that will think out these subjects for itself; interpret India's past to the present age, and not continue to simply echo the shibboleths of Western missionaries.

Must it not also afford the very highest motive and stimulus to missionary toil - ­fire our ardour and confirm our faith - to know that God has "never left Himself without witness"; that the scope of the Divine purpose is ampler than we dreamed; that wherever we go we find that God has been before us in the power and the teaching of His all-pervading Spirit; that we do not bring Christ and the heathen together for the first time; but that the religious lights of pagan lands have been unconscious emanations from the " Word of God," the spiritual revealer of God and of truth from the beginning? Without such an assurance missionary work would have no meaning, and would be a hopeless task. And does it not throw light on the dark, perplexing question of the salvation of the heathen in pre-Christian times? That question has never been properly faced and many Christian teachers would find themselves at a loss for a satisfactory answer. But when we realize that the historical period of Christ’s life and effort was but of an eternal feeling of the Divine heart; that the spiritual Christ was in the world He made, as its Teacher and Redeemer, prior to His incarnation, the one way of salvation for all ages and races is not difficult to see.

Science and the Bible.

(3) Coming now to modern scientific discoveries, culminating in the doctrine of evolution, we find that they have given many a shock to our popular theological ideas. But is there really anything to startle or alarm? “Whoever is afraid of science cannot believe in God." Because Charles Kingsley was not only a Chartist but an Evolutionist, he was reckoned by some" as bad as bad could be." And it was many years before a Christian teacher ventured to utter the dreaded word Evolu­tion save with bated breath. Now, how­ever, the idea has invaded almost every domain of thought; and we are becoming familiar with the notion that "a continu­ous progressive change according to certain laws" covers not only society, but religion, applies not only to society but to the Bible. Of course it is not atheistic evolution, by chance medley - a process utterly incredible-but Christian evolution, with a designing intelligence behind it, that so many thoughtful minds are studying - a theory of life per­fectly consistent with the supremacy of God and with the freedom of man, and, indeed, opening to us, in its ascending types, a new and wonderful vision of the Divine way in the creation and ruling of the world. If we accept the theory, we have undoubtedly to re-read the third as we have had to re-read the first chapter of the Book of Genesis; to find “an ideal portrait of man in his spiritual and Divine relations - a revelation of the meaning of life and of the principle of moral development to the full understanding of which he is meant to grow." Darwin, like Galileo and New­ton, will cause men to re-read their Bibles, but they will be none the worse for that. Dr. John Owen said that Newton's dis­coveries were" against evident testimonies of Scriptures; they were against traditional interpretations of Scripture, many of which it is the province of science and historical criticism, under the Providence of God, to correct and remove.

Good and honoured men there have been who thought that the truth of revelation stood or fell with the account of the creation given in Genesis, as commonly and literally understood. But it is now generally admitted by Christian scholars that all attempted reconciliations between Genesis and geology are as hopeless as they have been endless; that, as the late Professor Elmslie said, if the order of sequence in creation was meant to be chronological or historical, then either geology or Genesis was all wrong; that it was a mistake to treat that part of Scrip­ture as in any degree a physical record of creation. It was not geology; it was theology. What it gives is not a creed, but a God-the glorious personality and character of the great Creator, the design of the writer being to reveal and enforce religious truth. As such, this ancient chapter has accomplished a moral and religious revolution in overturning superstition and paganism, dualism, poly­theism, and atheism. And it means more, not less, than it did a generation ago, before the light of science was brought to bear upon it. It is now better understood and more honestly believed in that it has ever been before.

So with the Old Testament as a whole. The theory of a gradual growth, of a pro­gressive development in revelation, from dawn to perfect day, of a process of composi­tion and “canonisation "carried on under human limitations, instead of a sudden and complete illumination or a continual miraculous intervention, has been full of light, and has done immense service. The assaults of Ingersoll and other sceptics on the so-called “Mistakes of Moses," and on the imperfect morality of the Old Testament, might never have been made if the Church had formulated a doctrine of revelation accounting for these mistakes and immoralities, on a principle which satisfies the thinking man. The Old Testa­ment history is a faithful record of a race being trained to know God and to love righteousness, and it shows us the steps in their progress.

