The Melancholy Korean

William Tyndale was born about 1494 in Gloucestershire, took his B.A. at Oxford in 1512 and his M.A. in 1515, and apparently spent time in Cambridge. Even his enemy More said of him that he was “well known, before he went over the seas, for a man of right good living, studious and well learned in scripture, and in divers places in England was very well liked, and did great good with preaching.” He was for some time tutor to a local Gloucestershire family. He disturbed local divines by routing them at the dinner table with chapter and place of scripture, and by translating Erasmus’s Enchiridion militis Christiani. He was accused of heresy, but nothing could be proved. “Soon after,” Foxe records,

Master Tyndall happened to be in the company of a learned man and in communing and disputing with him drove him to that issue, that the learned man said: ‘We were better be without God’s law than the Pope’s.’ Master Tyndall, hearing that, answered him: ‘I defy the Pope and all his laws’; and said: ‘If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.’

To pursue his intention of translating the Bible, he offered himself to the Bishop of London, Tunstall, with an example of his skill as a translator from Greek in his hand — a speech of Isocrates. Tunstall, thoush a friend of Erasmus’s, rebuffed him. Realising he could not translate the Bible in England, Tyndale accepted the financial help of a London cloth-merchant and sailed for Hamburg in 1524. He never returned to England. He lived a hand-to-mouth existence, dodging the Roman Catholic authorities. In the autumn of 1525, he and his amanuensis moved to Cologne and began printing the New Testament. He was betrayed and fled up the Rhine to Worms. Here he started printing again, and the first complete New Testament in English appeared towards the end of February 1526. Copies began to arrive in England about a month later. In October, Tunstall began to have all the copies he could trace gathered and burned at St Paul’s Cross. Still they circulated. Tunstall arranged to buy them before they left the continent, so that they could be burned in bulk. Tyndale used the money for further translation and revision. He began the Old Testament, apparently in Antwerp: Foxe tells how, sailing to Hamburg to print Deuteronomy, he was shipwrecked and lost everything, ‘both money, his copies, and time’, and (Foxe says, with Coverdale) started all over again, completing the Pentateuch between Easter and December. 

Back in Antwerp, Tyndale printed it in early January 1530. Copies were in England by the summer. In 1531 he translated Jonah; in 1531 a revised Genesis; in 1534 his completely revised New Testament — very slightly revised again in 1535. the same year, the fanatical Englishman Henry Phillips betrayed him to the Antwerp authorities and had him kidnapped. He was imprisoned in Vilvorde, near Brussels, for sixteen months. A letter from him, in Latin, has survived:

I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh, which is much increased in this cell… My overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out… And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening: it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and Hebrew Dictionary, that I may pass the time in study.

Even Thomas Cromwell, the most powerful man next to King Henry VIII, moved to get him released; but Phillips in Belgium, acting for the papal authorities, blocked all the moves. On the morning of 6 October 1536, now in the hands of the secular forces, he was taken to the place of execution, tied to the sake, strangled and burned.

(David Daniell)

Rev Michael Ellick, Jean Montrevil, Rev Dr Donna Schaper

Abraham Heschel, The Prophets:

We and the prophet have no language in common. To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet it is dreadful. So many deeds of charity are done, so much decency radiates day and night; yet to the prophet satiety of the conscience is prudery and flight from responsibility. Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. To us life is often serene, in the prophet’s eye the world reels in confusion. The prophet makes no concession to man’s capacity. Exhibiting little understanding for human weakness, he seems unable to extenuate the culpability of man.

Martin Luther King, Jr at The Riverside Church, April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination:

Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr Bennett, Dr Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” 

Left to right: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, historian Henry Steele Commager, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. John Bennett, President of Union Theological Seminary

“Although this was not the first he had expressed opposition to the Vietnam War, it was the first time he linked it to the civil rights movement. And it was the first time that he directly attacked the Johnson administration’s war policy.”

Kelly Miller Smith, Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University, 1983:

Martin Luther King was and remains the dominant religious personage of the twentieth century. His social crisis message was not only communicated through the uncommon power of his well-chosen and eloquent words; his very presence communicated a message that depicted the essence of the Christian faith. Since there was such blending of words and work on the part of King, it would be inappropriate to speak of his preaching apart from his service. No mere recital of a few of his accomplishments can exhaust the meaning of King any more than a timepiece can measure the length of eternity…

Perhaps more than anyone else of the present era, Martin Luther King calls this generation to creative, effective, and persistent social ministry. This ministry cannot be accomplished simply by agitation to make his birthday a national holiday, as important as that would be for the soul of America. This ministry must be carried out through the proclamation of the uncompromising Word of a caring God and through the concrete courageous action required by that Word.

On the Drum Major Instinct:

To Pat Robertson

Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Republic, March 1988:

Robertson is the son of A. Willis Robertson, who was elected a congressman from Virginia in 1932, when Pat was two years old, and a senator in 1946, when Pat was sixteen. The father’s plans for the son were firm: young Pat would go into politics. He guided the boy to the right schools (Washington and Lee, Yale Law), looked after him while he was in the Marines (arranging for him to be in the Korean combat zone without actually being in combat, according to evidence adduced in Robertson’s abandoned lawsuit against former Representative Pete McCloskey), got a job for him on the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee, lined up a Virginia law firm for him, even introduced him to nice, suitably well-connected Baptist girls from the right Tidewater families. On the surface Pat seemed a dutiful enough son, but underneath he was in fitful, rebellious agony. One by one, he thwarted his father’s plans for him. He got a girl pregnant—a Catholic girl, no less—and married her in her seventh month. He flunked the bar exam. He moved to New York and went into business in a firm making audio components. He drank, swore, played poker, and, as he once told a Washington Post interviewer, spent his evenings in “upholstered sewers called nightclubs.”

Tillich:

Fundamentalism fails to make contact with the present situation, not because it speaks from beyond every situation, but because it speaks from a situation of the past. It elevates something finite and transitory to infinite and eternal validity. In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware.

John Henry Cardinal Newman:

But as regarded what was called Evangelical Religion or Puritanism, there was more to cause alarm. I observed upon its organization; but on the other hand it had no intellectual basis; no internal idea, no principle of unity, no theology. “Its adherents,” I said, “are already separating from each other; they will melt away like snow-drift. It has no straightforward view on any one point, on which it professes to teach, and to hide its poverty, it has dressed itself out in a maze of words. We have no dread of it at all; we only fear what it may lead to. It does not stand on intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a position; it does but occupy the space between contending powers, Catholic Truth and Rationalism. Then indeed will be the stern encounter, when two real and living principles, simple, entire, and consistent, one in the Church, the other out of it, at length rush upon each other, contending not for names and words, or half-views, but for elementary notions and distinctive moral characters.

