Philip Paul Bliss, who was born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania in 1838, died, with his wife, in tragic circumstances when the bridge at Ashtabula, Ohio collapsed under their train on this date in 1876. Bliss survived the first horrific impact, but died while trying to save his wife, who was trapped with scores of others in the wreckage of the passenger cars.



Bliss's music is now better known than his name and life, and he's perhaps best remembered as the author of the music Ville de Havre for Horatio Spafford's great hymn of assurance and hope It Is Well With My Soul.



A cenotaph was dedicated to the memory of Philip Paul Bliss and his wife in the cemetery at Rome, Pennsylvania on July 17, 1877 and their home there is now the site of the Gospel Songwriters Museum.



Here are the words, and a link to the music, of Bliss's hymn on the text of Hebrews 12:14: Without holiness no one will see the Lord.



More Holiness Give Me



More holiness give me, more strivings within.

More patience in suffering, more sorrow for sin.

More faith in my Savior, more sense of His care.

More joy in His service, more purpose in prayer.



More gratitude give me, more trust in the Lord.

More zeal for His glory, more hope in His Word.

More tears for His sorrows, more pain at His grief.

More meekness in trial, more praise for relief.



More purity give me, more strength to o’ercome,

More freedom from earth-stains, more longings for home.

More fit for the kingdom, more useful I’d be,

More blessèd and holy, more, Savior, like Thee.

Today is the memorial of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Here is an account of Thomas Becket's martyrdom on this date in 1170, taken from History of the Archbishops of Canterbury by Gervase of Canterbury.



But on the fifth day of the nativity, which was the third day of the week, there arrived four courtiers, who desired to speak with the archbishop, thinking by this to discover the weak points [of the monastery]. These were Reginald Fitz-Urse, Hugh de Morville, William de Traci, and Richard Brito. After a long discussion, they began to employ threats; and at length rising up hastily, they went out into the courtyard; and under the spreading branches of a mulberry-tree, they cast off the garments with which they had covered their breastplates, and, accompanied by those persons whom they bad summoned from the province, they returned into the archbishop’s palace. Yet he, unmoved by the exhortations, the prayers, and the tears of his followers, remained firm in his place, until the time had arrived for the performance of the evening service in the church; towards which he advanced with a slow and deliberate step, like one who of his own free-will prepares himself for death. Having entered the church, he paused at the threshold; and he asked his attendants of what they were afraid. When the clerks began to fall into disorder, be said, “Depart, ye cowards! Let these blind madmen go on in their career. We command you, in virtue of your obedience, not to shut the door.”



While he was thus speaking, behold! the executioners having ransacked the bishop’s palace, rushed together through the cloisters; three of whom carried hatchets in their left bands, and one an axe or a two-edged glaive, while all of them brandished drawn swords in their right hands. But after they had rushed through the open door, they separated from each other, Fitz-Urse turning to the left, while the three others took to the right. The archbishop had already ascended a few steps, when Fitz-Urse, as he hurried onwards, asked one whom he met, “Where is the archbishop?” Hearing this, he turned round on the step, and, with a slight motion of the head, he was the first to answer, “Here am I, Reginald. I have conferred many a benefit on you, Reginald; and do you now come to me with arms in your hands?” “You shall soon find that out,” was the reply. “Are not you that notorious traitor to the king?” And, laying hold on his pall, he said, “Depart hence;” and he struck the pall with his sword. The archbishop replied, “I am no traitor; nor will I depart, wretched man!” and he plucked the fringe of his pall from out the knight’s hand. The other repeated the words, “Flee hence!” The reply was, “ I will not flee; here your malice shall be satisfied.” At these words the assassin stepped back, as if smitten by a blow. In the meantime the other three assailants had arrived; and they exclaimed, “ Now you shall die!” “ If,” said the archbishop, “you seek my life, I forbid you, under the threat of an anathema, from touching any one of my followers. As for me, I willingly embrace death, provided only that the church obtain liberty and peace at the price of my blood.” When he had said these words, he stretched forth his head to the blows of the murderers. Fitz-Urse hastened forward, and with his whole strength lie planted a blow upon the extended head; and he cried out, as if in triumph over his conquered enemy, “Strike! strike!” Goaded on by the author of confusion, these butchers, adding wound to wound, dashed out his brains; and one of them, following up the martyr, (who at this time was either in the act of falling, or had already fallen) struck the pavement with his sword but the point of the weapon broke off short. They now returned through the cloister, crying out, “Knights of the king, let us go; he is dead!” And then they pillaged whatever they found in the archbishop’s residence. See here a wonder. While he was yet alive, and could speak, and stand on his feet, men called him a traitor to the king; but when he was laid low, with his brains dashed out, he was called the holy Thomas, even before the breath had left his body.



This blessed martyr suffered death in the ninth year of his patriarchate, on the fourth of the calends of January [29th Dec.], being the third day of the week, A.D. 1170, while the monks were singing their vespers. His dead body was removed and placed in the shrine before the altar of Christ. On the morrow it was carried by the monks and deposited in a tomb of marble within the crypt. Now, to speak the truth - that which I saw with my eyes, and handled with my hands - he wore hair-cloth next his skin, then stamin, over that a black cowl, then the white cowl in which he was consecrated; he also wore his tunic and dalmatic, his chasuble, pall, and miter; Lower down, he had drawers of sack-cloth, and over these others of linen; his socks were of wool, and he had on sandals. If any one (as he ought) desires to know more of this martyr, let him read those books or writers which I have mentioned above, namely, Herbert, John, William, Benedict, and Gervase: and let him not omit the letters of the same saint. Others there are who probably have written respecting him; but even if it be so, they cannot tell all that ought to be known about him.



After his martyrdom the church of Canterbury was vacant for two years and five months. That he is alive in Christ is proved by the miracles which are performed throughout the whole world.

Warm best wishes to all in this season of hope and promise. May the blessings of this holy Christmas remain with us through a New Year of peace and dedication, and may we be renewed and fulfilled in the way of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose three-fold birth -- in time, in eternity, and in the hearts of men -- we celebrate with such sublime joy.

A funeral Mass last evening. Those occasions are coming more frequently, as the parents of my friends and contemporaries are gathered to their inheritance in the Lord Jesus Christ.



Among the hymns and anthems during the beautiful Mass were the words of Richard Proulx, sung to Thaxted, the name of the hymn setting taken from the Jupiter section of The Planets by Gustav Holst, the music which is also used for the noble I Vow To Thee, My Country by Cecil Spring-Rice.



Here the words are appropriately those of acceptance, assurance, remembrance and the praise of the living God.