The aim of scientific theology is thus con­structive. True theology must be a growth. Without change and growth life cannot be. Where there is life there is progress. There is no worse enemy to a living Church than a propositional theology enforced by tradi­tional authority. There is nothing vital to add to such a system. “The living organ­ism grows; the dead crystal increases;" and the latter state has, alas! been truer of theology than the former. Scientific theo­logy, on the other hand, seeks to clear Divine truths from those accretions of human error that have stopped its own growth, and too often proved stumbling­ blocks in our brother's way. And what it is doing for the Old Testament it is doing also for the New-freeing the Gospel of Christ from scholastic and metaphysical conceptions really foreign to its essence; from traditional admixtures which hinder its acceptance by fair-minded and earnest men. It is often grievous to find how, not merely in the lower class of free thought journals, but by writers of culture like the late Cotter Morison, the spirit and aims of Christianity are completely misunderstood. I lately read a book, "Problems of the Future," by S. Laing, which I know has converted to agnosticism some inquiring Hindu minds, in which repulsive Cal­vinistic conceptions and views of the literal infallibility of the Bible are set forth as Christianity. The Christian is represented as afraid of light, and capable of swallowing any absurdities; as a selfish creature whose one object is to save his soul, that salvation consisting in escaping future punishment. The Church is surely responsible for such misrepresentation, in so far as it has allowed faith in Christ to become identified in the popular mind with faith in Scripture or faith in a certain theory of the Atonement and in a number of propositions regarding Christ, and without accepting which, a man cannot be a true Christian, thus making faith need­lessly difficult and to many minds repel­lent. What Christ required was that men should accept Him as the Lord and Ruler of their life and follow Him; and we have no right to ask more.

Return to the Primitive Gospel.

(4) And this, happily, is what the Church is coming back to. The present develop­ment of Christianity, under the quickening influences of the Spirit and the consequent spiritual discernment of the heart, is plead­ing for a return to the primitive Gospel. The original interest of the Church was moral rather than intellectual. The original faith centred in the ever-living Christ. But Greek thought brought With it a meta­physical interest in dogmatic theology, and Roman ideas a great ecclesiastical organi­sation; and most of the Churches have hitherto rested on these as their bases of union and bonds of fellowship, deeming it “more important to define God's mysteries in councils than to get His righteousness done in the world." It was brought as a charge against the old evangelicalism that its doctrinal preaching of the truths of Christianity had become so unreal and ineffective as to be without influence on the life; that the ethical side of the Gospel was ignored; that the acceptance of the ransom and substitutionary theory of the Atone­ment, without any moral effort to realise its spirit, was "fatal to progress in the upper path of goodness." This explains the appearance of the Broad Church party; but its destructive work is done. It is a characteristic feature of the new orthodoxy that it emphasizes the moral element in Christianity; that “its test of inspiration is not, like the old, a flawless and infallible statement, but a moral illumination; its account of atonement not" a legal satisfac­tion but a moral reconciliation; its limit of probation not in a term of years but in the possibilities of moral discipline."

While insisting on the fundamental evangelical truths, some of the best spirits in the West are trying to enforce these truths in such a way as to make them real to the individual soul-a quickening in­fluence in the thought and conduct of men. Creed there must always be, though short, simple and portable; but creed translated into character and life. In a word, the Christian ideas are not to be presented in a system, but in a Life. The essence of modern religious thought is that it is Christo-centric; its theology radiates from the personality of Christ-the centre and light of the whole Bible. Christianity is not a “body of Divinity"; it is Christ ­the living, reigning Christ. The present age is rediscovering Christ; going back to the sources; getting behind the Christologies to the Jesus of the Gos­pels. He is becoming more and more available, and His religion more intelli­gible to the moral nature. We are to put ourselves in the place of the first disciples; follow the Master whithersoever He goeth; come into living personal contact with Him, till our mind and heart and life are possessed with His Spirit. Christ Himself is the beginning and the end, the first and last word of Christianity.

