Jesus existed

Craig Keener at Huffington Post attempts to explain to—as the comments demonstrate—a rather difficult readership, what most scholars take for granted. From the first and last paragraphs of a column summarizing some of the evidence:

Contrary to some circles on the Internet, very few scholars doubt that Jesus existed, preached and led a movement. Scholars' confidence has nothing to do with theology but much to do with historiographic common sense. What movement would make up a recent leader, executed by a Roman governor for treason, and then declare, "We're his followers"? If they wanted to commit suicide, there were simpler ways to do it. ....

.... Logically, why would Jesus' followers make up a Jesus to live and die for? Why not glorify real founders (as movements normally did)? Why make up a leader and have him executed on a Roman cross? To follow one executed for treason was itself treason. To follow a crucified leader was to court persecution. Some people do give their lives for their beliefs, but for beliefs, not normally for what they know to be fabricated. Jesus' first movement would not have made up his execution or his existence. .... [more]

Craig S. Keener: Jesus Existed

Moderates are miserable

Arthur C. Brooks, yesterday in The New York Times, on the apparent fact that "Conservatives Are Happier, and Extremists Are Happiest of All":

.... Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. ....

.... According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness? You guessed it. Religious participants are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives as are secularists (43 percent to 23 percent). The differences don’t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.

.... Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids. ....

There is one other noteworthy political happiness gap that has gotten less scholarly attention than conservatives versus liberals: moderates versus extremists. ....

.... People at the extremes are happier than political moderates. Correcting for income, education, age, race, family situation and religion, the happiest Americans are those who say they are either “extremely conservative” (48 percent very happy) or “extremely liberal” (35 percent). Everyone else is less happy, with the nadir at dead-center “moderate” (26 percent). .... [more]

I am a single, never married, childless, religious conservative. Should I be less happy?

And a non-political, non-theological, advantage of parenthood: "Parents less apt to common cold than non-parents, says study".

Conservatives Are Happier, and Extremists Are Happiest of All - NYTimes.com

Having a lot to lose

A husband and father, worried that his very young daughter might be seriously ill, tells his wife that he isn't sure he could handle it if the worst were to prove true. Her response:

“Anyone who thinks they can’t handle it if something bad happens should probably ask themselves whether they were grateful enough for what they had before they realized that anything was wrong.” Most married women will have to contain their surprise at this admission, but it usually takes a while for me to grasp when my wife is right. Yet, this time it quickly dawned on me that having a lot to lose is a blessing, not a problem. ....

Mark Hemingway, writing in the current Weekly Standard. His wife is Molly.

Mark Hemingway, "A Brush With Eternity," The Weekly Standard, July 16, 2012, p. 5.

"Those Frenchies seek him everywhere"

Every summer National Review invites its editors and contributors to suggest good books for summer reading. There are a lot of interesting suggestions here — far more than could be read in any summer. John O'Sullivan divided his recommendations between those books he reads for work and those he reads for pleasure. In the former he included, among others, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, which I have also read and highly recommend. His "read for pleasure" section includes many of my favorites and he reminds me of the "Scarlet Pimpernel" books which I once read and enjoyed.

A final category of book I keep by me through the summer is the reliable one of books I’ve read before, enjoyed, and know will entertain me without fail. Obviously, Wodehouse falls into this category; ditto Sherlock Holmes, Eric Ambler, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Rafael Sabatini (or any books about pirates or swordsmen, really), James Hilton (an underrated popular novelist of the Thirties and Forties), Raymond Chandler (or any hard-boiled thrillers — my latest addiction is to the Norwegian Jo Nesbo), adventure stories (try Lionel Davidson’s The Rose of Tibet, set chronologically in 1950 but emotionally in the 1930s), and — finally — the dozen or so “Scarlet Pimpernel” novels by Baroness Orczy. These are intricately plotted romantic thrillers. They have a dire villain in the Jacobin zealot, Chauvelin, a meltingly beautiful but foolish heroine in Marguerite, a dashing hero in the form of Sir Percy Blakeney, an apparent fop secretly leading a group of English gentlemen to save French aristocrats from the guillotine, and not least a sound and solid hostility to the French Revolution. Give them to your adolescent son; he may annoy you subsequently by wearing a monocle at the breakfast table but he would never vote to sustain Obamacare. [more]

The Pimpernel series all seem to be in print and most are available for Kindle, including the first, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and that one, at least, is free.