Rev Dr Harry Emerson Fosdick, from his sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win?, delivered on Sunday, May 21, 1922, at First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York:

Nevertheless, it is true that just now the Fundamentalists are giving us one of the worst exhibitions of bitter intolerance that the churches of this country have ever seen. As one watches them and listens to them, he remembers the remark of General Armstrong of the Hampton Institute: “Cantankerousness is worse than heterodoxy.” There are many opinions in the field of modern controversy concerning which I am not sure whether they are right or wrong, but there is one thing I am sure of: courtesy and kindliness and tolerance and humility and fairness are right. Opinions may be mistaken; love never is. 

You felt it too.

“Where are the girls that would set my heart on fire?” you asked.

How many times did you ask that question, Martin?  Those dark and lonely nights, when you knelt beside your bed, afraid, trembling before your destiny.  “Take this cup away from me,” you begged.  “Let this cup pass from me!”

The foolish, desperate question resounded in your soul, maybe for a second, a day, a month—moments you lacked faith, but His will be done, and, steeling yourself to the task, you told Him:

“Not as I will, but as You will.” 

Käthe von Porada was “so enamored of Max Beckmann that she sacrificed her marriage, family, and possessions to champion his art.” 

Then, one day, the church secretary introduced you to a pretty girl from the New England Conservatory, Coretta Scott, and, with her at your side, Martin, the glory of the Lord was made known to all the people.

Amen.

Bonhoeffer:

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Montgomery, September, 1958.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, The Word of God, which he speaks as it please him. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

NOTE: This sermon was delivered by the Rev Dr Donna Schaper, Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church, on Sunday, January 10, 2010

When we woke up in our several beds on the morning of December 30, 2009, we were one people. Now we are a different people. One of our members, Jean Montrevil was detained at his regular check in and first put in a detention center on Varick Street, right down the street from our solemn assembly. He was later moved to the detention center in York, Pennsylvania where he now resides, precariously perched on the tip of deportation from his country, my country and your country. For the details of this captivity, please come this afternoon for the gathering at 2 or refer to the web site. There will be several people at the welcome table who can give you a thumbnail sketch of this injustice, which is a dam in the river of justice and blocking the flow of the everlasting streams.

I have a problem this morning because all of you are on different learning curves on this egregious manner. Some of you know how these things can be, how a father of four and husband of one can be summarily and unjustly uprooted by the state. Others are just figuring it out. My own husband, who is intimate with me and with this matter, asked me in a quiet moment yesterday, can you explain to me how this could be happening? I heard his plea and while I can explain it legally, I cannot explain it morally What is happening is just plain wrong, in addition to being stupid. Like the government’s current intention to not even allow some immigrants to BUY health insurance, Jean’s captivity by the state is stupid, impractical, uneconomical and risks putting a whole family on welfare, which welfare the same punitive tax payers who want to be safe above all, will end up paying for. Immorality joins stupidity in this potential deportation.

Rev Eleanor Harrison, Rev Susan Switzer, C.B. Stewart and Rev Sherrilynn Posey arrested Jan 7, 2010, as part of nonviolent civil disobedience demanding the release of nationally renowned immigrant rights leader, Jean Montrevil

Still others of you are here for the first time, hoping for some kind of spiritual experience to get you through your week, which is filled with its own detentions and captivities. And others of you are remembering that you joined 17 others in being arrested this week; outside of Varick Street, and that you have a court date on March 8. We are necessarily in different places of involvement in something, which at one level is just another oppression of another good person. You may care more about the homeless woman who shivered on your step last night or the fact that you can’t yet get health insurance. You may be more involved with your own addiction or the early failure of your New Year’s resolutions. Forgive me if I overdo one matter on behalf of creating a spiritual floor for us.

Today I want to stick to my topic, which is about appreciating our own religion in the midst of many competitors for our spiritual attention. Jean is one doorway to all the rest, including the doorway to things, which you may think are small, compared to his grievance.

Today we need to connect the dots. Yes, that is what the President said; we must connect the dots in order to be secure. One of the dots is Jean and the thousands like him, already detained. Another of the dots is the way our own religions are too pathetic to stop injustice. Another of the dots is the way we are overwhelmed with clusters of injustice. There is a good word for this cluster, and some of you know what I mean. It is like cluster freight or a cluster of fears or a cluster you fill in the blanks. The American people are experiencing a tsunami of trouble; so fierce are its waters that we can barely gather our forces to focus on one. But, and here starts the good news. We have gathered with hundreds of others this week to face what has happened to Jean and to say no to it. For a brief update on the situation, just let me say that we have a legal, political and spiritual glimmer of hope right now that Jean will not be deported. It is only a glimmer. But it is a glimmer. Again, I don’t want to get into the details of that glimmer so much as to announce that there is a glimmer. You may clap now.

The spiritual floor for this glimmer of hope in the face of the cluster of fears starts now. It begins with the text from the prophet Amos which has God announcing how sick God is of pathetic religion. Pathetic religion is a bunch of rituals which are empty. Pathetic religion is a bunch of symbols without any relationship to human reality. Pathetic religion is frequently the victim of nationalism or state security. Many of us are triple agents in these terms. We say we are Christians but we are more pantheistic than not, more nationalistic than not. When the president, whichever president, it matters not, implies that the purpose of the state is to protect us from dangerous others and we bow down in compliance, we are singing noisy songs or banging out music on bad harps. We have burnt offerings and grain offerings but no resistance to the lie. Let’s start with the big lie that is the basis for Jean’s captivity. The big lie is that we can fight off terrorism by deporting people or having more wars or better-organized national security agents. Terrorism will not be fought off by torture or war or deportation. Justice rolling down like waters, internationally and not just domestically, will tame terrorism. When righteousness comes, people will stop bombing us Religion that lets itself be lied to by the state is not religion at all. It is triple agent religion, saying it believes in the power of an almighty God who is our only security and whose laws is our delight but actually doing whatever the state tells it to do. At the heart of Jean’s situation is the absurdity of our foreign and domestic policy regarding terrorism. Of course it is scary when people get bombs on airplanes or penetrate the security systems we idolize. Very scary. If we really wanted to stop that kind of terrorism, we would not house potential terrorists together for years in Guantanamo so they could cook up better plots and more hates. We would not torture, hoard, or kill.