The Social Gospel.

(5) And, lastly, this moral interest is essentially social. The growth of the democracy, the social and political up­heaval of recent years, the changed conditions of industrial life, are seen to be silent forces by which God is help­ing His Church to understand the Bible and Christianity better. There has been a too wilful shutting of the eyes to the fact that a widespread indifference to religion exists among a large number of the more intelligent men of the working-classes, and this is largely due to the unreality and in­efficiency of Christian ministrations; to the ignoring till quite recently of the social question; to the conservative attitude of the Church as “the custodian rather than the almoner of truth and grace"; to the feeling that religious institutions are “proud monuments of a past glory rather than living witnesses of a present power”. What has been the relation of the Church to social economics? How many ministers of the-Gospel have influenced and guided the social movements of our time?

These are questions that no doubt affect the West more than the East; but they are fast assuming a significance among us also, and in our ministrations will have to find a place. India presents a splendid field for social Christianity. No land has suffered more from social woes; and we need to pre­sent Christ to the earnest reformers of India as the Pioneer of Progress, as the Solver of all social and political problems. We need a statement also for' Indian Christians on the subjects of marriage, money, debt, jewels, intemperance, litigation, and many other weaknesses affecting the purity and power of domestic life.

Christians in the West, at any rate, are waking up to see that the term" religion" has been much too limited in its meaning, and its sphere of operation far too con­fined. Many matters affecting social life and well-being-education, politics, trade, art, science, and philosophy-have been largely untouched by religion. A few years ago it was never imagined that the land question in England and Ireland, or the principles regulating capital and labour, had a religious side. Religion has been claimed as exclusively the pro­perty of certain orthodox systems, and having to do with ecclesiastical specula­tions and observances. And what has been the consequence? Many other efforts of the human spirit, such as science and art, have been forced into a position of indifference or hostility; and, what is worse, we have now to reckon with the sullen and dangerous socialists and secularists of the day. It is high time to restore Christ's large conception of salvation - the idea of a "kingdom" or social state of righteousness and joy on earth, as distinguished from the narrow notion of res­cuing a few souls here and there from final shipwreck; insuring a few lives from eter­nal perdition. It is high time to make manifest all the world over that Christianity is in living sympathy with all that concerns human welfare, a great moral and social lever for setting the world upon its feet; that " Christ's blood has been sprinkled upon all things"; and that the elevation of society, the redemption of the whole 'of the earthly life, are to be in­cluded in the "the saving plan”. Nothing affecting humanity can be alien to the Christian.

The present age is offering a rare opportunity for rejoicing of these great beliefs. And, happily, there is in the “forward movement" in the West a broadening application of Christianity to life - the Christianising of social institutions, philanthropic enterprises, crusades against poverty, vices, cruelties, and oppressions such as no past age has witnessed. Christian brotherhood is the watch­word of the day, and Christ is becoming once again the "Good Samaritan," the "Great Physician." What are called, Institutional Churches "are springing up among the. Congregationalists of America ­churches that, recognising the duty of Christianity to the whole man, provide not only for preaching and worship, but for the administration of charity, and for the per­vading of the whole community with a healthy, Christian spirit. Instruction in socio­logy, led by Professor Tucker, of Andover, is given, to students in some of their theo­logical seminaries. When shall we have these things in India?

The Duty for Missionaries.