The best film version of the first Pimpernel book is in the public domain and can be watched here: The Scarlet Pimpernel : Alexander Korda, Grace Blake : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

Got Summer Reading? - NRO Symposium - National Review Online, and I found the video link at The Frog's Eyebrows: Vintage Novels (The Scarlet Pimpernel)

Sacrifice

Calvin Coolidge was, in fact, born on the 4th of July. This is from a speech he delivered on Bunker Hill Day in 1918 in the final year of World War I:

.... There has been much talk in recent years of the survival of the fittest and of efficiency. We are beginning to hear of the development of the superman and the claim that he has of right dominion over the rest of his inferiors on earth. This philosophy denies the doctrine of equality and holds that government is not based on consent but on compulsion. It holds that the weak must serve the strong, which is the law of slavery, it applies the law of the animal world to mankind and puts science above morals. This sounds the call to the jungle. It is not an advance to the morning but a retreat to night. It is not the light of human reason but the darkness of the wisdom of the serpent.

The law of progress and civilization is not the law of the jungle. It is not an earthly law, it is a divine law. It does not mean the survival of the fittest, it means the sacrifice of the fittest. Any mother will give her life for her child. Men put the women and children in the lifeboats before they them selves will leave the sinking ship. John Hampden and Nathan Hale did not survive, nor did Lincoln, but Benedict Arnold did. The example above all others takes us back to Jerusalem some nineteen hundred years ago. The men of Bunker Hill were true disciples of civilization, because they were willing to sacrifice themselves to resist the evils and redeem the liberties of the British Empire. The proud shaft which rises over their battlefield and the bronze form of Joseph Warren in your square are not monuments to expediency or success, they are monuments to righteousness.

This is the age old story. Men are reading it again today; written in blood. The Prussian military despotism has abandoned the law of civilization for the law of barbarism. We could approve and join in the scramble to the jungle, or we could resist and sacrifice ourselves to save an erring nation.

Not being beasts, but men, we choose the sacrifice. .... [more]

Via Ben Domenech

Bunker Hill Day

A Seventh Day Baptist and Independence

On Independence Day it is particularly appropriate for Seventh Day Baptists to remember Governor Samuel Ward of Rhode Island.

Samuel Ward
1725–1776

Samuel Ward was Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, son of a governor of Rhode Island, three times governor himself, and presiding officer over the Continental Congress when it was meeting in Committee of the Whole.

Samuel Ward

He was the only colonial governor who refused to enforce the Stamp Act, and was actively involved in resistance to British authority – organizing committees of intelligence in every Rhode Island community.

Ward was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774. There he was a close ally of Samuel Adams and John Adams of Massachusetts. Perhaps his closest friend and political ally was Benjamin Franklin. He is remembered as the man who nominated George Washington as commander of the Continental Army. He was a close friend of and correspondent with Nathanael Greene - perhaps Washington’s best general. He advocated an American navy and introduced the resolution authorizing the construction of its first ships.

He died of smallpox in Philadelphia on March 25, 1776, having delayed inoculation out of fear that it would incapacitate him when important work needed to be done. The entire Congress attended his funeral.

He was a Seventh Day Baptist, a member of the Sabbatarian Church of Christ in Westerly & Hopkinton. His profession of faith and request for membership is in the possession of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society.

