dickson again

Another quote from David Dickson (who I've quoted from before). It's from the same book, but this time it's part of an exposition of Job 10.

We see here, that uprightness and a good conscience have boldness with God, and will get leave with confidence to lift up the face before him, and get his testimony and approbation.

An honest sincere man will be bold with God. An honest man is not a sinless man; but one who, as he shall answer to God, strives against all known sin in private and in public; and when he is overcome in sin, is never at rest, till he be sure that God is pacified, and has assurance of a remission granted. He tells God whatever he feels or fears, puts God on all his counsels, goes to him in all his distresses; counts God so merciful and good, that he will go to him; so constant, that he will not, nor cannot, change; and still justifies God, to be what he has spoken of himself in his word.

Such a man will get liberty to tell all his mind to God, and God will not mis-take him, or captiously snack at [check, snap at] his words, but expone them favourably. As he construes God according to his mind, so God construes him according to his aim and desire. Therefore, be honest before God, for the there is no beguiling of him. Those who promise to repent the morn beguile themselves, and not him. It were better that such persons should timeously take with their faults, and seek into his mercy then when he seemed angriest, yea count him their best friend; or when he curbs them most; for there are not passions in God.When any come into him, and make supplication to him, he can neither loosen his love from them, nor yet strike them in anger.

Therefore study plain dealing with God. If there be great wickedness in your heart, tell him of it. Tell him that it is stiff, stubborn, and backward; or that it is borne down with naughty burdens and will not take on a better burden. Let God be thy secretary [confidant] in all, and whatever thou would have close kept, commit that to him.

Taken from the Select Practical Writings of David Dickson (Vol 1). Issued by the Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland for the Publication of the Works of Scottish Reformers and Divines. Edinburgh (1845). p24.
PS: Words which strike me as possibly being old Scottish words, which possibly might not mean much any more, include expone for 'expound,' the morn for 'tomorrow,' and timeous for 'timely.' Also naughty is used in its old sense of 'evil.' The glosses given in square brackets were provided as footnotes in the 1845 publication.

an unexpected hero

This post follows firmly in my tradition of not getting round to talking about newspaper articles until ages after they were printed. This particular article was in the Guardian (well, where else) and it was about a nineteenth century social reformer called Josephine Butler, described by the writer, Julie Bindel, as one of feminism's unsung heroes and the first publicly recognised feminist activist in Britain.

Josephine Butler (1828-1906) made her name by campaigning on a wide range of women's rights issues. Prior to women even getting the vote, she was active in the cause of putting an end to exploitatative practices such as prostitution (including child prostitution), legalised brothels, and sex trafficking.

An example of her dedication and persistence was the 16-year fight against one particularly discriminatory piece of legislation - the Congatious Diseases Act of 1864, which aimed to stop the spread of venereal diseases amongst the armed forces. Apparently, "Under these laws, any woman in designated military towns could be forcibly investigated for venereal disease. It was decided that men would not be examined because they would resist. Women believed to be prostitutes could be reported to the authorities, and those found to be infected could be imprisoned for three months in a secure hospital. There were instances of such women, many of whom were not prostitutes, being subsequently forced into the sex trade." The article explains, "The sexual double standard of the act, which Butler took to mean that men could use prostitutes with impunity while at the same time punishing the women, disgusted her, and she led a campaign to repeal it. After winning that battle - the law was repealed in 1886 - Butler took the campaign to India, where women were being sold into prostitution by the British army."

What was particularly interesting about this article in G2 was that the same woman (and the same biography of her by Jane Jordan) were featured in none other than the Christian Institute's Update magazine of Summer 2006: Josephine Butler was in fact a Christian, determined that nobody should be treated as 'scum,' not even 'fallen women,' as "everyone is equal under God" - and living out her beliefs through letter writing, pamphleteering, and public speaking, as well as intensely practical measures which went to the lengths of taking women dying of disease into her own home, before she raised the funds to set up a separate, nondenominational refuge or 'house of rest' for desperate prostitutes.