(6) And this brings me to that part of my subject which I must leave others to solve. What is our relation, as missionary teachers and workers, to these movements of modern, thought? We certainly hear very little about them, and probably some of us think very little about them. The old teachings and methods continue, and the difficulties do not grow less. Are we to ignore the new positions altogether, or to refrain from speaking about them? We may, of course, shut our ears and close our eyes to the doubts and inquiries of the day, but they will go on just the same. And it is becoming increasingly evident that we must be prepared either to answer clearly and convincingly questions con­cerning the Bible and related subjects, such as were not raised a few years ago, or to see many 1osing their hold of Christ and Christianity. Surely we are not at liberty thus to dispose of difficulties that are hin­dering the faith of many. We must sub­stitute certainty for doubt, and greatly simplify our creed. And the ascertained results of recent criticism and larger knowledge and sanctified thought will greatly help us. We cannot keep such results or any knowledge of the present day shut up in a box. Nor, if we could, ought we to desire it. All truth is God's truth, and the Church and the world will be gainers for knowing it. And it is far better that such subjects as we have been considering, allied as they are to, the most sacred things, should be learned from Christian teachers rather than from the columns of free thought journals. Should we not be all the better if we had received no false notions about the Bible in our childhood? We might have been spared many a shock to our religious faith if we had received a different kind of teaching. Let us not make the same mistake with others by giving them views of the Bible which they will have to unlearn in the future; let us try to save the young from the mental disturbances of later years.

If we accept any of the conclusions at which I have glanced, we must notice them; and if so, what shall we say about them in the family, in the Bible-class, in the theo­logical seminary, in the pulpit, to our native fellow-workers, to the people gener­ally? We should refer to them frankly and distinctly. Compromise, accommoda­tion, and suppression will not do. What is held should be held with intelligence and "without lurking doubt of its substantial truth." Let us refrain from teaching wrong notions about the Bible. Let us teach that it is inspired - as no other writings have been - ­the veritable Book of God, "able to make men wise unto salvation"; but let us not say that every word from cover to cover is from above; that all the books are equally inspired; that Ecclesiastes and Esther are on the same level as the Gospels; that Moses wrote every line of the Pentateuch, and David everyone of the Psalms; that Ezra and his colleagues, when they issued their revised code, did so with reverential regard to textual accuracy. Let us not convey the impression that the Bible must either be accepted as throughout infallible or not at all; that Christianity is bound up with the inerrancy of Scripture or with any theory of inspiration. If we do, we shall most certainly defeat our aim as teachers, and drive many to unbelief. Let us candidly admit difficulties and contradictions when they exist, and avoid forced explana­tions. They will often be due, as we have seen, to two versions of the same story, and the composite character of the text will be found to solve many problems. Let us not hesitate to say that fearless inquiry into the literary history of Scripture is going on, and that it need not be rationalistic, any more than clinging to traditional beliefs necessarily implies a religious spirit.

Shall we continue attempting to show that the story of creation in Genesis is to be read literally, and corres­ponds with the conclusions of modern geology, or distinctly admit that the Bible writers lived in an age when science was unknown; and that we have various accounts of creation and of the early stages of human history, current among Eastern nations, as they were pre­sented to the Hebrew mind, their inspirations, like the rest of Scripture, lying in the high ethical and spiritual truths they teach? Shall we continue to offer the ex­planation of the universe as furnished by orthodox theology, and teach that the world was created in six days, some six thousand years ago, &c.; that the old theory of special miraculous interpositions ac­counts for all phenomena; and not add, that to many minds, such as Bishop Temple's, a Christian theory of evolution "seems something more majestic"? Be­cause the genealogies in Genesis most distinctly limit the duration of man's existence on the earth to a few thousand years, shall we still maintain man's recent origin and fall, falsified though that has been by the discovery in all quarters of the globe of innumerable human implements and remains, belonging to remote geological ages? Or, in the interests of a theological system, shall we continue to contend for the universality of the deluge, and the preservation of pairs of all wild creatures in the ark, and treat the narrative of Eden or the story of Jonah as literal history, and not allow that we may reasonably and reverently conceive of the one as a moral allegory, setting forth a living fact of spiritual experience in rela­tion to temptation and sin, and the other as an "historico-parable of inestimable value in broadening the conceptions of men as to the mercy of God"? So with other narratives that surprise even children, such as the sun standing still at Gibeon, the miracles of Elisha in the Book of Kings, and the wonders of the Book of Daniel. Are we to be reckoned faithless if we confess that they may be poetical or legendary in their character, while inter­woven with genuine historical records? But far more important are the moral difficulties of the Old Testament. Shall we permit these to suggest to others false ideas of the character and providence of God, or adopt the only safe solution, and readily admit the defective moral standard - the mixture of good and evil in the men and women of those primitive ages?" Most certainly true and most evidently human:" all helping us to understand and trust better the working of the Divine Spirit in heathen lands as well as in the Christian Church at the present day, where we meet with so many imperfections, such feeble, glimmerings of the light that is from heaven. And in dealing with the New Testament and the many misconceptions of the Gospel shall we not hold that a man’s salvation does not and cannot depend on the view he takes of the Bible, still less on the theories which different Christians hold concerning it, nor on any particular view of the atonement, nor on belief on everlasting punishment, the question of future destiny being a mystery too vast to rest on the forces of an adjective or on any isolated text; but that the declaration of pardon through simple faith in Him who died, apart from all theories, is the perquisite keynote of preaching?

In short, shall we not simplify our mes­sage, impose fewer intellectual burdens, and try to make faith easier? To require at the outset the acceptance of creeds that took centuries to crystallise is only to bewilder; to start a convert in life with a full-blown theological system is the sure way to stunt his growth. All his days, instead of work­ing towards truth, he must needs work from it, and "a cheap theology often ends in a cheap life." Let us put life above dogma, the spirit above the letter. Let us rejoice to be - what in one word is the essence of modern religious thought - Christo-centric; and from there reach out to apprehend that wider conception of salvation - a Divine Economy that covers all the interests of social life. Let us deepen our faith in the never-ceasing presence and working of God's Spirit in the world in the past and in the present, believing that He may speak as truly and authoritatively to-day in the enlightened Christian consciousness as in the oracles of bygone ages.

But far be it from me to urge or even to suppose that all that I have ventured to bring forward should be accepted. Each one must judge in such matters for him­self. Probably some feel that they have no cause to trouble themselves about these subjects, or that the time for dealing~ with them here has not yet come. Others, again, would no doubt say that nothing has been advanced which has not already been accepted by them. However that may be, I cannot but think that the consideration of these questions has a special importance in a land where we are striving to present a new faith to a thoughtful and inquiring people. In this difficult but glorious work, have we not sometimes had to correct misconceptions that have been handed down, and that have impeded the cause of truth? And shall we make the work of our suc­cessors still more difficult by perpetuating certain errors, or by failing to recognise certain established facts?

At no period does the full-orbed charac­ter of truth appear. The Christianity of the Churches is always very far from being the Christianity of Christ; and the great need of every age, while sitting with docility at the feet of learning, is to repair to the old Gospel, to learn what the faith really was " which was once for all delivered unto the saints."

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before,

But vaster”.

True robbery

Good name is man and woman

Is the immediate jewel of their souls;

Who steals my purse steals trash: tis' something,

nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

W Shakespeare

Condemn not, judge not: not to man

Is given his brothers' faults to scan;

One task is thine, and one alone­ –

To search out and subdue thine own

John Lennon was right - you reap what you sow

Sow with a generous hand;
Pause not for toil or pain;
Weary not through the heat of summer,
Weary not through the cold spring rain;
But wait till the autumn comes
For the sheaves of golden grain.

Sow, and look onward, upward,
Where the starry light appears;
Where, in spite of the cowards doubting,
Or your own heart's trembling fears,
You shall reap in joy the harvest
You have sown today in tears.

By A. A. Proctor.

Love

love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

Shakespeare's sonnet 116

To give and not to count the cost to toil and not to seek for rest...

Not what we give, but what we share –

For the gift without the giver is bare,

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,

Himself, his hungering neighbour and Me.

Longfellow

The power of the word

“Come, O Thou that hast the seven stars in Thy right hand,

appoint Thy chosen priests according to their order and courses of

old, to minister before Thee, and duly to dress and pour out the

consecrated oil into Thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast

sent out the spirit of prayer upon Thy servants over all the earth to

this effect, and stored up their voices as the sound of many waters

about Thy throne. . . . O perfect and accomplish Thy glorious

acts; for men may leave their works unfinished, but Thou art a

God ; Thy nature is perfection…..The times and seasons pass

along under Thy feet, to go and come at Thy bidding; and as

Thou didst dignify our fathers’ days with many revelations, above

all their foregoing ages since Thou tookest the flesh, so Thou canst

vouchsafe to us, though unworthy, as large a portion of Thy Spirit

as Thou pleasest; for who shall prejudice Thy all-governing will?

Seeing the power of Thy grace is not passed away with the primitive

times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but Thy Kingdom is now

at hand, and Thou art standing at the door, come forth out of Thy

royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth ; put on

the visible robes of Thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre

which Thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed Thee; for now the

voice of Thy bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.”

Milton

Words I hope never to use, but I will I guess one day....

A PARTING. 

WITHOUT one bitter feeling let us part; — 

And for the years in which your love has shed 

A radiance like a glory round my head, 

I thank you, yes, I thank you from my heart. 

I thank you for the cherished hope of years, 

A starry future, dim and yet divine, 

Winging its way from Heaven to be mine. 

Laden with joy, and ignorant of tears. 

I thank you, yes, I thank you even more 

That my heart learnt not without love to live, 

But gave and gave, and still had more to give, 

From an abundant and exhaustless store. 

I thank you, and no grief is in these tears; 

I thank you, not in bitterness but truth, 

For the fair vision that adorned my youth 

And glorified so many happy years. 

Yet how much more I thank you that you tore 

At length the veil your hand had woven away, 

Which hid my idol was a thing of clay, 

And false the altar I had knelt before. 

I thank you that you taught me the stern truth, 

(None other could have told and I believed,) 

That vain had been my life, and I deceived, 

And wasted all the purpose of my youth. 

I thank you that your hand dashed down the shrine, 

Wherein my idol worship I had paid; 

Else had I never known a soul was made 

To serve and worship only the Divine. 

I thank you that the heart I cast away 

On such as you, though broken, bruised and crushed, 

Now that its fiery throbbing is all hushed, 

Upon a worthier altar I can lay. 

I thank you for the lesson that such love 

Is a perverting of God's royal right, 

That it is made but for the Infinite, 

And all too great to live except above. 

I thank you for a terrible awaking, 

And if reproach seemed hidden in my pain, 

And sorrow seemed to cry on your disdain, 

Know that my blessing lay in your forsaking. 

Farewell for ever now: — in peace we part; 

And should an idle vision of my tears 

Arise before your soul in after years — 

Remember that I thank you from my heart

A A Proctor 

Tributes to a great Englishman

THE LATE REV. C. F. ANDREWS

Tributes by Mr. Gandhi and

Dr. Rabindranath Tagore

THE passing of C. F. Andrews has drawn forth two remarkable testimonies in India, and in these days of tension between England and India it should be helpful to all Britishers to know what Mr. Gandhi and Dr. Rabindranath Tagore have to say about their mutual friend. Mr. Gandhi writes: -
“In my Opinion Charlie Andrews was one of the greatest and best of Englishmen. And because he was a good son of England he became also a son of India. And he did It all for the sake of humanity and for his Lord and Master Jesus Christ. I have not known a better man or better Christian than C. F. Andrews. India bestowed on him the title of Deenabandhu. He deserved it because he was, a true friend of the poor and downtrodden in all climes.”