To the Sabbatarian Church of Christ in Westerly & Hopkinton:

Being fully satisfied that Baptism is a Christian Duty I desire to be admitted to that Ordinance this Day: my Life & Conversation are well known; my religious Sentiments are That there is one God the Father of whom are all Things and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all Things, That the Universe thus created has been preserved and governed by infinite Wisdom, Power and Goodness from the Beginning, That mankind having fallen into the most gross & unnatural Idolatry, Superstition and Wickedness it pleased God for their Recovery to make a Revelation of his mind & will in the holy Scriptures which (excepting the ceremonial Law and some part of the Judicial Law peculiar to the Jews) It is the Duty of all mankind to whom they are made known sincerely to believe and obey: my Sins I sincerely & heartily repent of and firmly rely upon the unbounded Goodness and Mercy of God in his only begotten Son Christ Jesus for Pardon & eternal Life: and I sincerely desire and Resolve by his Grace for the future to walk in all the Commandments and Ordinances of the Lord

Sam: Ward
August 5, 1769

information from Kenneth E. Smith, Sam: Ward: Founding Father, Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society, 1967

A site devoted to the Ward family provides this about Samuel Ward:

...[I]n 1763, he won election as Governor of Rhode Island. He was reelected in 1765 and held office until 1767. When the British parliament passed the infamous Stamp Act which imposed taxes on imports into the American Colonies — without any representation of these colonists in that legislative body — the Americans became infuriated. Samuel was the only one of the governors of the 13 colonies who refused to sign a required oath to sustain and enforce it.

He was appointed a delegate from Rhode Island to the Continental Congress to be held at Philadelphia as tensions heightened in the period leading up to the American Revolution.

The drama of revolution and war opened with all its horrors of bloodshed and devastation, and all its glorious scenes of devotion to the rights of man, and determination to obtain liberty, at any and every cost. Samuel played a prominent part in these scenes and performed it well. Samuel wrote a letter in 1775 to his brother, speaking of his own position and his feelings; he said:

"I have traced the progress of this unnatural war, through burning towns, devastation of the country, and every subsequent evil. I have realized, with regard to myself, the bullet, the bayonet and the halter; and, compared with the immense object I have in view, they are all less than nothing. No man living, perhaps, is more fond of his children than I am, and I am not so old as to be tired of life; and yet, as far as I can now judge, the tenderest connections and the most important private concerns are very minute objects. Heaven save our country, I was going to say, is my first, my last, and almost my only prayer"

Samuel took an active part in helping organize the Rhode Island Militia for the war. His son Samuel Jr., recently out of college, entered the Colonial Army with the commission of captain.

When the Continental Congress met, Samuel was chosen Chairman of the "Committee of the Whole". The committee recommended "...that a general be appointed to command all the Continental forces raised, or to be raised, for the defence of American liberty." This was passed and George Washington was chosen by ballot to take command of American forces.

Samuel was a devoted admirer of Gen. Washington, and a sincere advocate of his election. A few weeks after the appointment, he wrote to Gen. Washington:

"I most cheerfully entered upon a solemn engagement, upon your appointment, to support you with my life and my fortune; and I shall most religiously, and with the highest pleasure, endeavor to discharge that duty."

We find Governor Ward a most active member of Congress, and untiring in his efforts to organize and advance the preparations for defence on the part of the colonists. He was warmly in favor of pronouncing a declaration of independence; and, although he did not live to sign the Declaration, yet he was one of the most active and determined among those who consummated it.

During the Congress, Samuel contracted smallpox and fell ill in March 1776. He last attended sessions on Mar 15. He died 26 Mar and was buried at the First Baptist Church Cemetery in Philadelphia. All the members of the Congress and a large crowd of friends and supporters attended his funeral.

The remains of Governor Ward were exhumed and removed to the Old Cemetery at Newport, Rhode Island in 1860. The slab over his grave, contains the following inscription, written by John Jay (Supreme Court Justice):

"In memory of the Honorable Samuel Ward, formerly Governor of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; afterwards delegated from that colony to the General Congress; in which station, he died, at Philadelphia, of the small pox, March 26th, 1776, in the fifty-first year of his age. His great abilities, his unshaken integrity, his ardor in the cause of freedom, his fidelity in the offices he filled, induced the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to erect this grateful testimony of their respect."