I doubt that even I would always agree with the Guardian's classification of people into the category of heroes, but this time I think it's safe enough. The analysis of 'sex work' as exploitative and degrading is accepted both by this journalist and the Christian Institute's researchers, and in both publications the point is made that, while Butler's achievements were radical and progressive and brought huge benefits not just to women but society at large, they're unfortunately under increasing threat of being dismantled now, only a couple of generations after Josephine Butler's.

A quote from Butler herself to finish off:

The degradation of these poor unhappy women is not degradation for them alone; it is a blow to the dignity of every virtuous woman too, it is dishonour done to me, it is the shaming of every woman in every country of the world.

Julie Bindel's article is worth the read if you have a minute, and the biography by Jane Jordan is on my wishlist.

what can you see?

I'm not sure if this is a problem with my internet connection, or Opera, or Blogger, but publishing posts at this end is becoming a bit of a painful process. If you, dear reader, are seeing duplicates (or getting funny notifications) could I trouble you to drop me a line and let me know? Ta!

something for the ladies

Into my inbox the other day came a lengthy article on the beauty of Marriage and the general splendidness of being a Good Wife.

In amongst the usual exhortations to various wifely duties there also appeared this gem:

Wives ought to reference their husbands.

Well, indeed! I thought. It's about time somebody alerted us to this sadly neglected conjugal duty. Because, after all, consider what the alternative would be. Plagiarism, girls, that's what - plagiarism! And people have been kicked out of universities for less.

In the spirit of mutual sisterly helpfulness, I'd therefore like to propose the adoption of the following citation convention:

Hubby, My (2006). Pers. comm. (Available upon request. Please do not cite without permission.)

I do hope that this reminder will be beneficial to some among my readers; and in the mean time I'll try not to notice any further trivial slips of the keyboard to make mountains out of ... this one was just too good to resist.

back to front

I came across a comment recently which struck me as decidedly back to front. It was a recommendation to read a chapter about providence from a theology book, particularly emphasising the doctrine of sovereignty. The book was Louis Berkhof's Summary of Christian Doctrine, so that wasn't the problem. It was the portentous piece of advice which was meant to encourage you to read it, along the lines that 'If you don't understand sovereignty, you can't understand Scripture!'

I'm sure the comment was well meant, but it really doesn't make sense. Like probably most of the doctrines that are expounded in systematic theologies, you would have no way of knowing about them, or even guessing at them, if they weren't already in the bible. So far from needing to get your head round a doctrine before you can hope to understand the bible, the first step is always to acquaint yourself with what scripture says, in order for you to be able to evaluate whether a particular doctrine is in fact worth believing. What this person should have said instead is, 'If you aren't familiar with the bible, you won't be able to understand sovereignty!'

Of course the principle applies much more widely than just to the doctrine of God's sovereignty. (It strikes me that I've been writing here a lot recently on issues related to that; it's not intentional and I'll probably stop sometime soon.) Eg, as I was discussing with a friend recently, you wouldn't know what to pray for, if the bible didn't provide us (a) with examples of prayers to pray and (b) almost more importantly, with the assurance that God hears prayers. If you weren't familiar with the scriptures, you might be hard pushed to convince yourself that God would even listen to the prayer of a sinful human being, or that it was acceptable to address him in terms such as Hosea provides - 'Take with you words and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously...' In short, without knowing the bible you wouldn't know that there are three persons in the Godhead, or that there is such a thing as the Lord's day, or that such a weak instrument as faith can be the instrument of saving your soul, and so on.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that reading the Bible is the most important of the 'means of grace', but it's worth affirming that the Bible is absolutely fundamental to everything we know about God and our relationship to him. Apart from the fact that there is a God, almost everything else I can think of that we know, we could never have known if he hadn't told us. It's just as well that he's formulated that revelation not only in writing, as a more sure word of prophecy, but also in a way that's suited to the state and condition of any person at all who reads it. If someone doesn't understand about sovereignty, or about atonement, or about repentance, or whatever - that's no reason not to read the bible - it's actually the very reason why they should read it. Both perspicuous and reliable: if you're not familiar with the scriptures, you won't be able to understand any of the things that you really need to know.

"Through thy precepts I get understanding ... Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Psalm 119:104-105

[PS: something went funny when I tried to post this the other day and I can't see it published even though it appears in my list of published posts, so apologies if you're seeing it twice over.]

all eeked out

Got back from the office today to discover a monstrous spider nestling at the point where the wall meets the ceiling, directly in my line of vision as I came through the door. Nice.

Turns out it had previously been molesting James in the kitchen, before evidently taking itself up there. It was, seriously, like, this big. At least four inches across, and at least as big than the one which a dear brother of mine had noticed hanging around in the bathroom when I shared with uni friends a couple of years ago; and upon which he had replaced the toilet seat without troubling to alert any of us to the fact that it was lurking there. (It chose not to publicise itself for at least a day after that, and specifically not until I was on my own in the flat with nothing but a pyrex bowl between me and my worst nightmare.)

All this leads me on seamlessly to tell you about the only typo I've ever noticed in a dictionary. Not that I've ever looked particularly hard, I should stress, but I've always loved Derrick Thomson's English-Gaelic dictionary for its entry "eek" and collocation with "out." To celebrate, have a picture of today's spider, post capture and pre humane(-ish) disposal.



(Thanks to James for the gruesomeness; I've managed to upload it without looking too closely but I'm sure it's a fine photy. Go here for something a bit nicer.)

islam, violence, christianity

There are two separate issues bound up in what the Pope's been saying. One is whether he's quoted a fair assessment of the use of 'the sword' in Islam. The other is whether he's got the right to present his comments as those of the world's most significant Christian leader.

Of course, all over the world, Muslims are protesting about the fact that a link has again been prominently made between Islam and violence. However, the way they choose to make this protest is, er, with violence. As in: You're just a big bully. No I'm not! And I'll hit you if you say that again! The caption attached to the second image on the BBC's In Pictures is hugely ironic - "Some Indian Muslims burnt an effigy of the world's Roman Catholic leader who quoted remarks which linked Islam to violence." At least it was only an effigy, I suppose.

However, it should be a worry that the Pope is being taken as a spokesman for Christianity, rather than just the spokesman for the Roman Catholic tradition. Muslim-Christian relations on the ground in Muslim-majority situations are already strained enough, without someone like the Pope handing out gratis further excuses to penalise and marginalise local Christians. You can read far more about that than you'd ever wanted to find out by going to the Barnabas site, where the latest report is of a convert from Islam to Christianity being shot and killed in Somalia, about a week ago. The plight of indigenous Christians is constantly being exacerbated by the actions of Western political leaders - they don't need spurious Christian leaders to make things worse.

That, of course, is completely without mentioning how a spokesman for the Roman Catholic church can imagine he has a leg to stand on in terms of criticising the use of violence to achieve religious ends, but that's a whole other issue, and I just don't have time right now!

If anyone has any thoughts on the Pope's perception of the relation between faith and reason, incidentally, it would be good to hear from you. That, apparently, was the main point of his speech after all.

sleeping rough

This isn't what I'd intended my next post to be about, but you'll be interested (I'm sure) to know that I successfully managed to lock myself out of my flat on Monday and have only just got back in again.

Yes, it was all fun here, since my fellow occupants were located in a tent somewhere off the other side of the country, and it also happened to be the week that the two other people who have copies were out of town (to put it mildly).

It had struck me on Monday that by the time I write up my thesis, my Acknowledgements section will have to run to pages to capture a little of how much I owe to other people's generosity. (You know who you are..!) On Monday night, I thought I might as well devote a whole chapter to The Things Other People Do For Me. This was brought on by the fact that the friend I phoned (from the office phone, since my mobile battery was running down and my charger was, oh, locked inside my flat) not only agreed to let me stay overnight but offered to put me up the next night as well, when I was only obsessing about the logistics of travelling to the other side of the country to collect a pair of keys from the nearest, and yet so far away person who had a set, all before meeting my supervisor in the afternoon. And she even lent me some shampoo - which, I admit, officially means I was most definitely not sleeping rough.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, in particular the multiple amusing episodes with my ineptitude with borrowed alarm clocks, the long-awaited hand-over took place this evening when one of the key-bearers returned from their trip across the Atlantic today. My flat has never seemed so attractive (and neither, for that matter, has my phone charger). Maybe by tomorrow I'll manage to write something substantive, but meantime I'm being grateful for so many things, and plotting how soon I can make it to Timpsons, just to get one more extra precautionary set cut...

no such thing

While I was away I got a quick read of a book containing sermons by David Dickson, the minister who was involved in one of the revivals in the 17th century which I mentioned a while back.