O God Beyond All Praising



O God, beyond all praising,

we worship you today

and sing the love amazing

that songs cannot repay;

for we can only wonder

at ev’ry gift you send,

at blessings without number

and mercies without end:

we lift our hearts before you

and wait upon your word;

we honor and adore you,

our great and mighty Lord .



The flow’r of earthly splendor

in time must surely die,

its fragile bloom surrender

to you, the Lord most high;

but hidden from all nature

the eternal seed is sown—

though small in mortal stature,

to heaven’s garden grown:

for Christ the man from heaven

from death has set us free,

and we through him are given

the final victory.



Then hear, O gracious Savior,

accept the love we bring,

that we who know your favor

may serve you as our King;

and whether our tomorrows

be filled with good or ill,

we'll triumph through our sorrows

and rise to bless you still:

to marvel at your beauty

and glory in your ways,

and make a joyful duty

our sacrifice of praise.

Flying holds no particular terrors for me, but otherwise my reaction to great heights doesn't show me to advantage, and I'm not at my best on bridges. I wrote in June about a cruise on the Delaware River and about passing beneath the Benjamin Franklin Bridge hundreds of feet above; last evening, I was on the light rail system that runs along the side of that hundreds-of-feet-above bridge. Oh, the view is good, undeniably. But not quite good enough to conquer the trepidant tingling of my legs and chest during the time it took to cross the river.

John Ellerton, graduate of Trinity College, Anglican vicar during the high noon of Victorian England, author of some fine hymns and a contributor to the standard compilation Hymns Ancient and Modern, was born in England on this date in 1826.



Here is the text of his greatest hymn, sung to the very fine tune St. Clement of Clement Cotterill Scholefield, which Father Rutler has called a kind of cradle song for the cosmos.



The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,

The darkness falls at Thy behest;

To Thee our morning hymns ascended,

Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.



We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping,

While earth rolls onward into light,

Through all the world her watch is keeping,

And rests not now by day or night.



As o’er each continent and island

The dawn leads on another day,

The voice of prayer is never silent,

Nor dies the strain of praise away.



The sun that bids us rest is waking

Our brethren ’neath the western sky,

And hour by hour fresh lips are making

Thy wondrous doings heard on high.



So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,

Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:

Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,

Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.

Implications mathematical, theoretical, and philosophical, and much to delight the mind. But there's also something that simply gladdens the heart in seeing a milestone successfully reached through communal effort and shared commitment.



Mersenne Project Discovers Largest Known Prime Number

on World-Wide Volunteer Computer Grid



Number Found with 25,000 Years of Computer Time



ORLANDO, Florida - December 2, 2003 -- Michael Shafer, a 26 year-old volunteer in the Mersenne.org research project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has discovered the largest known prime number. Shafer used a Michigan State University lab PC and free software by George Woltman and Scott Kurowski as part of an international grid of 211,000 networked computers in virtually every time zone of the world.



The new number, expressed as 2 to the 20,996,011th power minus 1, has 6,320,430 decimal digits and was discovered November 17th. It is more than two million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number, and belongs to a special class of rare prime numbers called Mersenne primes . The discovery marks only the 40th known Mersenne prime, named after Marin Mersenne, a 17th century French monk who first studied the numbers 300 years ago.

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,

Skies, and be perfect! Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,

And disappear.

You moon, be slow to go down,

This is your full!



The four white roads make off in silence

Towards the four parts of the starry universe.

Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.

We have become more humble than the rocks,

More wakeful than the patient hills.



Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent,

holy spheres,

While minds, as meek as beasts,

Stay close at home in the sweet hay;

And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.



Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our

solemn valleys,

You skies: and travel like the gentle Virgin,

Toward the planets' stately setting,



Oh white full moon as quiet as Bethlehem!



Thomas Merton, Advent.



Thomas Merton died in Bangkok on this date in 1968 at the age of 53.



Today is also the anniversary of the beginning of Merton's Trappist journey, his entrance in 1941 to the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani.

Kenneth, who writes so well and with such insight at A Mind That Suits, also posts occasionally on Christian spirituality at The Fullness of Him. And always to edification. It was very good to read his essay on the beginning of the Advent season, with a rich analogy illuminating the message that The Church Year is not just an exercise. It has a point.

Isaac Watts died on this date in 1748 but is a presence in the life of everyone who next month will sing Joy to the World. He is the author also of At The Cross and Let Children Hear The Mighty Deeds, of O God, Our Help in Ages Past, sung at the funeral of Winston Churchill, and of When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Charles Wesley said of the last that he would rather have written it than all of his own hymns.



So great a talent casts a shadow, and a lesser figure also died on this date, in 1900. Robert Lowry was a Philadelphian and spent his life and ministry within a hundred miles of the city. He was a Baptist minister, a music editor and a composer and among his notable hymns are Low In The Grave He Lay, the mournful solemnity of death overwhelmed by Christ's triumph, and Shall We Gather At The River. In a happy circumstance, the men are joined in one work; Lowry wrote the musical setting for Watts's hymn Marching to Zion.



There's another of the hymns of Robert Lowry that I've always liked and that, because of an association, has become more important to me and more fixed in my mind. My father, another Philadelphian, died suddenly on a summer Saturday a couple of years ago and this happened to be the recessional hymn at the Mass I attended the following day. And fitting. For songs of reassurance are meant sometimes to be sung through tears.



How Can I Keep From Singing



My life flows on in endless song;

Above earth’s lamentation

I hear the sweet though far off hymn

That hails a new creation:

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear the music ringing;

It finds an echo in my soul—

How can I keep from singing?



What though my joys and comforts die?

The Lord my Savior liveth;

What though the darkness gather round!

Songs in the night He giveth:

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that refuge clinging;

Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?



I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin;

I see the blue above it;

And day by day this pathway smoothes

Since first I learned to love it:

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,

A fountain ever springing:

All things are mine since I am His—

How can I keep from singing?

Campbell's Soup and the National Football League are sponsoring the Tackling Hunger Tour. Click and vote.

Along with remembrance of the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy forty years ago last Saturday, a goodly number of the folk whose blogs are listed to the right noted the death on the same day in 1963 of the great Christian writer and apologist C.S. Lewis. So deep is the debt owed to him across our denominational markers, and in light of our common confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might be considered one of the patrons of blogs4God. And it's another source of fellowship that he is given honored and grateful remembrance by so many of that body.



On November 22 also died, but in 1900 and just before the second birthday of C.S. Lewis, Sir Arthur Sullivan, celebrated and successful as a composer of light opera and alive still in their performances. He had been created Knight by Queen Victoria in 1883, according to the citation, in recognition of your distinguished talents as a composer and of the services which you have rendered to the promotion of the art of music generally in this country.