Wards in the United States Congress, Part 2

Suffer not our trust in Thee to fail...

From The Book of Common Prayer (1928), a good prayer for Independence Day:

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favour and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Andy Griffith, 1926-2012, RIP

From WORLD magazine:

.... The Andy Griffith Show was a loving portrait of the town where few grew up but many wished they did—a place where all foibles are forgiven and friendships are forever. Villains came through town and moved on, usually changed by their stay in Mayberry. That was all a credit to Griffith, said Craig Fincannon, who met Griffith in 1974.

“I see so many TV shows about the South where the creative powers behind it have no life experience in the South,” Fincannon said. “What made The Andy Griffith Show work was Andy Griffith himself—the fact that he was of this dirt and had such deep respect for the people and places of his childhood. A character might be broadly eccentric, but the character had an ethical and moral base that allowed us to laugh with them and not at them. And Andy Griffith’s the reason for that.” ....

Worship "spaces"

David Greusel, the architect who designed PNC Park, where the Pittsburgh Pirates play, is a Christian with concern about the direction church architecture has taken over the last century. In an article about him at WORLD magazine, his views are summarized:

.... In an online essay called "God's Trailer," Greusel boldly states that "bad church architecture is as much the result of bad theology as it is of bad design"—meaning that an overemphasis on saving souls has blinded some congregations to the value of nurturing souls. Too many Christians buy into a perversion of the old architectural saw that "form follows function," seeing their buildings as so many square feet of function with a cross stuck on, instead of a place to direct our attention to God's glory.

Greusel likes to quote Winston Churchill: "First, we shape our buildings, then they shape us." He believes the need for Christian architects who bring their worldview to their work has never been greater, for at least three reasons. One, the "creation mandate" (Genesis 1:28) implies that we can continue God's work on earth by designing spaces that are both useful and beautiful. Also, as creatures made in His image, we honor God by following in His creative footsteps and striving for excellence. And finally, designing (and insisting on) beautiful buildings puts us on the front lines of the culture war: Against the dreary functionalism, commodification, and standardization of concrete boxes, our buildings can reflect both the glory of God and the humanity of man—whether their primary function is to encourage worship or to showcase a perfect double play.

Architecture is a serious calling, but also a joyful and optimistic one, combining the pragmatic with the poetic. .... (more)

And from David Greusel's essay, "God’s Trailer":

.... Church designers (again, uniformly but not universally) are guilty of following the dicta of modernism that we were all taught in school, the ABCs of architecture: Form follows function, ornament is crime, less is more, and so on. These axioms, questionable in their own right, become downright deadly when applied to the design of worship spaces, where the “function” of encountering the Divine Presence is much harder to express in a formula than the function of holding, say, 500 seats and a choir. And it is the former function which invariably gets shorted when church design is limited to functional problem-solving. ....

In North America, the Church (broadly understood) has always been underfunded, yet it did not until recent decades build so poorly. Even frontier chapels erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by pioneer communities have a dignity and beauty that is largely lacking in the North American Church’s more recent physical manifestations. And it is hard to argue that our communities are actually poorer than they were seventy or eighty or 120 years ago. .... (more)

WORLDmag.com | All-star architecture | Janie B. Cheaney | Jun 30, 12, God’s Trailer | Cardus Blog

Sherlock Holmes and Scripture

Eric McKiddie, a pastor in Wheaton Illinois, read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes last summer and compiled ten quotations he found relevant to the study of Scripture. For instance:

1. The number one mistake to avoid.

Holmes: “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Far too often students of the Bible twist verses to suit interpretations instead of formulating interpretations to suit what the verses say.

Don’t approach your passage assuming you know what it means. Rather, use the data in the passage – the words that are used and how they fit together – to point you toward the correct interpretation.