It included a sermon which he delivered as part of his congregation's preparation for a communion, on the verse that goes along the lines, 'the foundation of the Lord stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows them that are his, and, Let every one that names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.' He spoke a lot about adhering to Christ and "departing from iniquity" as two pieces of evidence that a person has been converted, which in turn is the proof that they were elect (the Lord knows them that are his).

But he also brought in another very interesting theme - having addressed the question of what constitutes a "mark of grace," or evidence of being converted (hence evidence of being among the elect), he added that people shouldn't find fault with the fact that there is such a thing as election.

What the Lord doth in the matter of election and reprobation, he doth it justly; for he says to man, Leave thy sins, and come to me, and thou shalt get heaven. Man answers, I will not leave sin. Then says the Lord, Thou shalt go to hell.
Is not this justice? From these words, no particular person can gather a mark of reprobation; but contrarily, there is here a mark of election. Why then should any quarrel with God, while he shows a possibility of election, and no mark of reprobation?

In other words, you can test to see whether you are elect by testing whether you're converted or not, and one of the tests of whether a person is converted is whether or not they're 'departing from iniquity.' But as he said, there's no such thing as a mark of reprobation. There's no way that anyone has the right to conclude that they're destined not to be saved. "It is not a mark of reprobation to be in an estate of sin," he said, "for one may come out of that estate."

It struck me as being a very encouraging thing to say - both from the point of view of an unconverted person wondering about the possibility of salvation, and from the point of view of Christians worried about unconverted people around them. Nobody has the right to conclude, "I am not one of the elect." And nobody has the right to conclude, "That person is not one of the elect." That's presumably why your lifetime is called "the ground of mercy" - as long as a person's alive on this earth, there's a reason to hope that they could still be saved.

If adherence to Jesus and departing from inquity do evidence election both to the world and a man's own soul, then the soul that [lacks] these two, can have no comfort: they who have not fled to Christ, and have not put the back of their hand to sin, [lack] the comfort of election. I dare not say, they are not elected, for God can change a filthy sinner into a washen saint. But I dare to say, while a soul is separate from Christ, and adheres to sin, that soul can have no comfort in election, nor yet say that it is elected. If thou then would be out of the black band and rank of reprobates, haste in to Christ, and from sin, as thou would be free of hell and damnation.

NB, it was definitely David Dickson who made this point (not John Colquhoun, as I said to a couple of people a few days ago. Mr Colquhoun was another bit of holiday reading, but he happened to live in a different century and it wasn't a collection of sermons either). The book was Select Practical Writings of David Dickson (Vol 1), issued by the Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland for the Publication of the Works of Scottish Reformers and Divines. Edinburgh (1845); these quotes came from p103-104.

blogs i read

I've been meaning to put these links down the side for ages but I just can't face messing around in the settings for the time being. Plus, I haven't written much for a while so this can double as a stopgap post until I recover that sense of the importance of my own view of things which drives all the rest of the stuff that appears on here. (My memoirs will be following shortly, watch this space.)

I should also warn you that I'm composing in Opera due to funny goings on with my Firefox, and the handy wee tools for making things like bulleted lists aren't available in Opera. In a choice between dodgy formatting and Internet Explorer, guess which wins out.

The Holdfast

Musings of an English Muffin

Running Well

Cranmer

Guy Fawkes

Inflections

Language Log

That'll do for starters, hopefully - I may (sometime, maybe, perhaps) put in some more later. And I'm always open to more suggestions for things worth reading.