Daily Reading for August 1 • The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

The idolatry of money means that the moral worth of a person is judged in terms of the amount of money possessed or controlled. The acquisition and accumulation of money in itself is considered evidence of virtue. . . . Where money is an idol, to be poor is a sin.

This is an obscene idea of justification, directly in contradiction with the Bible. In the gospel none are saved by any works of their own, least of all by the mere acquisition of money. . . . The notion of justification by acquisition of money is empirically absurd, for it oversimplifies the relationship of the prosperous and the poor and overlooks the dependence of the rich upon the poor for their wealth. In this world human beings live at each other’s expense, and the affluence of the few is proximately related to, and supported by, the poverty of the many.

This interdependence of rich and poor is something Americans are tempted to overlook, since so many Americans are in fact prosperous, but it is true today as it was in earlier times: the vast multitudes of people on the face of the earth are consigned to poverty for their whole lives, without any serious prospect whatever of changing their conditions. Their hardships in great measure make possible the comfort of those who are not poor; their poverty maintains the luxury of others; their deprivation purchases the abundance most Americans take for granted.

That leaves prosperous Americans with frightful questions to ask and confront, even in customs or circumstances that are regarded as trivial or straightforward or settled. Where, for instance, do the profits that enable great corporations to make large contributions to universities and churches and charity come from? Do they come from the servitude of Latin American peasants working plantations on seventy-two-hour weekly shifts for gross annual incomes of less than a hundred dollars? Do they depend upon the availability of black child labor in South Africa and Rhodesia? Are such beneficences in fact the real earnings of some of the poor of the world?

To affirm that we live in this world at each other’s expense is a confession of the truth of the Fall rather than an assertion of economic doctrine or a precise empirical statement. It is not that there is in every transaction a direct one-for-one cause and effect relationship, either individually or institutionally, between the lot of the poor and the circumstances of those who are not poor. It is not that the wealthy are wicked or that the fact of malice is implicit in affluence. It is, rather, theologically speaking, that all human and institutional relationships are profoundly distorted and so entangled that no person or principality in this world is innocent of involvement in the existence of all other persons and all institutions. . . .

Freedom from idolatry of money, for a Christian, means that money becomes useful only as a sacrament—as a sign of the restoration of life wrought in this world by Christ.

From William Stringfellow’s A Keeper of the Word: Selected Writings of William Stringfellow, edited by Bill Wylie Kellermann (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994).

Daily Reading for August 2 • Samuel Ferguson, Missionary Bishop for West Africa, 1916

The Episcopal Church consecrated two black bishops prior to the elevation of Demby and Delany in 1918. They were James Theodore Holly, consecrated in 1874 as missionary bishop of Haiti, and Samuel David Ferguson, consecrated in 1885 as missionary bishop of Liberia. Although both. . . suffered calumny at the hands of the mother church, and although both, victims of the racism and imperialism of the day, were succeeded by white bishops, their exemplary ministries helped to plant in the minds of black Episcopalians the idea that black bishops could and should be consecrated for the domestic church. Specifically, the seed was planted by the Reverend Paulus S. Moort, M.D., a West Indian ordained in the United States but who was working in Liberia at the time under Bishop Ferguson, who called for the election of black bishops in four or five American dioceses. It was largely because Moort held up the examples of the black missionary bishops that the Conference of Church Workers among Colored People, beginning in 1889, eschewed their previously held objection to a racial episcopate. Formerly of the opinion that a request for a racial episcopate “would fall into the hands of those southern whites pressing for ecclesiastical segregation to match disfranchisement, segregation and economical peonage being structured in the South as a replacement for slavery,” “they conducted a strong campaign to convince the Episcopal church that the mission work among blacks would not develop until a black bishop was at its head.”

The Episcopal Church, therefore, it is reasonable to argue, as a result of its experiences with Holly and Ferguson. . . might well have abandoned any further attempts at ordaining black men to the office of bishop. But the valiant efforts of those very men provided an impetus and incentive to black Episcopalians to replicate the missionary experiment at home. They believed that the experiment was necessary because “educated, self-respecting middle-class blacks to whom the Episcopal Church had a special appeal would not be drawn to a church which limited black achievement.”