We are in a religious fight here at the deepest of levels. We hear a God who is international, and not just American; tell us that there is no delight in our solemn assemblies, bunt offerings, grain offerings, and fatted animals. Instead this God wants one thing and that is for justice to roll down like mighty water. When that justice rolls down, we will be safe, saved, secure, and know salvation. Until that justice rolls down, there will be fights over security. At the deepest level of religion, we are not interested in our own petty safety. We are interested in it, of course, but we are more interested in justice for all and to just for ourselves. Some people have decided they need to be afraid of Jean, who did two crimes, as a youth, paid for them in prison, and now is paying again for them. Why be afraid of Jean? Because we are so deep in a cluster of fear that we don’t know how to get out. This cluster of fear will soon keep immigrants from getting health insurance. It has already drained the national treasury in undeclared and immoral and ineffective wars. If we want to connect the dots, we need to connect the dot of Jean’s oppression ot the national insecurity state.

The great sociologist, C. Wright Mills said, “The biographies of men and women, the kinds of individuals they variously become, cannot be understood without reference to the historical structures in which the milieu of every day life are organized.” Jean is right now the victim of historical structures, which now organize every day life, which structures are at their base petty. By petty I mean self-serving, selfish, and deeply nationalistic. Americans were attacked, Americans need to protect themselves, we are deserving of any kind or level of protection because we are the best of all people. God is laughing at this. Just laughing but in that painful kind of laugh which goes to tears of shame. There is nothing mighty about a river that flows only for one kind of people. It is actually terribly weak and invites others to attack it.

I said that Jean has a glimmer of hope right now. This congregation has worked tirelessly for over two years to work the system to make sure this captivity did not happen. It has happened. We are deeply sad when not just plain apoplectic. Because of this grave emergency, our efforts have quadrupled in size. We have been joined by a national movement that has said enough, enough, and enough. We have corralled and lassoed every political person in New York City who we could find. We have sat in on the street. W e have put up an enormous web site. 78 organizations have joined our efforts officially. We have talked to dozens of people in the press. Riverside Church has called an emergency council meeting for today to decide about whether they want to offer physical sanctuary to some of our other families who are equally endangered. Our glimmer is lighting up the hearts and faces of thousands of Americans who like us are tired of triple agent religion. Triple agent religion is pathetic and just keeps shifting its loyalties in a kind of espionage of spirituality. Something different is happening here. We are getting focused, not just on one man but also on how the injustice done to him is the link to the cluster of injustices our nation faces.

Rev Dr Donna Schaper getting arrested, as part of nonviolent civil disobedience, at Jan 5, 2010 rally to Free Jean

So let me summarize here with my little scaffolding about religion and its imposters. Religion that does not demand justice is not religion. It is triple agent religion. It is spiritual espionage and pathetic in its loyalties. Religion that does demand justice has deep action at its heart. By deep action I mean action that connects the dots between one man’s captivity and that of a nation’s heart and soul. Deep action reveals the apostasy of solemn assemblies that don’t do justice. Deep action shifts power, and we are experiencing the ever so slight shift of the tectonic plate. Ever so slight it is but it is shifting. And we are the shifters. We are shifting because we have been shifted, shifted to see how wrong our efforts at national security are. Once we have seen that, we can’t not see the rest. We will not be safe till others are safe. Deportation will not make people safe. Welcoming immigrants and growing a great openhearted nation will make us safe.

There is now a national movement for Jean, and you are at the heart of it. I almost want to do a roll of honor but that would sound too much like the noise of a solemn assembly. But I must give a few images of the shifting. Our offices were so full of humming computers and people all week that we got a message from our internet people. We are only paying for ten on line experiences at a time and had gone over our band width limit. When we explained why to the person with the concern, he said, “wow, that’s great.” Lenny Fox made sure we got the microphones for the rallies, which was no small thing. Many of you shivered through them.

I have always wanted to be like Leo Lionni’s Frederick. You do know Frederick, don’t you? He is one of the great children’s book’s characters. Frederick saves colors for the other mice so that in the winter they don’t get to grey. There is a ton of color happening in and around us right now. Watching Clover Vail be put into the police paddy wagon, I just wanted to paint the contrast of her white plastic hand cuffs and grey coat. One of the police officers took a good look at Lulu Fogarty and said he was thinking about coming to Sunday School himself. My assigned cop realized I had come out of my cuff links with ease and said, just put them back on when you get out of the paddy wagon. It’s all for the show, you know.

Jean’s son Jahsiah

In DC on Friday, with one of our board members, Father Mark Hallinan, Janay Montrevil and her three kids. At one point, when Janay told her story to a congressional aid, she started crying. Then Father Hallinan started crying. Then the children started crying. Then the aid started crying. This is what we mean by spiritual transformation. We have begun to shed tears over the stupidity. The tears are the mighty rolling river of justice.

At another point, on what seemed to be our sixteenth security check, going from house office building to house office building, and Craig was carrying one of the kids, whose jackets and scarves we had to keep taking off, and we were all getting bored with the “who gets to push the elevator button” game, Jamiah said, “Where’s Daddy?” I knew Jean was with us in spirit and if anything just shocked and awed that we have put together so much energy for him this week. I think we are a little shocked too. Articles in CNN, Sunday School teachers in jail because how could she face her children, knowing that their father had been detained? Sequential arrests by people who didn’t know each other at all but now do. Money raised to keep our staff going..yes you may contribute.

Amusing things happened in each congressional office. At one point, Jamiah was wearing one of Charlie Rangel’s African masks in his office, as our legal back up team in New York was sending us non stop messages on our several blackberries. At the last hour on Friday, by the work of 7 of us in DC and literally dozens behind us on the net in New York, the same dozens who had been working all day and all night all week, we were told that Jean would not be deported on Monday. New information and new legal efforts are at work. That is our glimmer.

On the way home on the train Josiah totally took apart in the large ball of rubber bands someone had given him to play with. They were all over the train, amusing our entire car. This ball of rubber bands gave me the image of community with which I want to end. Somebody added one of those rubber bands at a time to the large circled web that it was. That was our action all week.

If you don’t want to be a triple agent in your religion, feigning commitment to a justice oriented God but living by the state’s self-protecting rules, all the while telling people you are spiritually drained and that you need a shift, stretch yourself now and join our ball of energy. Wrap yourself around it. We won’t let Josiah pull you off…. and some day maybe we’ll have the joy of taking all our parts off the center of this activity and putting them back together in a different way. For now, please stretch. Stretch to see one glimmer of justice that might grow into a flame. For now do us the favor of not snapping or popping or stretching yourself too far. There is a cluster freight of stuff trying to keep you down, trying to break your spirit, trying to sell you lies, lies that are actually very dangerous to you as well as being dangerous to others. For now every time you go through one more security check, ask yourself where your true security lies.

Amen

NOTE: Jean’s letter is addressed to the Rev Dr Donna Schaper, Senior Minister at Judson Memorial Church, where Jean and his family worship and where he helped to co-found the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City.

January 1, 2010

Dear Donna,

I have always been afraid that the day would come when I would not have the opportunity to say goodbye and to thank you and the whole congregation for their love and support that they have been giving me from the very first day that I came to Judson. For that reason, you may read this letter to the congregation for me during the service, and you may post it to the listserv. Thank you.

I love life; even though life has not been easy for me, I will continue loving it. At birth we call babies miracles, bundles of joy, we make promises to be there for them, to protect them and to cherish them, I will not be able to do that for my babies, their future is now bleak and very fragile.

It is important for the world to know that although I did break the law many years ago, I am not getting deported because of that, I am getting deported because of unjust laws, just like the ones before, which no longer exist and I know one day this same law that just destroyed my family will no longer exist.

I just want to thank everyone NO EXCEPTIONS all those who accompanied me to my check-ins and all those who did not get a chance to come but who showed me so much love and support. Thank you for showing me that there are people who care out there, for letting me know that it’s ok to help someone in need, thank you for showing me that no matter who you are or where you are from you are still a human being and you should be treated like one. I am so sorry that I will not have the opportunity to give back to Judson but I promise to take all the love that you guys gave me to share and spread it wherever life takes me.

Although I cannot remember everyone’s names I do want to recognize those who gave me so much and yet expected nothing in return.

Jane Treuhold, my Angel, thank you so much for everything. I am so sorry that you had to witness this, I saw the pain in your eyes when the officers were escorting me, it seems at Judson when you are friends, it’s for life so I know that we have not seen the last of each other.

There is only one Lenny Fox in this world and I am so grateful that I met him, thank you Lenny.

My best wishes for your wife Ginny.

Grace Goodman, I will never forget the welcome you gave me on my first day at Judson, I have so much love and respect for you, thank you so much for everything you did for me and for all you do for the New Sanctuary Movement.

Keen Berger, you put your reputation on the line for me from day one, before you even knew me, for you there was no limitation on what you would do to stop me from getting deported, for that I thank you so much.

Michael Ellick, I wishfully hope that you were getting deported with me; because I know then I would be ok, thank you for being the best friend everyone should have.

Donna, you treated me with so much love and you gave me so much, you made me feel like I was your son, I am so glad I met you and I cannot wait to see you again. Thank God you love to travel.

I have to keep this list short because I am afraid of forgetting someone, thank you to all the Susan(s), all the Jane(s), all the Michael(s), all the Martha(s), Bob Happy 82nd Birthday, bring your bike to Haiti.

Right now I am in York, Pennsylvania, they said that I would not be here for long, my next stop would be Texas from there to Santo Domingo then a bus ride to Haiti. I will keep you guys up to date on this journey. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Love always,

Jean Montrevil

Paul Tillich:

There is another kind of doubt, which we could call skeptical in contrast to the scientific doubt which we could call methodological. The skeptical doubt is an attitude toward all the beliefs of man, from sense experiences to religious creeds. It is more an attitude than an assertion. For as an assertion it would conflict with itself. Even the assertion that there is no possible truth for man would be judged by the skeptical principle and could not stand as an assertion. Genuine skeptical doubt does not use the form of an assertion. It is an attitude of actually rejecting any certainty. Therefore, it cannot be refuted logically. It does not transform its attitude into a proposition. Such an attitude necessarily leads either to despair or cynicism, or to both alternatively.

And often, if this alternative becomes intolerable, it leads to indifference and the attempt to develop an attitude of complete unconcern. But since man is that being who is essentially concerned about his being, such an escape finally breaks down. This is the dynamics of skeptical doubt. it has an awakening and liberating function, but it also can prevent the development of a centered personality. For personality is not possible without faith. The despair about truth by the skeptic shows that truth is still his infinite passion. The cynical superiority over every concrete truth shows that truth is still taken seriously and that the impact of the question of an ultimate concern is strongly felt. The skeptic, so long as he is a serious skeptic, is not without faith, even though it has no concrete content.

Heinrich Hofmann, Christ in Gethsemane, gift of John D Rockefeller, Jr to The Riverside Church

The doubt which is implicit in every act of faith is neither the methodological nor the skeptical doubt. It is the doubt which accompanies every risk. It is not the permanent doubt of the scientist, and it is not the transitory doubt of the skeptic, but it is the doubt of him who is ultimately concerned about a concrete content. One could call it existential doubt, in contrast to the methodological and the skeptical doubt. It does not question whether a special proposition is true or false. It does not reject every concrete truth, but it is aware of the element of insecurity in every existential truth. At the same time, the doubt which is implied in faith accepts this insecurity and takes it into itself in an act of courage. Faith includes courage. Therefore, it can include the doubt about itself. Certainly faith and courage are not identical. Faith has other elements besides courage and courage has other functions beyond affirming faith. Nevertheless, an act in which courage accepts risk belongs to the dynamics of faith…

This insight into this structure of faith and doubt is of tremendous practical importance. Many Christians, as well as members of other religious groups, feel anxiety, guilt and despair about what they call ‘loss of faith.’ But serious doubt is confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of the concern, its unconditional character. This also refers to those who as future or present ministers of a church experience not only scientific doubt about doctrinal statements—this is as necessary and perpetual as theology is a perpetual need—but also existential doubt about the message of their church, e.g., that Jesus can be called the Christ. The criterion according to which they should judge themselves is the seriousness and ultimacy of their concern about the content of both their faith and their doubt.

Hadi Deeb, from this essay:

Since Tillich is not a mystery writer, we can come straight to the point: Faith is the meaning of life. Or, at least, it is what we perceive the meaning of our particular life to be. Restricted by his desire to epigrammatic, Tillich concerns us with what we have to come to call our ultimate concern, that is to say, the conclusion we make actively or passively about why we keep ourselves alive in the first place. An alcoholic may declare — and openly demonstrate — that the bottom of the next bottle is his only aim; yet his true goal may be far more profound, even when attended by the usual psychological poppycock. Despite his addiction or weakness, the alcoholic has faith in the machinery that fills his body and mind with intoxicants. These intoxicants may make him forget or make him remember; they may ease physical or emotional pain; they may render him more palatable to others or others to himself. Whatever the case, he is convinced every morning that he rises without taking his own life, that his actions and motivations correspond to a system that runs the entirety of his existence. His faith is embodied in that system the same way that the entirety of a Christian is embodied in his faith in the Cross. That both remain abiding symbols for what they represent does not diminish the impact of faith in either of those two lives. The only question we need to ask is what on earth or beyond the faith of alcoholic might entail. As it were, the answer is as simple as the idolatry that has pervaded the majority of our culture: Faith in things not of ultimate concern.

Critics may stop after a few short pages with the retort: How is everything we believe in construed as faith? But again, they will not have understood the crux of the argument. Belief is not faith because belief can be expressed by an act of the will and, as it were, expressed in detail in language that need not be symbolic. Faith for Tillich is what moves us to move; in a way the dynamics of faith is a pleonasm. You may have faith in money because you perceive money to be the means by which you can acquire what you really want; you may also have faith in money because it, unlike faith or language, appears to enjoy universal acceptance. You may also construct a world in which you could never be disappointed with anything except the world itself, since you take no risks so as to endure no potential for suffering or regret. Tillich suggests, however, that it is impossible to separate man from faith if man is seen as having any direction or willpower at all. Whatever activities a man may pursue, he is bound by intractable faith. The difference again between one man and another resides in the difference between their ultimate concerns.

Κατα Λουκαν, 9:57-62:

Καὶ πορευομένων αὐτῶν ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ εἶπέν τις πρὸς αὐτόν Ἀκολουθήσω σοι ὅπου ἂν ἀπέρχῃ. καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς Αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις, ὁ δὲ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἔχει ποῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν κλίνῃ. Εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς ἕτερον Ἀκολούθει μοι. ὁ δὲ εἶπεν Ἐπίτρεψόν μοι πρῶτον ἀπελθόντι θάψαι τὸν πατέρα μου. εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ Ἄφες τοὺς νεκροὺς θάψαι τοὺς ἑαυτῶν νεκρούς, σὺ δὲ ἀπελθὼν διάγγελλε τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ. εἶπεν δὲ καὶ ἕτερος Ἀκολουθήσω σοι, κύριε· πρῶτον δὲ ἐπίτρεψόν μοι ἀποτάξασθαι τοῖς εἰς τὸν οἶκόν μου. εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς Οὐδεὶς ἐπιβαλὼν τὴν χεῖρα ἐπ’ ἄροτρον καὶ βλέπων εἰς τὰ ὀπίσω εὔθετός ἐστιν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ.

The Gospel according to St Luke, 9:57-62:

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

Geshe Michael Roach:

The royalty of ancient India were the driving force in the economic and political life of their countries: They were nothing less than the exact equivalent of the business community in modern Western society. When we speak about the Buddha and Buddhist ideas nowadays, we tend to think of an odd-looking, oriental man with a bump on his head and—if we have seen one of those Chinese statues—a big smile and a big tummy. But think rather of a tall and graceful prince, traveling quietly through the country, speaking with knowledge, conviction, and compassion of ideas that every man or woman can use to succeed in life, and to make this life meaningful.

And think of his followers not just as shaved-head mendicants sitting on the ground cross-legged, chanting om at the wall. Perhaps the greatest masters of Buddhism in ancient times were the royalty, those with the drive and talent to manage entire countries and economies.

Victor Niederhoffer:

Victor Niederhoffer has specialized in trading futures and options since 1979. He began his business career after studying statistics and economics at Harvard (B.A. 1964) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1969), and teaching at the University of California, Berkeley (1967-1972). In 1965, he founded Niederhoffer, Cross and Zeckhauser, Inc., which became one of the leading finders involved in selling privately held firms to public companies. With Dan Grossman, his partner for 40 years, Niederhoffer also bought many privately held firms.

Niederhoffer is proudest of having a benevolent influence on people that came in contact with him. At least a dozen employees whom he started out or taught became billionaires or multi-centimillionaires, including Monroe Trout, Stu Rose, John Hummer and Roy Niederhoffer, all of whom are famous in money management or M&A. Niederhoffer’s interests include the study and implementation of counting, ecology, electronics, entrepreneurship, free markets, music, sports, statistics, and strategy in checkers and chess. Favorite authors include Patrick O’ Brian, Cervantes, Galton, Rand, Jack Schaeffer, Hugo, Melville, and Twain.

He is well known in the field of racquet sports, where he was the undefeated national squash champion for a decade (1965-1975) and claimed the world squash title in 1976. Victor Niederhoffer is married to Susan Cole Niederhoffer and has seven children. Victor Niederhoffer believes the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness and achievement, and that the voluntary transactions that flow naturally out of an enterprise system are the key to material and personal freedom, and peace.

Aristotle:

ἔτι ὅσα μὲν φύσει ἡμῖν παραγίνεται, τὰς δυνάμεις τούτων πρότερον κομιζόμεθα, ὕστερον δὲ τὰς ἐνεργείας ἀποδίδομεν (ὅπερ ἐπὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων δῆλον· οὐ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ πολλάκις ἰδεῖν ἢ πολλάκις ἀκοῦσαι τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἐλάβομεν,ἀλλ’ ἀνάπαλιν ἔχοντες ἐχρησάμεθα, οὐ χρησάμενοι ἔσχομεν)· τὰς δ’ ἀρετὰς λαμβάνομεν ἐνεργήσαντες πρότερον, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων τεχνῶν· ἃ γὰρ δεῖ μαθόντας ποιεῖν, ταῦτα ποιοῦντες μανθάνομεν, οἷον οἰκοδομοῦντες οἰκοδόμοι γίνονται καὶ κιθαρίζοντες κιθαρισταί·

οὕτω δὴ καὶ τὰ μὲν δίκαια πράττοντες δίκαιοι γινόμεθα, τὰ δὲ σώφρονα σώφρονες, τὰ δ’ ἀνδρεῖα ἀνδρεῖοι

Moreover, the faculties given us by nature are bestowed on us first in a potential form; we exhibit their actual exercise afterwards. This is clearly so with our senses: we did not acquire the faculty of sight or hearing by repeatedly seeing or repeatedly listening, but the other way about—because we had the senses we began to use them, we did not get them by using them. The virtues on the other hand we acquire by first having actually practised them, just as we do the arts. We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it: for instance, men become builders by building houses, harpers by playing on the harp.

Similarly we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

ἔτι ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν καὶ διὰ τῶν αὐτῶν καὶ γίνεται πᾶσα ἀρετὴ καὶ φθείρεται, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τέχνη· ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ κιθαρίζειν καὶ οἱ ἀγαθοὶ καὶ κακοὶ γίνονται κιθαρισταί. ἀνάλογον δὲ καὶ οἰκοδόμοι καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ πάντες· ἐκ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ εὖ οἰκοδομεῖν ἀγαθοὶ οἰκοδόμοι ἔσονται, ἐκ δὲ τοῦ κακῶς κακοί.

εἰ γὰρ μὴ οὕτως εἶχεν, οὐδὲν ἂν ἔδει τοῦ διδάξοντος, ἀλλὰ πάντες ἂν ἐγίνοντο ἀγαθοὶ ἢ κακοί. οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἔχει· πράττοντες γὰρ τὰ ἐν τοῖς συναλλάγμασι τοῖς πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους γινόμεθα οἳ μὲν δίκαιοι οἳ δὲ ἄδικοι, πράττοντες δὲ τὰ ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς καὶ ἐθιζόμενοι φοβεῖσθαι ἢ θαρρεῖν οἳ μὲν ἀνδρεῖοι οἳ δὲ δειλοί. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἔχει καὶ τὰ περὶ τὰς ὀργάς· οἳ μὲν γὰρ σώφρονες καὶ πρᾶοι γίνονται, οἳ δ’ ἀκόλαστοι καὶ ὀργίλοι,οἳ μὲν ἐκ τοῦ οὑτωσὶ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀναστρέφεσθαι, οἳ δὲ ἐκ τοῦ οὑτωσί. καὶ ἑνὶ δὴ λόγῳ ἐκ τῶν ὁμοίων ἐνεργειῶν αἱ ἕξεις γίνονται.

διὸ δεῖ τὰς ἐνεργείας ποιὰς ἀποδιδόναι· κατὰ γὰρ τὰς τούτων διαφορὰς ἀκολουθοῦσιν αἱ ἕξεις. οὐ μικρὸν οὖν διαφέρει τὸ οὕτως ἢ οὕτως εὐθὺς ἐκ νέων ἐθίζεσθαι, ἀλλὰ πάμπολυ, μᾶλλον δὲ τὸ πᾶν.

Again, the actions from or through which any virtue is produced are the same as those through which it also is destroyed—just as is the case with skill in the arts, for both the good harpers and the bad ones are produced by harping, and similarly with builders and all the other craftsmen: as you will become a good builder from building well, so you will become a bad one from building badly.

Were this not so, there would be no need for teachers of the arts, but everybody would be born a good or bad craftsman as the case might be. The same then is true of the virtues. It is by taking part in transactions with our fellow-men that some of us become just and others unjust; by acting in dangerous situations and forming a habit of fear or of confidence we become courageous or cowardly. And the same holds good of our dispositions with regard to the appetites, and anger; some men become temperate and gentle, others profligate and irascible, by actually comporting themselves in one way or the other in relation to those passions. In a word, our moral dispositions are formed as a result of the corresponding activities.

Hence it is incumbent on us to control the character of our activities, since on the quality of these depends the quality of our dispositions. It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from childhood in one set of habits or another; on the contrary it is of very great, or rather of supreme, importance.

Geshe Roach:

The business world today is without question a vast pool of the most talented people in the country. They have drive and they have the ability to do what must be done to get something done, as no one else does. They churn out billions of dollars’ worth of goods and services like clockwork, constantly improving products, constantly cutting down the time and money it takes to make them. Innovation and efficiency are a way of life, as in no other sector of our society.

Business people are thoughtful, resilient, thorough, and insightful. Those who are not do not survive, for business has its own purity, its own process of natural selection: No one will put up with you for very long, at any level in a company, if you do not produce. The ownership and management, even more your own fellow workers, will expel you from their midst if you fail to pitch in and produce. I have seen this process happen often; it’s like your body rejecting a foreign antibody.

The greatest businesspeople have a deep inner capacity—they hunger, as we all do, but perhaps more strongly—for a true spiritual life. They have seen more of the world than most of us; they know what it can give them, and what it cannot. They demand a logic in spiritual things; they demand that the method and the results be clear, as clear as the terms in any business deal. Often they have dropped out from an active spiritual life—not because they are greedy or lazy, but simply because no path has measured up to their demands.

Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization. This self-realization is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures. But its author surely did not write it to establish that doctrine. The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization. That which is to be found, more or less clearly, spread out here and there in Hindu religious books, has been brought out in the clearest possible language in the Gita even at the risk of repetition.

That matchless remedy is renunciation of the fruits of action.

This is the center round which the Gita is woven. This renunciation is the central sun around which devotion, knowledge, and the rest revolve like planets. The body has been likened to a prison. There must be action where there is body. And yet all religions proclaim that it is possible for man, by treating the body as the temple of God, to attain freedom. Every action is tainted, be it ever so trivial. How can the body be made the temple of God? In other words how can one be free from action, i.e., from the taint of sin?

The Gita has answered the question in decisive language: By desireless action; by renouncing fruits of action; by dedicating all activities to God, i.e., surrendering oneself to Him body and soul.

*** 

श्रीभगवानुवाच |

अनाश्रितः कर्मफलं कार्यं कर्म करोति यः |

स संन्यासी च योगी च न निरग्निर्न चाक्रियः ||६-१||

यं संन्यासमिति प्राहुर्योगं तं विद्धि पाण्डव |

न ह्यसंन्यस्तसङ्कल्पो योगी भवति कश्चन ||६-२||

आरुरुक्षोर्मुनेर्योगं कर्म कारणमुच्यते |

योगारूढस्य तस्यैव शमः कारणमुच्यते ||६-३||

यदा हि नेन्द्रियार्थेषु न कर्मस्वनुषज्जते

सर्वसङ्कल्पसंन्यासी योगारूढस्तदोच्यते ||६-४||

***

The Lord said:

He who performs all obligatory action, without depending on the fruit thereof, is a sannyasi and a yogi—not the man who neglects the sacrificial fire nor he who neglects action.