Sullivan's many and distinguished musical services included the composition of several fine and well-known hymn tunes. And among them is the noble and stirring anthem of encouragement in the spiritual warfare that Lewis so often described and illustrated.



Onward Christian Soldiers



Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before.

Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;

Forward into battle see His banners go!



Refrain



Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before.



At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;

On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!

Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;

Brothers lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.



Like a mighty army moves the church of God;

Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.

We are not divided, all one body we,

One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.



What the saints established that I hold for true.

What the saints believèd, that I believe too.

Long as earth endureth, men the faith will hold,

Kingdoms, nations, empires, in destruction rolled.



Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,

But the church of Jesus constant will remain.

Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail;

We have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.



Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,

Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.

Glory, laud and honor unto Christ the King,

This through countless ages men and angels sing.

It is quite true that Christ is a priest; but He is a priest not for Himself but for us, when in the name of the whole human race He offers our prayers and religious homage to the eternal Father; and He is also a victim for us since He substitutes Himself for sinful man. Now the exhortation of the Apostle, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus," requires that all Christians should possess, as far as is humanly possible, the same dispositions as those which the divine Redeemer had when He offered Himself in sacrifice: that is to say, they should in a humble attitude of mind, pay adoration, honor, praise and thanksgiving to the supreme majesty of God. Moreover, it means that they must assume to some extent the character of a victim, that they deny themselves as the Gospel commands, that freely and of their own accord they do penance and that each detests and satisfies for his sins. It means, in a word, that we must all undergo with Christ a mystical death on the cross so that we can apply to ourselves the words of St. Paul, "With Christ I am nailed to the cross."



Pope Pius XII, in the encyclical Mediator Dei, issued on this date in 1947.

Some coincidences seem to carry a burden of meaning. It is, anyway, an appropriate reminder of our country's blessings and of the demands of liberty that today is the anniversary of the sighting of land by the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in 1620.



The promise of freedom, the recognition of covenant.



It's also the anniversary of the great address of President Abraham Lincoln at the field of the Battle of Gettysburg.



The promise of freedom, under God.



Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.



Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.



But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And men who have loved a crucified God need never think of torture as all-powerful.



Evelyn Waugh, in a letter to George Orwell.

Henry Martyn Dexter, author of The England and Holland of the Pilgrims and of a monograph on Roger Williams that defended the Massachusetts Plantation against the charge of intolerance, died in New Bedford on this date in 1890. Dexter was editor of The Congregationalist and also translated from the Greek what is thought to be the oldest Christian hymn whose author is known.



It was about the year 200, closer in time to the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus than are we to the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, that Clement of Alexandria, whose memorial is kept immediately after that of my own patron in early December, recorded the lines of the hymn in his Peidagogos, for use in his school. Clement was the teacher of Origen, and there is no reason not to think that the great scholar sang this hymn when an ardent and studious boy.



At his death, Origen is described as being buried with honour as a confessor of the Faith. For a long time his sepulchre, behind the high-altar of the cathedral of Tyr, was visited by pilgrims. Today, as nothing remains of this cathedral except a mass of ruins, the exact location of his tomb is unknown.



A long way from the vibrant happiness and promise of youth, and a melancholy image, if that were all. But of course it is not, for we are redeemed. And all our tombs will one day be unknown, except to Him whose own, to His triumph and to our eternal life, is empty.



Shepherd Of Tender Youth



Shepherd of tender youth, guiding in love and truth

Through devious ways; Christ our triumphant King,

We come Thy Name to sing and here our children bring

To join Thy praise.



Thou art our holy Lord, O all subduing Word,

Healer of strife. Thou didst Thyself abase

That from sin’s deep disgrace Thou mightest save our race

And give us life.



Thou art the great High Priest; Thou hast prepared the feast

Of holy love; and in our mortal pain,

None calls on Thee in vain; Help Thou dost not disdain,

Help from above.



Ever be Thou our guide, our shepherd and our pride,

Our staff and song; Jesus, Thou Christ of God,

By Thine enduring Word lead us where Thou hast trod,

Make our faith strong.



So now, and till we die, sound we Thy praises high

And joyful sing; infants and the glad throng

Who to Thy church belong, unite to swell the song

To Christ, our King.

It was cold in Philadelphia after dark on Saturday, but it was also a night of crystal clarity and the lunar eclipse was vivid in its passage.



No clouds, and Venus now a morning star, so the words aren't descriptive. Maybe, despite that, evocative. The words of John Milton have been in and out of my head for days.



Now glowed the firmament

With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.



Paradise Lost, Book IV, line 604

Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others...The opinion of the judges has no more authority over the Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive.



President Andrew Jackson, in a message to the Congress of the United States, 10 July 1832.

Josh Claybourn posted an entry today on The Bible and Slavery that ends with the powerful admonition and reminder that it should be Christians that continue to lead the crusade against slavery and oppression everywhere.



Well said, and a fitting day to say it. It was on November 7, 1837 that Elijah Parish Lovejoy, whose arguments in the anti-slavery newspaper The Saint Louis Observer were deeply influenced by The Second Great Awakening, was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending his press.



Lovejoy was valedictorian for his fellow scholars in 1826, the inaugural graduating class of Colby College, and the college each year offers a prize in honor of its distinguished graduate.



The award was given posthumously last year to Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal writer who, on his way to interview a Muslim leader in Pakistan in January 2002, was taken prisoner and murdered by thugs incensed alike by his commitment to freedom and by the fact that he was an American and a Jew.



The meeting in Faneuil Hall in Boston in December, 1837 on the subject of Elijah Lovejoy's murder by the Alton mob was the occasion of one of the great addresses in the history of American liberty, the extemporaneous remarks and exhortations that made the reputation of the great abolitionist Wendell Phillips.

I've never watched "The West Wing," and would be perfectly content if I never heard the word "Sheen" again without the word "Fulton" close by ...





From today's evidence of Eve Tushnet's gifts as wordsmith and turner of phrase.

He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. Psalm 126:6



Knowles Shaw, who wrote the great hymn on that text, was born in Ohio on this date in 1834.



Bringing In The Sheaves



Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.



Refrain



Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,

Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,



Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;

By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.



Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,

Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;

When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Franco Corelli, one of the great tenors of the twentieth century, has died in Milan at 82. Corelli made his La Scala debut in La Vestale with Maria Callas. His debut at the Metropolitan Opera was as Manrico in the landmark and storied performance of Il Trovatore that was also the house debut of the incomparable Leontyne Price.

It's a pity that this article was published in The Washington Post on a Saturday, the least-read issue of the week. There are insights here, and some powerful words.



"He is telling people something he has believed his entire life: Suffering is part of the human condition. He embodies a basic teaching and he's doing it by not being ashamed of his illnesses," said George Weigel, an American biographer of the pope.



"There is no question this is preaching done with the body," said Vittorio Messori, an Italian writer who interviewed the pontiff for a book on his teachings. "Death is not something to flee. He forces us to look at it right in the face."



The article is also perhaps evidence of a dawning and respectful appreciation of the richness and gift of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.



The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the invisible mystery hidden since time immemorial in God.



Thanks to Zoe Romanowsky at Heart Mind & Strength who posted the article earlier today.

Speaking to the assembled cardinals last weekend, Pope John Paul said that Courage in proclaiming the gospel must never diminish. Indeed, until the last breath it must be our principal duty.



His ability to speak at length is failing quickly, and there is deep sadness in watching his infirmity, in being a witness as he bears witness, and as he is poured out.



There is a treasure house of the Holy Father's writings, reflections, and exhortations, and to spend time there and read is always to hear his urgent and powerful voice proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ and the Cross of our salvation.



But another time is come. In the words of Tadeusz Styczen, rector of Lublin University: The time for speeches is over. Now we must listen to the silence of the Pope. He speaks to us fully in those silences. Eloquent silences.

... et evasi ego solus ut nuntiarem tibi.



The Vulgate's rendering of the recurring phrase from the first chapter of Job. And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.



The phrase is in my mind because of a very fine performance yesterday of Historia di Job, a rarely heard oratorio from the pen of the first great composer in that form, Giacomo Carissimi.



Job did not, of course, as urged by his wife, curse God and die. And Job's hymns of assurance have been echoed by other men and women down the centuries as they faced severe and heart-rending loss. Among the most moving of those stories of aching pain met with noble and Christian resignation is that of Horatio Gates Spafford, who died in Jerusalem on 16 October 1888 and who was born on this date in 1828.



Although their own losses in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 brought them near to financial ruin, Horatio Spafford and his wife worked selflessly to aid other victims and to help in rebuilding lives. Months later, after the sudden death of his son, Spafford sent his wife and four daughters abroad on the S.S. Ville de Havre. Two ships collided in the North Atlantic and Spafford received his wife's telegram with the grim message Saved alone, the words unconsciously echoing the phrase from Job.



Crossing the Atlantic to be with his wife, Spafford's own ship sailed past the site of the collision, the site of his daughters' graves. And he set down the words to one of the greatest of hymns of assurance and hope, It Is Well With My Soul.



When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.



Refrain



It is well, with my soul,

It is well, with my soul,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.



Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control,

That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.



My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!



For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:

If Jordan above me shall roll,

No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life

Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.



But, Lord, ‘tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,

The sky, not the grave, is our goal;

Oh trump of the angel! Oh voice of the Lord!

Blessèd hope, blessèd rest of my soul!



And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

Christ is the first 'exegesis' of the Father; he is his 'Word,' the one who manifests him. All other words on God and Christ are based on that prime revelation of the Father. The Word - Verbum - was manifested historically in the flesh, and consequently in the assumption of human language. His words, those of the first witnesses and servants of the word, whom the Spirit moved to give authentic expression to the mystery of his appearance among men, will therefore always remain the fundamental norm for everything that will be said about Christ down to the end of time. The incarnation of the Word, his lowering of himself by assuming a temporal form in a certain historical period and within a certain culture, is a fact which has repercussions for all subsequent cultures, and obliges them to turn continually and loyally to that privileged moment and let it work in them as the indispensable formative principle. But fidelity to the Incarnate Word demands, by virtue of the dynamics of the Incarnation, that the message shall be made present whole and entire, not just to man in general but to man of today, to whom the message is announced now. Christ made himself the contemporary of some men and spoke their language. Fidelity to him demands that such contemporaneity should continue. This is the Church's whole task, with its Tradition, the Magisterium and preaching.



Pope Paul VI, Address 25 September 1970, in L'Osservatore Romano, 8 October 1970. Quoted in Magisterium, Scripture and Catholic Exegetes by Rev. Thomas McGovern.



UPDATE and ADDITIONAL: I've just visited Steven Riddle at Flos Carmeli, one of the indispensable sites. He posted the following excerpt from St. John of the Cross earlier today. The passage above could now almost be read as a gloss.



From The Ascent of Mount Carmel Book II Chapter 22.



In giving us, as He has done, His Son, who is his only Word, He has spoken to us once and for all by His own and only Word, and has nothing further to reveal.

In a few weeks, we'll mark the anniversary of the birth of Augustus Montague Toplady, born on 4 November 1740 and best known as the author of the great hymn Rock of Ages, written in 1776. The tune to which we sing the hymn is named Toplady in his honor and was composed in 1830 by Thomas Hastings, who was born in Connecticut on 15 October 1784.



Hastings, who in his long life wrote dozens of books and musical treatises, trained the voices of scores of choirs, and composed many hundreds of hymn texts and melodies, is far less known and remembered than his contributions warrant.



His memoirs, A History of Forty Choirs, published in 1854, remain well worth reading and are the record of a disciplined and productive Christian life during formative years for America.



Here is the text of his hymn Gently Lord, O gently lead us.



Gently Lord, O gently lead us,

Pilgrims in this vale of tears,

Through the trials yet decreed us,

Till our last great change appears.

When temptation’s darts assail us,

When in devious paths we stray,

Let Thy goodness never fail us,

Lead us in Thy perfect way.



In the hour of pain and anguish,

In the hour when death draws near,

Suffer not our hearts to languish,

Suffer not our souls to fear;

And, when mortal life is ended,

Bid us in Thine arms to rest,

Till, by angel bands attended,

We awake among the blest.

The hunger for freedom passes through the heart of every man, and the richer the heart, the greater that hunger.





Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, in his homily at the International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, 3 August 1976.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?



The Sombrero Galaxy

John Burwell reports from the epochal meeting in Dallas, A Place to Stand, organized by the American Anglican Council:



46 Bishops in this room

There are 46 deacons in this room

There are 799 Priests

There are 1,413 lay persons in the room

There are 103 seminary students

2,674 people from 600 parishes and missions in every single diocese.



.....



We sang "Shout to the Lord," "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus," and "Come thou Font." We heard Scripture, proclaimed our faith with the Apostles Creed and had a time of opening prayer.



Commentary and reflections also from, among others, Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon, Will Sulik, Midwest Conservative Journal, Ben Domenech. And an article considering ecumenical implications, and quoting the words of Pope John Paul II to the Archbishop of Canterbury: New and serious difficulties have arisen.



Dr. Harmon's site is named for a touchstone and clarion passage of Scripture, Titus 1:9, on the character and quality demanded of a bishop.



Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able both to encourage others by right teaching and to confute those who contradict it.



Joined with our Anglican brethren.

All the way to heaven is already heaven, because Christ says: I am the Way.



Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue

Daniel Brink Towner, music director at several Methodist Episcopal churches and for many years head of the music department at Moody Bible Institute, died on this date, 3 October, in 1919. He was the editor of several hymnals and the composer of hundreds of tunes, among the most familiar being his music for William Reed Newell's hymn At Calvary. You'll remember the opening words and the refrain:



Years I spent in vanity and pride,

Caring not my Lord was crucified,

Knowing not it was for me He died, on Calvary.



Mercy there was great, and grace was free;

Pardon there was multiplied to me;

There my burdened soul found liberty, at Calvary.



Towner was born in 1850 in Rome, Pennsylvania and shares the honors of that town with the great hymn composer Philip Paul Bliss, who is memorialized by a cenotaph in the cemetery there and whose home is maintained as the site of the Gospel Songwriters Museum.

See that you despise not one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.



Matthew 18:10



The Feast of the Guardian Angels is celebrated on 2 October.

I was looking through a circular from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service the other day. There were some interesting and profitable titles listed, and the advertisement for one of the books has particularly lingered in my mind because of its beautiful phrasing of the book's purpose. Rev. Philip Graham Ryken, senior minister at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, asks What Is A True Calvinist?, a survey described as a practical introduction.



But how simply and nobly stated is Dr. Ryken's purpose, and how surely it should be the aim of all our study and reading: to encourage a God-centered mind, a penitent spirit, a grateful heart, a submissive will, a holy life, and a glorious purpose.

The Cross has dissolved hatred towards Man, has brought reconciliation, has made the earth heaven, has mingled men with the angels, has conquered the bastion of death, has neutralised the strength of the devil, has dismissed the power of sin, has rid the earth of error, has restored the truth, has driven away the demons, has torn down pagan temples, has upset sacrificial altars, has dispelled the smell of burnt offerings, has planted virtue, has founded churches.



The Cross is the Will of the Father, the Glory of the Son, the Joy of the Spirit.



The Cross is brighter than the Sun and more joyous than its rays.



The Cross has torn up our debts, has rendered useless the prison of death.



The Cross is proof of the Love of God, the unshaken wall, the unconquered weapon, the security of the rich, the richness of the poor, the weapon of the threatened, the rebuke of the passions, the kingdom of virtue, the wonderful and strange sign.



The Cross has opened Paradise, has admitted the thief and has guided the human race from impending disaster to the Kingdom of God.



St. John Chrysostom, Encomium on the Holy Cross.



The memorial of the Doctor of Preachers and Doctor of the Eucharist is tomorrow. And the great feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is Sunday, 14 September.

Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City, under fire from supporters of freedom for the indulgent depiction of Fidel Castro in its advertisements, will alter the context in which the racist and murderous thug is shown.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,



Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.



Romans 8:38-39



Listening last night to the fine series by Dr. James Montgomery Boice on the great questions of Romans 8: 31-35, and so the sublime assurance in these two verses has been with me through the day. And a good day for it to be so.



President Bush quoted this text two years ago in his address at the National Cathedral.

A fragment -- not shored against my ruin -- of the phrase was in the entry and a further reference in the comments box bekews, and because. I didn't know it. I liked it. Here it is, with thanks for the path to both Berek and Steve Master, and joined in respect to Caputo, whom I met when I was bq's age. And now bq sage.



...his ineffable, effable, efanineffable, deep and inscrutable, singular name.



TS Eliot, The Naming of Cats

Villanova and Temple haven't met on the football field since 1980, and renewal of the rivalry in their game tomorrow has several things to recommend it, not least that it'll be played in the new Lincoln Financial Field.



A bit warm for football still, of course, and Saturday in Philadelphia will be a day of brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies. Not yet autumn's crispness, but seats close to midfield. I'm looking forward to it.



UPDATE: Villanova Upsets I-A Opponent Temple In OT, 23-20

26 August is the anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams, thought by some the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell. Vaughan Williams, who lived 1872-1958 and whose ashes are interred near Purcell's tomb in Westminster Abbey, in his long and productive life made a major contribution to our musical heritage not only in his own noble compositions, but also in the immense labor he performed in collecting and preserving folk melodies, carols and musical idioms and in his settings for some of our finest hymns.



Vaughan Williams was the musical editor of the great and influential work The English Hymnal 1906 and composed or arranged, among other works, Down Ampney (the music for Come Down, O Love Divine), King's Lynn (for Chesterton's O God of Earth and Altar), Sine Nomine (William How's For All The Saints) and Monks Gate (Percy Dearmer's version of John Bunyan's words He Who Would Valiant Be).



Thought of that last hymn is particularly fitting, since the influence of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress on Vaughan Williams was profound and his fascination with its language and message lasted through his life. In fact, a very fine program of his music could be put together with the work as an organising theme.



Bertrand Russell spoke of him as "the most frightful atheist" when he was at Cambridge, and others have spoken of his agnosticism, but Vaughan Williams inherited a deep love of Christian imagery and tradition from his Evangelical ancestors and it's difficult, hearing his music and thinking of his work, to believe that the Truth that lies behind those images and traditions was not real to him. We can certainly hope that the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.



He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,

Let him in constancy follow the Master.

There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.



Who so beset him round with dismal stories

Do but themselves confound—his strength the more is.

No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,

He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.



Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,

We know we at the end, shall life inherit.

Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,

I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

There's a good deal of foolishness about on the subject of angels, some of it pernicious, much of it sentimental nonsense. Not for the first time, it's good to give thanks for the clear thinking of the physicist Dr. David Heddle, whose blog has shed light on many questions. He gave an impromptu Sunday school lesson on the subject of angels and shares the main points of his presentation at He Lives.

But the believing soul longs and faints for God; she rests sweetly in the contemplation of Him. She glories in the reproach of the Cross, until the glory of His face shall be revealed. Like the Bride, the dove of Christ, that is covered with silver wings (Ps. 68.13), white with innocence and purity, she reposes in the thought of Thine abundant kindness, Lord Jesus; and above all she longs for that day when in the joyful splendor of Thy saints, gleaming with the radiance of the Beatific Vision, her feathers shall be like gold, resplendent with the joy of Thy countenance.



Rightly then may she exult, 'His left hand is under my head and His right hand doth embrace me.' The left hand signifies the memory of that matchless love, which moved Him to lay down His life for His friends; and the right hand is the Beatific Vision which He hath promised to His own, and the delight they have in His presence.



Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, in Chapter IV of On Loving God. Today is the memorial and feast day of the great monk and abbot, the 850th anniversary of the death of this illustrious Doctor of the Church.

Fr. Jim Tucker at Dappled Things has posted the results of his Myers-Briggs analysis. He's INFP. My score was identical to his on I and N, and nearly so (73 to his 82) on P. But I scored INTP, with 55-45 Thinking-Feeling, a marked divergence from his score.



An interesting few minutes in answering the questions on this abbreviated version of the test, and Fr. Jim also has some good explanatory links.



UPDATE - 8/19: Fr. Jim, drawing also on an earlier survey at the site of Kathy the Carmelite, -- who linked to the Jung Typology Test -- posts a roundup of scores from a sampling of St. Blogs. And what a group of introverts we are. Not a gladhander in the group.

Above all, the World Trade Center Memorial must be lapidary, a useful term that literally means the terseness appropriate to carving on stone. It would be wrong to communicate anything other than the simplest of declaratives: We mourn, we persevere, we continue.



Michael J. Lewis, chairman of the art department at Williams College, writing in OpinionJournal today. And noted at Armavirumque.



Professor Lewis, whose scholarly work on Philadelphia architect Frank Furness has been widely praised, also wrote Glass Walls to Bunkers: The New Look of U.S. Embassies, an essay published in the New York Times on 27 July.

We have familiar experience of the order, the constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, never-ceasing as are its changes, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, it is set up in unity; and, though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dissolution does but give birth to fresh modes of organization, and one death is the parent of a thousand lives. Each hour, as it comes, is but a testimony, how fleeting, yet how secure, how certain, is the great whole. It is like an image on the waters, which is ever the same, though the waters ever flow. Change upon change,--yet one change cries out to another, like the alternate Seraphim, in praise and in glory of their Maker. The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of the night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched. Spring passes into summer, and through summer and autumn into winter, only the more surely, by its own ultimate return, to triumph over that grave, towards which it resolutely hastened from its first hour. We mourn over the blossoms of May, because they are to wither; but we know, withal, that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops,--which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.



The opening paragraph of The Second Spring, the sermon of John Henry Newman at the First Provincial Synod of Westminster, preached on July 13, 1852, in St. Mary's College, Oscott.



Cardinal Newman, now Venerable, died on this date in 1890 and is well included in the litany of intercession proposed in these sad and difficult, perhaps even sundering, days for the Anglican Communion.

Last week I quoted the following from Richard Llewellyn's How Green was My Valley:

There is no fence or hedge around time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.



Here's a thought from the same topical family, and even better expressed: The past has incredible patience, waiting for us to return to it. It is we who run out of time.



And the author of the second, William Luse, writes almost every day, always to our profit, and to a deeper understanding and fellowship. You owe it to yourself to be reading his work.

I'm not really much of a cola man but there's a soda that's always been a treat to me: Black Cherry Wishniak. With quarts of orange soda and of ginger ale, it was one of the flavors in the twelve-bottle wooden crate that was occasionally delivered to our house when I was a boy, or that could be picked up from the beer distributor. Frank's was the brand then, and sweetened with cane sugar instead of the now-ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup.



Well, I discovered on my way home last evening that Canada Dry now makes a Black Cherry Wishniak and I bought some. I'm looking forward to a frosty glass. Really. But the bottlers want to make it clear that it's a hardy -- perhaps foolhardy -- soul that will run the risks that are entailed.



Beside an exclamation point in a universal sign triangle is the word WARNING in bold-faced caps. And below is the legend: "Contents under pressure. Cap may blow off causing eye or other serious injury. Point away from face and people, especially while opening."



I won't be deterred. Some treats are worth it.

Emeth and Davey took over each other's blogs to announce their courtship. Not an easy thing, with half a world of distance between the pair. But enormous talent, and the love of God, uniting them. Prayer for their growth and happiness, and best wishes.

A visit to Turner Classic Movies last night, just in time to see One Foot in Heaven, an enjoyable story of the ministry and tribulations of a Methodist minister in the first half of the last century. Fredric March is very fine as Rev. William Spence and Martha Scott brings subtlety and strength to the part of his wife.



Fredric March is far better known, of course, but Martha Scott also had a long and interesting career and at various times played the wife and the sister of Charlton Heston and, both in The Ten Commandments and in Ben-Hur, his mother. Only nine years Heston's senior, Miss Scott seems not to have known vanity when a good part was offered.



One of the interesting things about the film last night was the strong presence of the hymn The Church's One Foundation, as a motif woven repeatedly into the score and as the concluding anthem, rendered with full chorus and carillon. A wonderful hymn, rich in instruction and beauty, a standard in most Christian churches, words and music lingering long in the mind. The music is Aurelia, composed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the natural son of Charles Wesley's son Samuel.



The movie is based on a memoir of his father by the writer Hartzell Spence, named by his parents in honor of Joseph Crane Hartzell, missionary bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Hartzell Spence, founder and executive editor of Yank magazine during World War II, died at 93 in 2001.



One Foot in Heaven was among the ten films nominated for Best Picture in 1941, a year of stiff competition. The award that year went to How Green Was My Valley.



There is no fence or hedge around time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough. --- Richard Llewellyn

I'm off to Ocean City, New Jersey for a few days. Sand, surf, bike. Food, family, fun.



... and all creation rightly gives Thee praise.

William Luse, who's always worth a visit, commented on the entry on Rev. John Keble below that The story of that movement, and the great light that came of it (Cardinal Newman, among others) is dear to me.



I'm glad to say that it's one of many opinions on which we're in agreement, and that most visitors here share the devotion. A good occasion, then, to recommend a rich and perceptive little book, re-issued last year by the Saint Austin Press.



T.S. Eliot thought Christopher Dawson perhaps the most influential man in all of Britain. Dom David Knowles wrote that in his field [he] was the most distinguished Catholic thinker of the century. Frank Sheed said that Dawson may not have known everything, but there was nothing that you could count on his not knowing.



There was certainly no subject that Christopher Dawson didn't illuminate in his writing, and The Spirit of the Oxford Movement is one of the many gems among his works. Here's a review of the re-issued volume by Robert Royal in Crisis.

In New York Monday evening and Tuesday. I've always felt comfortable there, and easy, and always with a thrill at first sight of the skyline. I wrote here last fall: No matter how many times seen, there are few sights like the Manhattan skyline, but the sense now of what's missing still catches you and leaves the vista suddenly tinged with ache and sadness and loss.



A working trip this time, but not onerous in any sense, and lodged with a group from work at the Ritz at Battery Park. Walking distance, then, from Ground Zero, and we all were drawn there, some for the first time. Excavated and largely cleared now, of course, and vast in its desolation, murmuring sorrow as you look. But girders there fused in the shape of the Cross of our salvation, and of lordship over death. Lifted above the loam and the debris in the first weeks after the cataclysm, lifted for solace by men fulfilling their vocation of rescue and protection.



There was a sculpture that stood in the plaza fountain between the World Trade Center towers. The Sphere by Fritz Koenig. Bronze and steel. A monument fostering world peace. It was found in the rubble, gashed and torn but structurally intact. It's now installed, with an eternal flame burning before it, in Battery Park. One of our group led us over there after dinner in Tribeca. Quiet there under the trees in the park, somber there in the darkness, memories stirring there in the light breeze.



Fritz Koenig said his sculpture now has a different beauty, one I could never imagine. It has its own life - different from the one I gave to it.

We observe the memorial today of that remarkable young woman Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, known as The Lily of the Mohawks.



Many thanks to Norm Leveillee, who continues his wonderful website tribute.

After all, the surest way to uphold or restore our endangered Church, will be for each of her anxious children, in his own place and station, to resign himself more thoroughly to his God and Saviour in those duties, public and private, which are not immediately affected by the emergencies of the moment: the daily and hourly duties, I mean, of piety, purity, charity, justice. It will be a consolation understood by every thoughtful Churchman, that let his occupation be, apparently, never so remote from such great interests, it is in his power, by doing all as a Christian, to credit and advance the cause he has most at heart; and what is more, to draw down God's blessing upon it.



Rev. John Keble, theologian, teacher and poet, priest of the Church of England, preached the Assize Sermon at St. Mary's Church, Oxford, on 14 July 1833. His sermon on the text of 1 Samuel 12:23, National Apostasy, is reckoned as the start of the Oxford Movement, of which Keble remained a central figure.



Lord, In Thy Name Thy Servants Plead

It's scarcely a new insight , but it hit me with particular force yesterday: how good it can be to see the familiar from a new perspective. Visiting Naked Wayne at Case Western Reserve and catching up with his posts -- almost always interesting and engaging -- I came across this:



By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us--set us right with him, make us fit for him--we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand--out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise!



Strong words, and a powerful reminder, but unfamiliar to me. Not a new message, but a new path of hearing, a fresh way of seeing. It's the rendering of the first verses of Romans 5 in Eugene Peterson's The Message.

Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.



Leviticus 25:10

The passage below is from The Quickening of John the Baptist, one of Thomas Merton's great Marian poems.



You have trusted no town

With the news behind your eyes.

You have drowned Gabriel's word in thoughts like seas

And turned toward the stone mountain

To the treeless places.

Virgin of God, why are your clothes like sails?



The day Our Lady, full of Christ,

Entered the dooryard of her relative

Did not her steps, light steps, lay on the paving leaves

like gold?

Did not her eyes as grey as doves

Alight like the peace of a new world upon that house, upon

miraculous Elizabeth?





The Roman, Anglican, and Lutheran calendars now observe the Feast of the Visitation on 31 May, but 2 July was the traditional date of the feast on the Roman calendar, commemorating the events described in the first chapter of Luke. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, greeting her young kinswoman Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb and Mary, in response and in full acceptance of her role in the history of our salvation, proclaiming the noble words of the Magnificat.

Ganns Deen has moved from Mere Madness to his new home at Superblessed.net



Ganns and Cathy learned today that their child, who has 11 more weeks left to live in the womb, is a boy. His name is Nathan Joshua Midel Deen.



Ganns earned his baccalaureate degree at Ateneo de Manila University, which takes its motto from Ephesians 5:8.



Lux in Domino.

I think I've listened almost as frequently this year to spoken word recordings as to music CDs. In part because of the suspension last winter of daily broadcasts of the late Dr. James Montgomery Boice on The Bible Study Hour, I've bought a number of recordings of sermons and exegesis and have been enriched by listening to the words of, among others, Bishop Fulton Sheen and Rev. George Rutler.



There's been instruction, too, in the BBC recordings of the wartime speeches of Sir Winston Churchill, and I've tried without success to find a CD recording of the state funeral of that great man, a recording that I once had on LP.



Today is the 140th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Gettysburg and on Sunday I listened for the first time to a new spoken word CD, and one that I strongly recommend. James McPherson recently published Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg and also made available a CD on which he reads the work. The story of the battle, of the officers and soldiers, of the stakes involved, of heroism and suffering, of mistakes of great consequence and of plans gone awry and, later, of President Lincoln's great address on the site, is rich in meaning, lesson, and drama. McPherson says perhaps no word in the American language has greater historical resonance than Gettysburg. And the story of that epochal battle in southern Pennsylvania is compelling, heart-breaking, ennobling.

Now, in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!

Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!

When went there by an age, since the great flood,

But it was famed with more than with one man?

When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,

That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?

Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,

When there is in it but one only man.



Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii



The subject lends itself to bombast, and there's certainly a bit of that in the TNT production Caesar, the new retelling that ran for two hours last night and that concludes with two hours tonight. But there's also some compelling acting in the presentation of the familiar story, and Richard Harris -- in his last performance -- as Sulla is very fine. Christopher Walken takes the role of Cato, and Chris Noth -- looking at times startlingly like Victor Mature -- plays Pompey. Jeremy Sisto has the title role, and is said to be the only actor to play both Caesar and Jesus.



The story of Julius Caesar, the man and his accomplishments, remains a wonder. Ripples from his career eddy past us even now and, to take but one example, it's within living memory that his very name ceased being used as a title of kingly power and authority.

I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better I began to think of it as rivers. America is a great story, and there is a river on every page of it.----- Charles Kuralt



It's roughly 100 degrees in Philadelphia, and this may not be the ideal, but I made plans to be on the Delaware River this evening. The Spirit of Philadelphia sails at 7:00 for a three-hour cruise. Not on Gerard's scale, of course, but it sounds like fun. The cruise is a joint project of several Big East schools, with Villanova University having the largest contingent on board.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.



George Orwell, in Why I Write, published in Gangrel in 1946. Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in the Bengal province of India on 25 June 1903.



The Brothers Judd also have a fine collection of Orwell links here.

Controversy over the authenticity of the James ossuary continues, despite media reports that suggested otherwise in covering the judgment advanced by a committee of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, Hershel Shanks, presents his survey of the current state of the question on the journal's web site:



The day after the Biblical Archaeology Review published an article last October on the extraordinary inscription, "James, the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus," scratched on a stone bone box from Jerusalem, it appeared on the front page of almost every paper in the world.



On June 18, 2003, a committee appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the inscription to be a forgery. The bone box, or ossuary, was indeed ancient, but the inscription was added in modern times, the committee found.