It can be asserted, then, that while the Church tried to paint the pioneer black bishops as failures and did everything in its power to thwart their enterprise, black church leaders saw in them strong role models, who having succeeded in making bricks without straw had exhibited extraordinary grace under pressure. If black American bishops abroad could accomplish all this despite oppressive tropical heat and severe lack of resources, the conference reasoned, they should be no less successful on their native soil.

From Yet With a Steady Beat: The African American Struggle for Recognition in the Episcopal Church by Harold T. Lewis (Valley Forge, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1996).

Daily Reading for August 3 • William Edward Burghardt DuBois, Sociologist, 1963, and George Freeman Bragg, Jr., Priest, 1940

When the Church of England came to America, it sought to embrace all of the people, without respect to race. Despite the difficulties and unfavorable conditions the very early records of parish churches disclose the fact that babes of African descent were brought to Holy Baptism and incorporated into the Church of Christ. The children of the slaves or servant class, were diligently instructed in the Church Catechism, and, at the proper time, brought to the Bishop for Confirmation. That is, after the Church in this country had received the Episcopate. But it must be remembered that the Episcopate was not obtained until the year 1787. The English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts manifested a special interest in providing for the religious instruction of the slave population in the American colonies. The white population in these colonies were not all of the same class or quality. Nor were the more numerous elements especially friendly to the Church of England and her method of presentation of the Gospel. Under such circumstances it was not at all strange that there was widespread indifference with respect to the religious training of the slave population. And, then, at the first, there was a general feeling that Baptism operated in converting the slave into a free man. Until the consciences of many were satisfied that Baptism did not destroy the relation of master and slave, but little progress was made in the conversion of the slaves to Christianity. All along there were those whose tender consciences suffered no change in this matter, and gradually, many manumissions ensued. By degrees, owing largely to this conviction, there came into being an ever increasing class of “free Negroes.” A number of very sincere white Christians in their last will and testament set free forever their slaves.

Then, in the North, following the Revolutionary War, there was a general, or gradual, emancipation of slaves. It is from this period that formal organizations among the colored people date. From then on to the Civil War, the record of organized Church life among the people of African descent is confined almost exclusively to the Northern States, where the largest number of “free Negroes” resided.

In the South the religious instruction of the colored people was carried on under varying forms. Usually the black people of a particular plantation who attended any religious instruction gave in their adhesion to the same religious faith of their masters. In a number of the white churches there was always “the Negro gallery” for the slaves. In some places where the slaves were exceedingly numerous special chapels were erected for them in which they were diligently gathered and instructed. Uniformly white ministers were placed over these chapels. But, simultaneously with these special chapels, and “the Negro gallery” in white churches, there came into being an “invisible” institution among the slaves, which, to them, was the real thing, despite their formal attendance upon the ministrations of white ministers. This institution was the native Negro Church, the great conservator of religious fervor and zeal among the black people of the South.

From History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church by George F. Bragg (Baltimore, Md.: Church Advocate Press, 1922); found at http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/bragg/bragg.html

Daily Reading for August 4

I was fortunate enough to come upon . . . Archbishop Anthony Bloom’s School for Prayer; it helped me greatly in many ways, especially to find the presence of God in ordinary places, people, events and moments of time. I listened to the advice that Archbishop Bloom once gave to a woman who had been trying to perceive God’s presence for fourteen years and failed to do so. He advised her:

“Go to your room, after breakfast, put it right, place your armchair in a strategic position. . . just sit, look round, and try to see where you live, because I am sure that if you have prayed all these fourteen years it is a long time since you have seen your room. And then take your knitting and for fifteen minutes knit before the face of God, but I forbid you to say one word of prayer. You just knit and try to enjoy the peace of your room.”

I too followed that advice and, like Archbishop Anthony’s old lady, found that I noticed things about the room that I had never noticed before. I also saw how peaceful the room felt and, for the first time, how full of “presence” it felt, presence that made me feel happy and in tune with my room and, after a while, with the people who came into my thoughts. That was the beginning of a change in my attitudes. In time I became more observant of everything in my surroundings. I began to see them in relation to God and I began to find God within them, and them in God.

I stopped being greedy for what I hadn’t got because I had been given so much delight in each moment. Like many other Christians I also found myself full of reverence for the things I was receiving from God’s hands each day. This reverence has grown. It springs from a perception that everything we are given comes from God. When we understand, see and experience that we are well on the way to learning to worship God through finding God’s transcendence within the immanent moments of each day.

From Vocation to Resistance by Una Kroll (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1995).

Daily Reading for August 5 • Albrecht Dürer, 1528, Matthias Grünewald, 1529, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1553, Artists

One of the most monstrous offences against religion is to regard Christianity as utterly unrelated to present-day life or as something eccentric and peculiar, or to regard the Church either as a hot-house or a prison. They are its worst foes who keep Christianity apart from Science, apart from Art, or apart from all manner of social and political life. They are the enemies of the Church who place a barrier between it and music, drama, poetry, sculpture, painting, or forbid any traffic with philosophy and modern thought. A wise old writer in the Apocrypha, describing the occupation of working men in most vivid language, ends up with these words: “They will maintain the fabric of the world, and in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer.” For my part I whole-heartedly believe that the serious exercise of a man’s art is itself an act of worship, and that the offering of the very best that is in him, be it poem, picture or sculpture, nobly conceived and wrought, or whatever mighty work of the inspired imagination, is a song of praise and thanksgiving, or maybe a poem of intercession for God’s creatures. It is for the Church, as I believe, to welcome the artist, to rejoice in his inspiration as springing from God, from Whom cometh every good and every perfect gift.

From “Christmas Broadcast” by George Kennedy Allen Bell, in The Listener (December 25, 1929).

Daily Reading for August 6 • The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Tauler, the preacher, walked, one autumn day
without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
As one who, wandering in a starless night,
Feels, momently, the jar of unseen waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,
Breaking along an unimagined shore.

And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
Old prayer with which, for half-a-score of years,
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart
Had groaned: “Have pity upon me, Lord!
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
Send me a man who can direct my steps!”

Then, as he mused, he heard along his path
A sound as of an old man’s staff among
The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old.
“Peace be unto thee, father!” Tauler said,
“God give thee a good day!” The old man raised
Slowly his calm blue eyes.” I thank thee, son;
But all my days are good, and none are ill.”
Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,
“God give thee happy life.” The old man smiled,
“I never am unhappy.”

Tauler laid
His hand upon the stranger’s coarse grey sleeve:
“Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
Surely man’s days are evil, and his life
Sad as the grave it leads to.” “Nay, my son,
Our times are in God’s hands, and all our days
Are as our needs: for shadow as for sun,
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
And that which is not, sharing not his life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.” . . .

Silently wondering, for a little space,
Stood the great preacher; then he spoke as one
Who suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light:
“What if God’s will consign thee hence to Hell?”

“Then,” said the stranger cheerily, “be it so.
What Hell may be I know not; this I know—
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord:
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon His dear
Humanity; the other, Love,
Clasps His Divinity. So where I go,
He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
Than golden-gated Paradise without.”

Tears sprang in Tauler’s eyes; a sudden light,
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
Apart the shadow wherein he had walked
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man
Went his slow way, until his silver hair
Set like the white moon where the hills of vine
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said—
“My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew.”

So, entering with a changed and cheerful step
The city gates, he saw, far down the street,
A mighty shadow break the light of noon,. . .
In the noon-brightness the great Minster’s tower,
Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown,
Rose like a visible prayer. “Behold!” he said,
“The stranger’s faith made plain before mine eyes.
As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top,
So darkness in the pathway of Man’s life
Is but the shadow of God’s providence,
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in Heaven.”

From “Tauler” by John Greenleaf Whittier, in The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler, with Twenty-five of His Sermons, translated by Susannah Winkworth (London: Allenson & Co., 1905); found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/winkworth/tauler.ii.html

Daily Reading for August 7 • John Mason Neale, Priest, 1866, and Catherine Winkworth, Poet, 1878

If there be one point of ecclesiastical order which would at first might seem, more than any other, to be commanded by Holy Scripture, fashioned by primitive usage, and required by common sense, it is surely this,—that the public offices of the Church should be offered in the vernacular language of the people. To employ, in addressing God, a tongue which his worshippers cannot comprehend; to wrap up lessons, epistles, and gospels in the obscurity of a dead language,—can this be a reasonable service? Can this be a gospel preached to the poor? Can this be such a worshipping in spirit and in truth as our Saviour’s express command enjoins? Is it not diametrically opposed to the declaration of S. Paul, “Yet in the church I had rather speak ten words to the edifying of the hearers, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue?” No man ever denied that the practice of the primitive Church was in accordance with this teaching, and that, a priori, one should have considered it a standing order, a stereotyped law, of the Church Catholic. The more surprising, therefore, is it to find that all the branches of the Church . . . have agreed in this: that the language of their public services shall be, to a certain extent,—some more, some less,—a language “not understanded of the people.” . . . The apostolic law is, really or apparently, broken; and the “ten thousand words” of liturgies, and hours, and offices, are said in an unknown tongue. . . .

Three hundred years ago, in opposition to the then prevailing practice, a national Church decreed as follows:—“It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the practice of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understanded of the people.” Three centuries passed; and the office then compiled has become so obsolete in its phrases as certainly to fall not very far short of incurring the condemnation there pronounced. The fact is, that we are so thoroughly used to both our spoken language and to that of our Bible and Prayer-book, that we fail to see what foreigners remark at once, the worldwide difference between the two. . . . We have to explain, for instance, that when we pray, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings,” we mean, “Assist us”; that when we lament our being let in running the race that is set before us, we mean that we are not let to run it. And so we may fairly ask the question: Is it not almost impossible to find any one Collect which shall be intelligible to an uneducated person? Do not the inversions of the sentences, as well as the difficulty of the words, make it a matter of difficulty to explain these “vernacular” prayers to the poor? Even in one of the Creeds, who is there . . . that could comprehend such a phrase as “of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting”? And how differently would it have been expressed had the service been composed in modern times! Nothing can be more clear than that the compilers of the Prayer-book did not use the easiest and readiest words. . . .

We are not blaming this—far from it. We are merely showing that those who thought it their duty to exclaim most loudly against the employment of a foreign tongue in the services of the Church, themselves used a dialect of English different from any which is now, or which was ever, spoken; and “not understanded” entirely by any worshipper of the nineteenth century.

From Essays on Liturgiology and Church History by John Mason Neale (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1867).

Daily Reading for August 8 • The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (and Dominic, Priest and Friar, 1221)

It is not surprising that the friars, both Dominican and Franciscan, were greeted with incredulity and alarm, because of their habit of wandering around and frequenting public places. Even someone as sympathetic as Jacques de Vitry regarded Franciscan life as dangerous, because of its lack of enclosure and stability. However, as Jacques de Vitry himself realized, the friars were not really as much of an innovation as they appeared to be. As Pope Paul VI remarked on one occasion, there is a certain affinity between the church and the gypsies. Our Lord himself was a wandering teacher, in the best (or worst, as some thought) tradition of Galilee, and he sent his disciples out to be itinerant preachers. In the early centuries of Christian history we find evidence of this tradition continuing, and even hardening into a rule of itinerancy, obliging some people never to settle down anywhere. It is probable that this is the true beginning of Christian monasticism, long before the more settled monasticism of Egypt.

Even in the period of Benedictine supremacy there had always been an undercurrent of something more primitive and less structured, and in the twelfth century this broke out afresh with renewed vigour. . . . People began looking for something more simply evangelical, more penitential, more expressive of the notion that we are pilgrims on the earth. In particular the model of the “apostolic life,” as found in Luke 10, began to exercise a new fascination. . . . St. Dominic, following in the footsteps of his bishop, Diego, adopted the apostolic life, modeled on Luke 10, as the most promising way of combating of the heretical “evangelical” preachers. . . .

The Dominicans wanted a kind of ministry that was quite different from that exercised by clergy who had an official claim on their flocks. And, granted the close link between the spiritual claims of the clergy and their financial claims on their people, the repudiation of one kind of claim would naturally lead to the repudiation of the other kind too. . . . The development of Dominican poverty can be understood simply . . . as an extension to their communities of the principle of total trust in Providence, which was expected of individual preachers in accordance with Luke 10, and a way of making more thorough their renunciation of rights over other people.

From the Introduction by Simon Tugwell to Early Dominicans: Selected Writings, a volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1982).

Daily Reading for August 9 • Herman of Alaska, Missionary to the Aleut, 1837

Once the Elder was invited aboard a frigate which came from St. Petersburg. The Captain of the frigate was a highly educated man, who had been sent to America by order of the Emperor to make an inspection of all the colonies. There were more than twenty-five officers with the Captain, and they also were educated men. In the company of this group sat a monk of a hermitage, small in stature and wearing very old clothes. All these educated conversationalists were placed in such a position by his wise talks that they did not know how to answer him. The Captain himself used to say, “We were lost for an answer before him.”

Father Herman gave them all one general question: “Gentlemen, What do you love above all, and what will each of you wish for your happiness?” Various answers were offered. . . . Some desired wealth, others glory, some a beautiful wife, and still others a beautiful ship he would captain; and so forth in the same vein. “Is it not true,” Father Herman said to them concerning this, “that all your various wishes can bring us to one conclusion—that each of you desires that which in his own understanding he considers the best, and which is most worthy of his love?” They all answered, “Yes, that is so!” He then continued, “Would you not say, Is not that which is best, above all, and surpassing all, and that which by preference is most worthy of love, the Very Lord, our Jesus Christ, who created us, adorned us with such ideals, gave life to all, sustains everything, nurtures and loves all, who is Himself Love and most beautiful of all men? Should we not then love God above every thing, desire Him more than anything, and search Him out?”
All said, “Why, yes! That’s self-evident!”

Then the Elder asked, “But do you love God?” They all answered, “Certainly, we love God. How can we not love God?” “And I a sinner have been trying for more than forty years to love God, I cannot say that I love Him completely,” Father Herman protested to them. He then began to demonstrate to them the way in which we should love God. “If we love someone,” he said, “we always remember them; we try to please them. Day and night our heart is concerned with the subject. Is that the way you gentlemen love God? Do you turn to Him often? Do you always remember Him? Do you always pray to Him and fulfill His holy commandments?” They had to admit that they had not! “For our own good, and for our own fortune,” concluded the Elder, “let us at least promise ourselves that from this very minute we will try to love God more than anything and to fulfill His Holy Will!” Without any doubt this conversation was imprinted in the hearts of the listeners for the rest of their lives.

From the recollections of Simeon Yanovksy, quoted in “The Life of Saint Herman of Alaska”; http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/st-herman-alaska.htm.

Daily Reading for August 10 • Laurence, Deacon and Martyr at Rome, 258

It is a very great incentive to mercy to share in others’ misfortunes, to help the needs of others as far as our means allow, and sometimes even beyond them. For it is better for mercy’s sake to take up a case, or to suffer odium rather than to show hard feeling. So I once brought odium on myself because I broke up the sacred vessels to redeem captives—a fact that could displease the Arians. Not that it displeased them as an act, but as being a thing in which they could take hold of something for which to blame me. Who can be so hard, cruel, iron-hearted, as to be displeased because a man is redeemed from death, or a woman from barbarian impurities, things that are worse than death, or boys and girls and infants from the pollution of idols, whereby through fear of death they were defiled?

Although we did not act thus without good reason, yet we have followed it up among the people so as to confess and to add again and again that it was far better to preserve souls than gold for the Lord. For he who sent the apostles without gold also brought together the churches without gold. The Church has gold, not to store up, but to lay out, and to spend on those who need. What necessity is there to guard what is of no good? . . . How beautifully it is said, when long lines of captives are redeemed by the Church: these Christ has redeemed. Behold the gold that can be tried, behold the useful gold, behold the gold of Christ which frees from death, behold the gold whereby modesty is redeemed and chastity is preserved. . . .

Such gold the holy martyr Lawrence preserved for the Lord. For when the treasures of the Church were demanded from him, he promised that he would show them. On the following day he brought the poor together. When asked where the treasures were which he had promised, he pointed to the poor, saying: “These are the treasures of the Church.” And truly they were treasures, in whom Christ lives, in whom there is faith in him. . . . What better treasures has Jesus than those in which he loves to be seen? These treasures Lawrence pointed out, and prevailed, for the persecutors could not take them away. . . . Lawrence, who preferred to spend the gold of the Church on the poor, rather than to keep it in hand for the persecutor, received the sacred crown of martyrdom for the unique and deep-sighted vigour of his meaning. . . . For no one can say: Why does the poor man live? None can complain that captives are redeemed, none can find fault because a temple of the Lord is built, none can be angry because a plot of ground has been enlarged for the burial of the bodies of the faithful, none can be vexed because in the tombs of the Christians there is rest for the dead. In these three ways it is allowable to break up, melt down, or sell even the sacred vessels of the Church.

From On the Duties of the Clergy by Ambrose of Milan, II.28; found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf210.iv.i.iii.xxviii.html

Daily Reading for August 11 • Clare, Abbess of Assisi, 1253

I, Clare, a handmaid of Christ, a little plant of our most holy father Francis, a sister and mother of you and the other poor sisters, although unworthy, beg our Lord Jesus Christ through his mercy and the intercession of his most holy Mother Mary and of blessed Michael the Archangel and of all the holy angels of God, of our blessed father Francis, and of all men and women saints, that the heavenly Father give you and confirm for you this most holy blessing in heaven and on earth: on earth, by multiplying you in grace and his virtues among his servants and handmaids in his Church Militant; in heaven, by exalting you and glorifying you among his holy men and women in his Church Triumphant.

I bless you during my life and after my death, as I am able, out of all the blessings, with which the Father of mercies has blessed and will bless his sons and daughters in heaven and on earth and a spiritual father and mother have blessed and will bless their spiritual sons and daughters. Amen.

Always be lovers of your souls and those of all your sisters. And may you always be eager to observe what you have promised the Lord.

May the Lord always be with you and may you always be with him. Amen.

From the final blessing of Clare of Assisi, quoted in The Lady: Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, translated and edited by Regis J. Armstrong (New York: New City Press, 2006).

Daily Reading for August 12 • Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910

Nightingale’s ideas might have more appeal now in the third millennium than in her own day. Certainly her most holistic approach to health care and emphasis on environmental factors and nutrition are popular now. Her highly positive conceptualization of human life will resonate with the present age, where it offended the dour hellfire and damnation adherents of her own. Her unorthodox religious views would offend few people now while her spirituality, nourished from diverse sources and not tied to any one religious institution, would attract rather than appear heretical. The fact that she gave up church attendance in her early thirties would intrigue now rather than scandalize. For today’s Christian feminists Nightingale is a great source, fully believing as she did in the equal right of women to develop themselves, their lives and careers. Liberation theologians and Christian socialists, now in a political climate of cutbacks of the welfare state, may be interested in her early vision of public health care and her work to advance it. Experts on India will find a rich trove of unpublished as well as now-hard-to-obtain published material. Although she never visited India, Nightingale became so immersed in Indian material, and such an advocate of Indian causes, that Indian nationalists appreciated her as a model. She was a mentor to Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Gandhi’s mentor. Her systemic approach, the integration of physical, geographical factors with the social—land tenure, taxation, government institution—is as appropriate now as it was when she developed it.

Nightingale might even be a more congenial model for social scientists today than in her own time. Her hard-line quantitative approach will please some and displease others, as in the past. So will her insistence on knowledge for application. Yet her criticism of positivism as being too embedded in the seen, material world will cheer those who seek a greater role for values in social science without giving up on the principles of scientific method. Nightingale herself always maintained her commitment to values, religious values at that, while conducting, in some cases pioneering, practical empirical research. . . .

Those who denigrate Nightingale have been, in the opinion of the editors of this Collected Works, ill-informed. We, too, have had enough of the stereotyped heroine, and we want her now to be understood in all her complexity. Since a collected works tells all, warts, errors of judgment and ill temper will be evident. Overwhelmingly, however, the volumes to follow will portray a woman of extraordinary intellect, utter dedication to her calling, a prodigious appetite for work and touching human qualities, especially fierce loyalty to her co-workers. The spirituality that underlay all her intellectual and practical work will be apparent from beginning to end.

From the introduction to Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family, edited by Lynn McDonald (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001).

Daily Reading for August 13 • Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Conner and Dromore, 1667

Rise as soon as your health and other occasions shall permit; but it is good to be as regular as you can, and as early. Remember, he that rises first to Prayer, hath a more early title to a blessing. But he that changes night into day, labour into idleness, watchfulness to sleep, changes his hopes of blessing into a dream. . . .

At your opening your eyes, enter upon the day with some act of piety: 1. Of thanksgiving for the preservation of you the night past. 2. Of the glorification of God for the works of the Creation, or any thing for the honour of God. When you first go off from your bed, solemnly and devoutly bow your head, and worship the holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. . . .

When you are dressed, retire your self to your Closet; and go to your usuall devotions, which it is good that at the first prayers they divided were into seven actions of piety: 1. An act of Adoration. 2. Of Thanksgiving. 3. Of Oblation. 4. Of Confession. 5. Of Petition. 6. Of Intercession. 7. Of Meditation, or serious, deliberate, useful reading of the holy Scriptures. . . .

Before you go forth of your Closet, after your Prayers are done, set you self down a little while, and consider who you are to do that day, what matter of business is like to imploy you or to tempt you; and take particular resolution against that, whether it be matter of wrangling, or anger, or covetousness, or vain courtship, or feasting: and when you enter upon it, remember, upon what you resolved in your Closet. If you are likely to have nothing extraordinary that day a general recommendation of the affairs of that day to God in your Prayers will be sufficient: but if there be any thing foreseen that is not usual, be sure to be armed for it, by a hearty though a short Prayer, and an earnest prudent resolution before-hand, and then watch when the thing comes. . . .

Read not much at a time; but meditate as much as your time, and capacity, and disposition will give you leave: ever remembering, that little reading, and much thinking; little speaking, and much hearing; frequent and short prayers, and great devotion, is the best way to be wise, to be holy, to be devout.

From “The Diary: Or, Rule to spend each Day religiously,” in Jeremy Taylor’s The Golden Grove, or, A Manuall of Daily Prayers and Letanies (London: R. Royston, 1655); found at http://anglicanhistory.org/taylor/golden/diary.html

Daily Reading for August 14 • Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Seminarian and Martyr, 1965

In 1965 Lowndes County, Alabama, the piney hill country between Selma and Montgomery, was known among civil rights workers as “Bloody Lowndes.” It was one of the poorest counties in America, a place where 80 percent of the population was black, and not one black had ever voted. The official motto of the Lowndes County Democratic party was “White Supremacy.” After civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered, bumper stickers reading “Open Season” appeared on cars in Lowndes County. “Selma was scary enough,” said one civil rights worker, “but Lowndes County was the edge of the civilized planet.”

It was the last place one might have expected to find a young man named Jonathan Myrick Daniels from Keene, New Hampshire, in a jail cell, writing a note to his mother. Daniels was 26 years old, white, a doctor’s son who was about to enter his third year of divinity school. That spring he had answered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for clergy to join him in fighting for voting rights in Lowndes County. . . . Three days later, on Connie Daniels’s 50th birthday, Jon Daniels and 18 other civil rights workers were abruptly released without bail. While someone hurried to a pay phone to call Montgomery for rides, Daniels and Father Richard Morrisroe, a 25-year-old Catholic priest from Chicago, accompanied two black teenage girls, Ruby Sales and Joyce Bailey, to buy sodas at Varner’s Cash Store, the only place in Hayneville that would serve blacks.

“There was a kind of eerie feeling,” remembers Ruby Sales, “as if suddenly the streets were deserted, and we could not locate a black face anywhere. We were very hot and very tired. I told Jon I felt something wasn’t right, and he assured us everything would be fine. He was always so calming in that way.”

As they approached the Cash Store, a 52-year-old part-time deputy sheriff named Tom Coleman stepped into the doorway holding a pump shotgun. According to witnesses, he told the group, “This store is closed. If you black bitches don’t get off this goddamned property, I’m going to blow your brains out.”

Coleman leveled his gun at Ruby Sales. Witnesses later testified that Daniels pushed Sales to the ground just as the shotgun discharged. Daniels died instantly from a wound in the stomach; the force of the blast propelled him a dozen feet backward. Father Morrisroe grabbed Joyce Bailey and hurled her behind a parked car just as a second blast struck him, almost cutting him in half. Miraculously, he survived.

As witnesses fled for safety, Coleman walked to the courthouse and phoned the sheriff in Montgomery. “I just shot two preachers,” he reported. “Y’all better get on down here.”

A month later, an all-white jury found Coleman not guilty of manslaughter. The Lowndes County solicitor, who prosecuted the case, said afterward that Daniels would still be alive if he’d chosen to mind his own business.

In New Hampshire, the Keene Sentinel editorialized: “White Southerners and Northerners who hold (that) view . . . simply do not, and apparently cannot, understand why a white man would risk his life to help a Negro register to vote or teach Negro children to read. They simply do not understand that, to men like Jonathan Daniels, all men are brothers, and skin color means nothing. . . . In dying, not only was Jonathan Daniels minding his own business, but he was also attending to His business.”

“One of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry and career was performed by Jonathan Daniels,” said Martin Luther King Jr., when he heard of the tragedy. “Certainly there are no incidents more beautiful in the annals of church history, and though we are grieved at this time, our grief should give way to a sense of Christian honor and nobility.”

Two days after his death, Jon Daniels received the last rites of his faith at St. James Episcopal Church in Keene.

From “The Legacy of Jonathan Daniels” by James Dodson, in the January 1992 issue of Yankee magazine.

Daily Reading for August 15 • The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

We affirm that the fire that Christ sent out is for humanity’s salvation and profit. May God grant that all our hearts be full of this. The fire is the saving message of the gospel and the power of its commandments. We were cold and dead because of sin and in ignorance of him who by nature is truly God. The gospel ignites all of us on earth to a life of piety and makes us fervent in spirit, according to the expression of blessed Paul. Besides this, we are also made partakers of the Holy Spirit, who is like fire within us. We have been baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit. We have learned the way from what Christ says to us. Listen to his words: “Truly I say to you, that except a man be born of water and spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

It is the divinely inspired Scripture’s custom to give the name of fire sometimes to the divine and sacred words and to the efficacy and power which is by the Holy Spirit by which we are made fervent in spirit.

From Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Luke, Homily 94, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III, Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just, Jr. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for August 16 • St. Mary the Virgin (transferred)

Whom earth, and sea, and eke the skies,
Adore, and worship, and declare,
As ruler of the triple frame,
The closure of Maria bare.

Whom both the Moon, the Sun and all,
Do serve in their due time and space,
A maiden’s inward parts doth bear,
Bedewed with celestial grace.

Blest is the mother by this gift,
Whose womb as in a coffer held,
The maker that surmounteth all,
Who in his hand the world doth weld.

She blessed is by heavenly news,
And fruitful by the holy Ghost,
From out whose womb was yielded forth,
Whom nations had desired most.

Glory be unto thee O Lord,
That born was of the virgin pure,
With the Father and Holy Ghost,
All ages ever to endure, Amen. . . .

R: O holy and immaculate virginity, I know not, by what praises I may extol thee: for thou hast born in thy womb, whom the heavens could not contain.
V: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Because whom the heavens could not contain, thou hast born in thy womb.
V: Bid me O Lord to bless.
Blessing: The virgin herself of virgins, make intercession for us unto our Lord.
R: Amen.

From the medieval Office of Our Blessed Lady at Matins; found at http://www.medievalist.net/hourstxt/bvm1mata.htm

Daily Reading for August 17 • Samuel Johnson, 1772, Timothy Cutler, 1765, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, 1790, Priests

Timothy Cutler was ordained and installed Pastor of the Congregational Church in Stratford, Conn., on the 11th of January, 1710. Here he sustained a very high reputation, as a preacher, and was regarded as one of the most influential clergymen in the Colony. Yale College, having, after a serious and somewhat protracted conflict, become established in New Haven, the Trustees of that institution convened in March, 1719, and requested Mr. