WHEN Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it --lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall set us to work anew!
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall ...
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Question: "Do you like Kipling?"
Answer: "I don't know, I've never kippled."
Today (December 30) is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the enormously popular writer who was the first English author to win the Nobel Prize in literature (1907) in his early 40s.
But aside from a couple of childrens' stories (The Jungle Book and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi), most of Kipling...
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Here is the best section of William Gladstone's chapter on the Psalms, from pp. 184ff of The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture. No comment, except to point out that Gladstone's reading of the Psalms is from the perspective of a person with deep immersion in the Greek classics since childhood.
It is, I submit, the general strain of the Psalms to which we should look An...
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Today (December 29) is the birthday of William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), who has been called "the most eminent of the eminent Victorians." Gladstone the politician dominated British history throughout the bulk of the nineteenth century: He became a Member of Parliament in 1832, and remained in high offices until 1895, serving four times as Prime Minister, and four times as C...
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Today (December 28) in 1843, an unclean spirit cried "Jesus is victor!" as it departed from a young girl in Möttlingen, Germany.
The possessed girl was Gottliebin Dittus, and the presiding pastor was Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880). An account of the conflict can be read in the book The Awakening, available as a free pdf from Plough books. In fact, several books b...
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The average Christian today is a poor Nigerian or Brazilian woman.
Soon, the phrase “a White Christian” may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as “a Swedish Buddhist.” Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied.
—Philip Jenkins, from his book The Next Christendom
In terms of the languages and ethnic groups affected, as ...
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Spoiler alert: I will be talking about plot in this review, so don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie, or unless you don’t plan on seeing it anyway!
Every year on Christmas Eve I enjoy attending a worship service at my church, and then my whole extended family (uncles, aunts, cousins, and kids) gets together for a big family dinner with a white elephant gift e...
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At Morning Prayer on Christmas Eve, at least in my daily lectionary, the New Testament reading is Philippians 2:5-11:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being...
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I just saw the movie Avatar and there are many things to say about the movie. One, of course, is the amazing visuals. It definitely set a new standard in special effects technology for movies, on par with what The Matrix did when it first came out. “Gorgeous” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Secondly, the plot was pretty good—a little predictable at times, but it ...
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Things are hard and the message of Advent, the days before Christmas, is not to cheer up, but to look up. The redemption of all people is coming, but it is coming on God's timing.
That frustrates me and I suspect I am not the only one.
We want help when we think we need it, but God insists on giving it when we really need it.
The days before the first Christmas were d...
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Mr. Ben Nelson is a jolly old United States Senator for Nebraska. He was fighting for principle in opposing abortion funding in the health care reform moving through Congress.
Now he is backing health care reform without the language he originally demanded.
It would be easy to caricature Senator Nelson's move unfairly. Some will say he is a Judas for betraying his ideals ...
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Today (December 19) is the birthday of Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), Scottish preacher and writer of uncommon power and insight. He is best remembered today for the hymn 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say."
In 1847, Bonar published a book called Prophetical Landmarks. It is a great example of the kind of premillennial theology that maintains its connections with the great traditi...
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