6. The harder the mystery, the more evidence you need.

“This is a very deep business,” Holmes said at last. “There are a thousand details which I should desire to know before I decide upon our course of action.”

In grad school, one professor gave us an assignment requiring us students to make 75 observations on Acts 1:8. The verse does not even contain that many words!

The professor’s goal was to train us in compiling evidence. Harder Bible passages demand that we collect as much information as possible.

8. Don’t be so committed to a solution that you ignore new evidence.

“I had,” said Holmes, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data…I can only claim the merit that I instantly reconsidered my position.”

After you’ve put the hard work into grasping a mysterious passage, the case isn’t necessarily closed. Often you’ll run across other passages that shed new light on your passage. Or you’ll hear someone preach those verses in a different way than how you interpreted it.

Always be willing to consider new insights. This will at least help you nuance your understanding of the passage, if not take a different stance. .... [more]

How about this one, from The Sign of Four:

"You will not apply my precept," he said, shaking his head. "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

10 Tips on Solving Mysterious Bible Passages from Sherlock Holmes – Trevin Wax

"Standing back from life and seeing it whole"

Tim Kreider's "The 'Busy' Trap" isn't about religion or the Christian life but some of what he writes is certainly applicable:

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. ....

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence. ....

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. ....

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole....

The 'Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com

Perfect worship

Via By Every Word

"The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God." — C.S. Lewis

By Every Word...: The perfect church service...

Waterfox

I've been running the 64-bit version of Windows for several years and Firefox has been my preferred browser. Waterfox is a 64-bit build of Firefox. I have been using it for about a month without a glitch and it is faster.

Lifehacker's description

Mozilla still hasn't officially released any 64-bit builds for Firefox, and Waterfox aims to fill that void. It has one main goal: speed. They've tweaked a lot of Firefox's codebase to work better with 64-bit processors, so if you're running a 64-bit version of Windows, it should give you a solid speed boost. It...uses your current Firefox profile, so you don't have to do any extra setup. All of your add-ons should work out of the box, too. ....

Waterfox is a free download for Windows only.

The current version, Waterfox 13, doesn't seem to update automatically, although that is promised in the next version. It isn't necessary to uninstall Firefox and it is easy to revert if you uninstall Waterfox being careful not to uninstall your profile in the process.

It can be downloaded here: Waterfox | The fastest 64-Bit variant of Firefox!

"In your presence there is fullness of joy"

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
In the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
My flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
Or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life;
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
[Psalm 16: 6-11, ESV]

"We have erred, and strayed..."

Re-posted from September 28, 2007 because I just re-read it and it is very good:

At Challies.com, a review of Respectable Sins, by Jerry Bridges. Bridges practices a discipline he calls "preaching the gospel to yourself," He describes the practice:

Since the gospel is only for sinners, I begin each day with the realization that despite my being a saint, I still sin every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. If I am aware of any subtle, or not so subtle, sins in my life, I acknowledge those to God. Even if my conscience is not indicting me for conscious sins, I still acknowledge to God that I have not even come close to loving Him with all my being or loving my neighbor as myself. I repent of those sins, and then I apply specific Scriptures that assure me of God’s forgiveness to those sins I have just confessed.

I then generalize the Scripture’s promises of God’s forgiveness to all my life and say to God words to the effect that my only hope of a right standing with Him that day is Jesus’ blood shed for my sins, and His righteous life lived on my behalf. This reliance on the twofold work of Christ for me is beautifully captured by Edward Mote in his hymn “The Solid Rock” with his words, “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Almost every day, I find myself going to those words in addition to reflecting on the promises of forgiveness in the Bible.

What Scriptures do I use to preach the gospel to myself? Here are just a few I choose from each day:

• As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
• “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)
• All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
• Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. (Romans 4:7-8)
• There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

There are many others, including Psalm 130:3-4; Isaiah 1:18; Isaiah 38:17; Micah 7:19; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 2:13-14; Hebrews 8:12; and 10:17-18.

A regular part of Morning Prayer in the old Book of Common Prayer was the "General Confession." Confession reminds us that we are entirely dependent on God's grace in Christ, both for our salvation, and in every moment.

Almighty and most merciful Father: We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind In Christ Jesus Our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen

Challies Dot Com :: Jerry Bridges Preaches the Gospel to Himself

Seven Days, July 1862

Geoffrey Norman on "Seven Bloody Days," McClellan and the 1862 effort to capture the Confederate capitol, a frustrating and ultimately pointless expenditure of blood:

The story of the Seven Days and the Peninsula Campaign that preceded it is, in large part, a tale of one man’s hubris.

General George McClellan liked to think of himself as a kind of American Napoleon, and in at least one regard there was a similarity. Both men were short.

Napoleon, though, was a master of war. He loved war and thrived on its challenges, and he was a gambler. It could have been said of him, as it was of a general who became McClellan’s adversary in the Seven Days, “his name might be Audacity.”

McClellan was quite the other thing. He was a master of military organization and an exceedingly adroit player in the political contests that result in promotion. But he did not much like war, and he made a point of avoiding both battle and the battlefield. The carnage was repellent to him. .... [more of a good account]

More:

• Peninsula Campaign
• The Seven Days' Battles

Seven Bloody Days | The Weekly Standard

Stand fast

If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.

[Isaiah 7:9, NIV]

Robert Spencer:

God said to Ahaz, "If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all."

This is the first passage of Scripture to slam me to the floor (as they say) in quite some time. I mean, listen to this:

If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm in at all. You will be firm in nothing. Everything in your life . . . or, more precisely, your response to everything in your life . . . will be infirm, unstable, questionable, uncertain. You will be easily influenced, swayed by circumstances, by every little thing. You will drift. You will fluctuate. You will be unreliable. Things for you will always be running downhill, out of control, headed for a fall.

Well, that's taking liberties with the text I suppose. If you need the real back-story, look it up in Isaiah 7.  And btw, the NIV puts it this way:

If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all. ....

Ahaz, and all that. | The Gospel Chronicles

Mencken's dictionary

Two of the reference books I acquired early and used often were books of quotations. They were useful, of course, but also fun just to browse. One was Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, now in its 17th edition. I no longer have a copy, Googling having replaced my need for such a source. But I still have the other and it is indispensable. H.L. Mencken's New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles From Ancient and Modern Sources is, unfortunately, no longer in print. Terry Teachout celebrates "Mencken's Notable, Quotable and Witty Compendium" here:

.... The fathomlessly cynical Mencken wisely warned his readers in the preface that the "New Dictionary" was aimed at "readers whose general tastes and ideas approximate my own…. The Congressman hunting for platitudes to embellish his eulogy upon a fallen colleague will find relatively little to his purpose."

He wasn't kidding. Look up "Evolution," for example, and you'll find this 1925 statement by the Bible-thumping evangelist Billy Sunday: "If a minister believes and teaches evolution, he is a stinking skunk, a hypocrite, and a liar." Look up "Critic" and you'll be confronted with a rich catalog of ripe insults, among them this passage from Samuel Coleridge's "Modern Critics": "All enmity, all envy, they disclaim, / Disinterested thieves of our good name: / Cool, sober murderers of their neighbor's fame." Or check out "Irish," under which can be found no less than a page of invidious comments, including a sideswipe from, of all people, Gerard Manley Hopkins: "The ambition of the Irish is to say a thing as everybody says it, only louder."

Most delightful of all are the proverbs. According to Mencken, "Special attention has been given to the proverbs of all peoples, for in them some of the soundest thinking of the human race is embodied, and also some of the most pungent wit." No doubt, but Mencken is widely suspected to have coined a considerable number of them himself. The entry on "Marriage," for instance, ends with a page and a half of anonymous witticisms, including this "German proverb": "The bachelor is a peacock, the engaged man a lion, and the married man a jackass." I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if that particular "proverb" turned out to be the work of the waggish editor of the "New Dictionary of Quotations." .... [more]

The book cover is from my copy.

H.L. Mencken's New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles From Ancient and Modern Sources | Mencken's Notable, Quotable and Witty Compendium | Sightings by Terry Teachout - WSJ.com

The mutual dependence of civil and religious liberty

As we approach the Fourth, an interesting essay about the origins of American attitudes toward religious liberty. Joseph Loconte, on the roots of American religious toleration:

On Sunday morning, Jan. 21, 1776, at a church in Woodstock, Va., Rev. Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg brought his sermon to a dramatic and unexpected crescendo. His text was taken from the book of Ecclesiastes. "The Bible tells us 'there is a time for all things,' and there is a time to preach and a time to pray," said Muhlenberg. "But the time for me to preach has passed away; and there is a time to fight, and that time has now come."

Stepping down from the pulpit, the minister took off his clerical robes to reveal the uniform of a colonel in the 8th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army. He had been personally recruited by George Washington. Outside the church door, drums sounded as men kissed their wives goodbye and strode down the aisle to enlist. In less than an hour, 162 men from Muhlenberg's congregation joined the patriot cause.

The "fighting parson" was a common sight in the American Revolution. Why? Because American Christianity—anchored in a Protestant understanding of religious freedom—gave its blessing to democratic self-government. ....

Despite their theological differences, colonial Americans shared a singular doctrine about the nature of religious faith: It could not be imposed by force but must be embraced freely by the mind and conscience of the believer. ....

It is now widely assumed that religious toleration—a hallmark of the secular, democratic West—grew out of the 18th-century Enlightenment. This may be true in much of Europe, but not in the United States. The evangelical preachers who supported the Revolution knew their Bible and believed it. They insisted that the gospel of Jesus upheld the rights of conscience in religious matters—Jesus never coerced anyone into following him, they pointed out—and that republican government would collapse without it.

Liberty of conscience became part of the American Creed. Embraced universally by the nation's clergymen, it quickened the thirst for political freedom. "There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire," warned John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence. "If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage." .... [more]

Loconte: They Preached Liberty - WSJ.com

Secret Knowledge

Irenaeus [c130-c202] was particularly known as a proponent of orthodoxy and enemy of Gnosticism. In recounting his role, this article explains the heresy:

.... The heresy’s starting-point is that this world is too fundamentally flawed to be the creation of a perfect God. Rather, the Gnostics speculated, it was the work of the Demiurge, a partially corrupted emanation from the supreme deity. The ultimate divinity remains hidden from mankind. Even so, buried deep within us, there are inklings of its existence, discernible by those inherently gifted with spiritual insight, or possessed of the appropriate secret formulae.

For the Gnostics, then, religious knowledge was confined to the superior intellect. To such sophisticates there could be no absolute truth or morality, merely intuitions gathered by the favoured few. As for Christ, while He might be regarded as a valued teacher, he could hardly be part of the Godhead.

Irenaeus perfectly captured the smugness that Gnosticism imbued: “As soon as a man has been won over to their way of salvation, he becomes so puffed up with conceit and self-importance that he imagines himself to be no longer in heaven or on earth, but to have already passed into the fullness of God’s powers.

“With the majestic air of a cock he goes strutting about, as if he had already embraced his angel.” ....

While some Gnostics gained a reputation for asceticism, Irenaeus railed against their sexual licence. What else, he demanded, could be expected of those who believed that “conduct is only good or evil in the eyes of man”? Irenaeus insisted that sinful men and women required a religious authority above and beyond their individual whims. Christian practice and morality, he taught, was laid down in apostolic tradition and Scripture. But which Scripture exactly? Irenaeus played an important part in rejecting various Gnostic texts and establishing the canon of the four gospels, later confirmed by Church councils. .... [more]

The priest who captured the smugness of Gnosticism | CatholicHerald.co.uk