Under the heading of “Andrews’ Legacy,” Dr. Rabindranath Tagore writes: —“Nobody probably knew Charlie Andrews as well as I did; ours was not a friendship between an Englishman and an Indian. It was an unbreakable bond between two seekers and servants. I want Englishmen, and Indians, whilst the memory of the death of this servant of England and India is still fresh, to give a thought to the legacy he has left for us both. There is no doubt about his love for England being equal to that of the tallest of Englishmen, nor can there be any doubt of his love for India being equal to that of the tallest of Indians. . . . At the present moment 1 do not wish to think of English misdeeds. They will be forgotten, but not one of the heroic deeds of Andrews will be forgotten so long as England and India live. It is possible, quite possible, for the best Englishmen and the best Indians to meet together and never to separate till they have evolved a formula acceptable to both. The legacy left by Andrews is worth the effort.”

So does the reconciling spirit of C. F. Andrews— the best loved white man in India—still live on.

Gandhi's comments

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages that persuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weened from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on oneself.
November 1919.

I feel thankful to God that, for years past, I have come to regard secrecy as a sin, more especially in politics. If we but realised the presence of God as witness to all we say and do, we would not have anything to conceal from anybody on Earth. For, we would not think on clean thoughts before our Maker, much less speak then. It is uncleaness that seeks secrecy and darkness. The tendency of human nature is to hide dirt, we do not want to see or touch dirty things, we want to put them out of sight. And so it must be with our speech. I would suggest that we should avoid even thinking thoughts we would hide from the world.
22nd December 1920.

The mental attitude is everything. Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation, as of a bird, so a fast may be a meer mechanical torture of the flesh. Such mechanical contribances are value less for the purpose intended. Again, just as a mechanical chant may result in training the voice, a mechanical fast may result in purifying the body. Neither will touch the soul within.
16th February 1922.

As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion overriding morality. Man for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent, and claim to have God on his side.
24th November 1921.

Poem of R Tagore

WITH THE SONG I AM A SONG

The morning’s skies do shimmer, wistful, dank,
With glistening dews and bright;
The casuarinas on the riverbank
All glimmer in the light.
Within my breast they seem
To press and throng and teem:
So that I know full well
The universe does dwell
On the shoreless sea of dream
A lotus gay and bright.

This truth I know, at last,-
I am a voice out of the vast
Upsurging Voice and with the Song
A song, a live that’s linked along
With Live, a light that flaming rends
Dark meshes of the night.

R. Tagore

The Future

From "Conservation and Progress."
By Sri Aurobindo Ghose

The future is a sphinx with two minds, and energy which offers itself and denies, gives itself and resists seeks to enthrone us and seeks to slay. But the conquest has to be attempted, the wager has to be accepted. We have to face the future’s offer of death as well as its offer of life, and it need not alarm us, for it is by constant death to our old names and forms that we shall live more vitally in greater and newer forms and names.
Go on we must; for if we do not, time itself will force us forward in spite of our fancied immobility. And this is the most pitiable and dangerous movement of all. For what can be more pitiable than to be borne helplessly forward clinging to the old that disintegrates in spite of our efforts and shrieking to the dead ghosts and dissolving fragments of the past to save us a live? And what can be more dangerous than to impose immobility on that which in its nature mobile? This means an increasing and horrible rottenness; it means an attempt to persist on as a putrid and stinking corps instead of a living and self-renewing energetic creature.

The greatest spirits are, therefore, those who have no fear of the future, who accept its challenge and its wager; who have that sublime trust in the God or Power that guides the world, that high audacity of the human soul to wrestle with the infinite and realise the impossible ,that wise and warrior confidence in its ultimate destiny, which mark the avatars and profits and great innovators and renovators.

Sri Aurobindo Ghose on Natural Value of Art

The work of purifying conduct through outward form and habitual and seemly regulation of expression, manner and action, is the lowest of the many surfaces which the artistic sense has done to humanity, and yet how wide is the field it covers and how important and indispensible have its workings been to the progress of civilisation!

The lie about war

DULCE ET DECORUM EST₁

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country