It may indeed be a forgery and, if so, let's hope the forger will be caught and put in jail.



But I'm still not convinced that it is a forgery.



Jeremy Lott also writes on the subject at American Prowler.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.



Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and of Charles Beecher, was born 24 June 1813.

Today is Juneteenth, anniversary of the day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln, and effective 1 January 1863, was finally delivered in Galveston, Texas. Major General Gordon Granger issued the General Order Number 3:



The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.



Celebrations of the day have through the years been closely associated with the Christian church, and here is a traditional prayer from the period of enslavement, beginning Father, I stretch my hand to thee--for no other help I know. Oh my rose of Sharon, my shelter in the time of storm. My prince of peace, my hope in this harsh land...



I'm looking forward to the memorial service this evening at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia, the church that W.E.B. DuBois called by long odds the vastest and most remarkable product of American Negro civilization. The church was founded by Richard Allen, among the most distinguished sons of Philadelphia, and its property at Sixth and Lombard Streets is the oldest parcel of land in the United States continuously owned by African-Americans.



Also on this date, and twenty years later in 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor.



Lift Every Voice And Sing



Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.



Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.



God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

When the great preacher George Whitefield died in 1770, John Wesley wrote the hymn Servant of God, Well Done as a testimony. The memorial of John Wesley himself is observed with that of his brother Charles on 2 March, but today is the 300th anniversary of the birth of the great evangelical, and we apply the hymn to its author, and ponder the symbol of Cross and flame.



Servant of God, well done!

Thy glorious warfare’s past;

The battle’s fought, the race is won,

And thou art crowned at last.



With saints enthroned on high,

Thou dost thy Lord proclaim,

And still to God salvation cry,

Salvation to the Lamb!



O happy, happy soul!

In ecstasies of praise,

Long as eternal ages roll,

Thou seest Thy Savior’s face.



Redeemed from earth and pain,

Ah! when shall we ascend,

And all in Jesus’ presence reign

Through ages without end?

Christianity is, of course, not the only religion that has found the best explanation of human life in the idea of an incarnate and suffering god. We might, therefore, prefer not to take this tale too seriously - there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of Divine character walking and talking among us - and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, "heard him gladly"; but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that he talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of his friends to hand him over quietly to the police, and we tried him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, "thanking God we were rid of a knave." All this was not very creditable to us, even if he was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about him, it was more discreditable still; for the man we hanged was God Almighty.



So that is the outline of the official story - the tale of the time when God was the underdog and got beaten, when he submitted to the conditions he had laid down and became a man like the men he had made, and the men he had made broke him and killed him. This is the dogma we find so dull - this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.



from The Greatest Drama, by Dorothy L. Sayers, who was born on this date, the feast of Saint Anthony of Padua, in 1893.

I hadn't planned to post a notice of the events here, but I'm a proud and happy uncle. Graduations this year from Scranton Preparatory School, Little Flower School, and Germantown Friends School. Warm congratulations to Amanda, Clare, and Michael, and every good wish as another stage of the academic journey begins at Catholic University, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, and Vassar College.

For what seemed like a long time I stood leaning near the window, my eyes shut tight against the twilight. Maybe he is right, I thought, maybe all was for nothing, maybe worse than nothing, and all I´ve done was evil in the sight of God. Maybe he is right and God is dead and gone, which is why I can no longer reach him ... I opened my eyes again, looking out into the gloaming light, the woods where wild ducks skimmed southard against a sky as gray as smoke. Yes, I thought, maybe all this is true, otherwise why should God not heed me, why should he not answer?



from The Confessions of Nat Turner. Author William Styron was born on this date in 1925.



Here is a link to Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938.

There's no image of the sculpture in the previous posting that's available to link, but Philadelphia is home to more than 2100 wall murals, works from a celebratory and inspirational program that continues growing, and enriching lives. Here's one called Gateway to West Philadelphia by the artist Max Mason. It's on the side of a building a couple of blocks from Presbyterian Medical Center.

After work last evening, I went to visit a friend, who's recovering well from very serious abdominal surgery. Presbyterian Hospital, founded in 1871 by the Alliance of Philadelphia Presbyteries, is now the Presbyterian Medical Center of the University of Pennnsylvania Health System. It's a remarkably fine facility with a wonderful staff and is situated and landscaped in such a way that it's easy to forget that you're in the heart of West Philadelphia. And there's a detail on the grounds that's stayed in my mind through several visits.



Outside one of the hospital buildings, near a courtyard now alive with marigolds, is a sculpture in stainless steel of a group of four doctors in consultation, detailed even to the stethoscopes, lab coats, and patients' charts. Another doctor, young, purposeful, and still some yards away, hurries to join the discussion. Suggesting collegiality, thoughtfulness and urgency, it's meant to be a realistic portrayal of medical professionals at their work. And it undoubtedly was so when it was commissioned. But time and opportunity have changed the face of the profession, and even though the sculpture remains in the tradition of realism as a mode of representation, it's no longer realistic in its depiction. All of the doctors, you see, are men. And all are Caucasian.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.



The calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church marks today as the feast of Mary and Martha of Bethany. And there's a happiness in the coincidence that it was on this date in 1919 that the United States Congress, by joint resolution, approved the woman's suffrage amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby issued the proclamation of the amendment's adoption on 26 August 1920.



Professor Marjorie Spruill Wheeler of the University of Southern Mississippi is among the country's pre-eminent scholars of The History of the Suffrage Movement.



Vermeer's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha

The Young Women's Christian Association, founded in 1858, was prominent in the news a few weeks ago because of the appointment of Patricia Ireland as its new executive director. Mrs. Ireland insisted to the New York Times that "I'm not the head of a Christian organization. I'm the head of a social justice women's organization." In light of her denial, endorsed by others in the national leadership of the group, the suggestion's been made that it would be best that the YWCA remove the Christian reference from its name.



What used to be known as the Young Women’s Christian Association Hymn was written by Frances Ridley Havergal, who died in Wales on this date in 1879.



Truehearted, wholehearted, faithful and loyal,

King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be;

Under the standard exalted and royal,

Strong in Thy strength we will battle for Thee.



Peal out the watchword! Silence it never!

Song of our spirits, rejoicing and free;

Peal out the watchword! Loyal forever!

King of our lives, by Thy grace we will be.



Wholehearted! Savior belovèd and glorious,

Take Thy great power and reign Thou alone,

Over our wills and affections victorious—

Freely surrendered and wholly Thine own.



Truehearted, wholehearted! Fullest allegiance

Yielding henceforth to our glorious King!

Valiant endeavor and loving obedience

Freely and joyously now would we bring.