What is called sannyasa, know thou to be yoga, O Pandava; for none can become a yogi who has not renounced selfish purposes.

For the man who seeks to scale the heights of yoga, action is said to be the means. For the same man, when he has scaled those heights, repose is said to be the means.

When a man is not attached either to the objects of sense or to actions and sheds all selfish purpose, then he is said to have scaled the heights of yoga.

John Doberstein:

Through Hans von Dohnanyi, the husband of his sister Christel, he learned something of the crisis that was centering in General Fritsch and the secret plans for the overthrow of Hitler being made by General Beck and others. The man who felt all the force of the pacifist position and weighed the “cost of discipleship” concluded in the depths of his soul that to withdraw from those who were participating in the political and military resistance would be irresponsible cowardice and flight from reality.

“Not,” as his friend Bethge says, “that he believed that everyone must act as he did, but from where he was standing, he could see no possibility of retreat into any sinless, righteous, pious refuge. The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from responsibility. He saw that sin falling upon him and he took his stand.” Here he acted in accord with his fundamental view of ethics, that a Christian must accept his responsibility as a citizen of this world where God has placed him. In 1939 he was in the United States for a brief time. His friends here urged him to remain and use his gifts as a scholar and teacher in the service of the ecumenical church, but he refused and boarded one of the last ships to return to his manifest destiny. 

Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, first published in 1937:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite… 

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be askedfor, the door at which a man must knock.

G Leibholz:

Bonhoeffer (together with his sister Christel and her husband, Hans von Dohnanyi) was arrested by the Gestapo in the house of his parents on April 5th, 1943. 

On October 5th, 1944, Bonhoeffer was transferred from Tegel to the main Gestapo prison in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. 

In February, when the Gestapo prison in Berlin was destroyed by an air raid, Bonhoeffer was taken to the concentration camp of Büchenwald and from there to other places until he was executed by special order of Himmler at the concentration camp at Flossenburg on April 9th, 1945, just a few days before it was liberated by the Allies. This happened just about the time when his brother Klaus and his sisters’ husbands, Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher, met their execution at the hands of the Gestapo in Berlin and in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.

“When Christ calls a man,” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

BEHOLD, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.

But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap: 

And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.

Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless

and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. 

(Malachi 3:1-7)

First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York - May 21, 1922

Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the Fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions. I speak of them the more freely because there are no two denominations more affected by them than the Baptist and the Presbyterian. We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservative, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant. The Fundamentalists see, and they see truly, that in this last generation there have been strange new movements in Christian thought. A great mass of new knowledge has come into man’s possession: new knowledge about the physical universe, its origin, its forces, its laws; new knowledge about human history and in particular about the ways in which the ancient peoples used to think in matters of religion and the methods by which they phrased and explained their spiritual experiences; and new knowledge, also, about other religions and the strangely similar ways in which men’s faiths and religious practices have developed everywhere.

Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is his revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal, but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might really love the Lord their God not only with all their heart and soul and strength, but with all their mind, they have been trying to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge. Doubtless they have made many mistakes. Doubtless there have been among them reckless radicals gifted with intellectual ingenuity but lacking spiritual depth. Yet the enterprise itself seems to them indispensable to the Christian church. The new knowledge and the old faith cannot be left antagonistic or even disparate, as though a man on Saturday could use one set of regulative ideas for this life and on Sunday could gear to another altogether. We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian life clear through in modern terms.

There is nothing new about the situation. It has happened again and again history, as, for example, when the stationary earth suddenly began to move and the universe that had been centered in this planet was centered in the sun around which the planets whirled. Whenever such a situation has arisen, there has been only one way out: the new knowledge and the old faith had to be blended in a new combination. Now, the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship. Shall they be allowed to succeed?

It is interesting to note where the Fundamentalists are driving in their stakes to mark out the deadline of doctrine around the church, across which no one is to pass except on terms of agreement. They insist that we must all believe in the historicity of certain special miracles, pre-eminently the virgin birth of our Lord; that we must believe in a special theory of inspiration—that the original documents of the Scripture, which of course we no longer possess, were inerrantly dictated to men a good deal as a man might dictate to a stenographer; that we must believe in a special theory of the atonement—that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner; and that we must believe in the second coming of our Lord upon the clouds of heaven to set up a millennium here, as the only way in which God can bring history to a worthy denouement. Such are some of the stakes which are being driven, to mark a deadline of doctrine around the church.

If a man is a genuine liberal, his primary protest is not against holding these opinions, although he may well protest against their being considered the fundamentals of Christianity. This is a free country and anybody has a right to hold these opinions or any others, if he is sincerely convicted of them. The question is: has anybody a right to deny the Christian name to those who differ with him on such points and to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship? The Fundamentalists say that this must be done. In this country and on the foreign field they are trying to do it. They have actually endeavored to put on the statute books of a whole state binding laws against teaching modern biology. If they had their way, within the church, they would set up in Protestantism a doctrinal tribunal more rigid than the Pope’s. In such an hour, delicate and dangerous, when feelings are bound to run high, I plead this morning the cause of magnanimity and liberality and tolerance of spirit. I would, if I could reach their ears, say to the Fundamentalists about the liberals what Gamaliel said to the Jews, “Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown: but if it is of God ye will not be able to overthrow them; lest haply ye be found even to be fighting against God.”

The doom of the children is the greatest tragedy of the disinherited. They are robbed of much of the careless rapture and spontaneous joy of merely being alive. Through their environment they are plunged into the midst of overwhelming pressures for which there can be no possible preparation. So many tender, joyous things in them are nipped and killed without their even knowing the true nature of their loss. The normal for them is the abnormal. Youth is a time of soaring hopes, when dreams are given first wings and, as reconnoitering birds, explore unknown landscapes. Again and again a man full of years is merely the corroboration of the dreams of his youth. The sense of fancy growing out of the sense of fact—which makes all healthy personalities and gives a touch of romance and glory to all of life—first appears as the unrestrained imaginings of youth.

But the child of the disinherited is likely to live in a heavy life. A ceiling is placed on his dreaming by the counsel of despair coming from his elders, whom experience has taught to expect little and to hope for less. If, on the other hand, the elders understand in their own experiences and lives the tremendous insight of Jesus, it is possible for them to share their enthusiasm with their children. This is the qualitative overtone springing from the depths of religious insight, and it is contagious. It will put into the hands of the child the key for unlocking the door of his hopes. It must never be forgotten that human beings can be conditioned in favor of the positive as well as the negative. A great and central assurance will cause parents to condition their children to high endeavor and great aspiring, and those in turn will put the child out of the immediate, clawing reaches of the tense or the sustained negations of his environment. I have seen it happen. In communities that were completely barren, with no apparent growing edge, without any point to provide light for the disadvantaged, I have seen children grow up without fear, with quiet dignity and such high purpose that the mark which they set for themselves has even been transcended.

The charge that such thinking is merely rationalizing cannot be made with easy or accepted grace by the man of basic advantage. It ill behooves the man who is not forced to live in a ghetto to tell those who must how to transcend his limitations. The awareness that a man is a child of the God of religion, who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy.

Nothing less than a great daring in the face of overwhelming odds can achieve the inner security in which fear cannot possibly survive. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene. Here we reach the high-water mark of prophetic religion, and it is of the essence of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course God cares for the grass of the field, which lives a day and is no more, or the sparrow that falls unnoticed by the wayside. He also holds the stars in their appointed places, leaves his mark in every living thing. And he cares for me! To be assured of this becomes the answer to the threat of violence—yea, to violence itself. To the degree to which a man knows this, he is unconquerable from within and without.

When I was a very small boy, Halley’s comet visited our solar system. For a long time I did not see the giant in the sky because I was not permitted to remain up after sundown. My chums had seen it and had told me perfectly amazing things about it. Also I had heard of what were called “comet pills.” The theory was that if the pills were taken according to directions, then when the tail of the comet struck the earth one would not be consumed. One night I was awakened by my mother, who told me to dress quickly and come with her out into the backyard to see the comet. I shall never forget it if I live forever. My mother stood with me, her hand resting on my shoulder, while I, in utter, speechless awe, beheld the great spectacle with its fan of light spreading across the heavens. The silence was like that of absolute motion. Finally, after what seemed to me an interminable time interval, I found my speech. With bated breath I said, “What will happen to us if that comet falls out of the sky?”

My mother’s silence was so long that I looked from the comet to her face, and there I beheld something in her countenance that I had seen only once before, when I came into her room and found her in prayer. When she spoke, she said, “Nothing will happen to us, Howard. God will take care of us.”

O simplehearted mother of mine, in one glorious moment you put your heart on the ultimate affirmation of the human spirit! Many things have I seen since that night. Times without number I have learned that life is hard, as hard as crucible steel; but as the years have unfolded, the majestic power of my mother’s glowing words has come back again and again, beating out its rhythmic chant in my own spirit. Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive, to achieve, and not to yield.

Now what the New Testament means by grace is perfectly plain.  It means that whole areas of experience where we are recipients of blessings that we did not earn, and that we never can pay for.  It means in human life there is a whole realm where we receive benedictions that we do not deserve, that we can only take as free gifts, and be thankful for them, and be as worthy of them as we may.

Let us see for a moment how really true it is that that area does exist in human life, and let us mark it off by other elements that seem to delimit it, and sometimes to contradict it.  For example, we are all aware of one element in life that seems the very opposite of grace.  How oftentimes are we stung to resentment and indignation by things done to us or said about us that we know we do not deserve.  So Keats, hammered by the harshness of his condemning critics said, “I am in such a temper that, were I under water, I would hardly kick to come to the surface again.”  Almost all of us know moods like that. And, yet, we would be the first to say that injustice is not the whole of life.  No, for there is justice sometimes, too.  I mean just punishment for sins, where we deserve to bear the consequences of our iniquity.  There are times when we go out into the harvesting field of our lives and bring in nettles—vile nettles to fill our barns withal; and as we carry in this disgraceful harvesting we say to ourselves—we sowed nettles, and what we garner now we do well deserve!  In such hours of honest self-accusation we assure ourselves that there is such a thing as just punishment in the world.  You cannot have positive electricity at one end of the needle without negative electricity at the other.  No more can you have sin without punishment, and it is written large in private and in social life that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

And yet, while we all know the presence here of injustice and just punishment, we know that is not all. No:  there is an element of just reward.  Sometimes we do ring upon the counter of life hard work, and get what we deserve.  Some of us have been attending graduations this month past, and have seen with joy the prize scholar step forth to get his merited reward, amid the acclamations of his rejoicing classmates, who know that he is getting what he well deserves.  Are there not many here who feel about their position in their profession or business, just like that? You have worked hard.  You have paid the price.  You have spent laborious days, it may be sleepless nights.  You have put upon the counter plain devotedness to duty,

Steadfast and pure, nor paid with mortal praise,
But finding amplest recompense in work
Done squarely, and unwasted days.

And now you say about the position that you occupy—I deserve it!  So we do have in life these elements: Injustice, Just Punishment and Just Reward.

But, says the New Testament, there is something else—a surrounding, interpenetrating realm of grace. For, what the New Testament insists on is this, that while injustice, just punishment and just reward may be here the foundation and background of life, its encompassing horizons, its sustaining air is made of finer stuff than that.  There are here free gifts that you never bargained for, never earned, never can pay for; can simply take, and be grateful for, use as well as you may, and be as worthy of as you can.

Now let us see how real in actual, daily experience, grace is.  For one thing, you can’t pay for the world in which you live.  You never bargained with God about it.  Like an indulgent father rather, setting up his son in business and saying—Here is capital to start with; take it now and make something out of it—so, free, gratis, for nothing God gave us the world to start with and our lives within it.  You can’t pay for the sun and moon and stars.  You can’t pay for snowcapped mountains, and the wide expanse of the ancient sea.  You never bargained with God for white birch trees against green backgrounds—for a trout stream in the Adirondacks.  Those things are given to folk.  And this Summer as we get away from the dust and dirt of the city streets, and even for a little time commune close with Nature again, shall we not say to ourselves—Here is a realm that is different from the injustice that man so often practices upon man, something different from just punishment, and just rewards?  Grace!  Something given to folk to start with. To be taken with gratitude, and made something of, if they can.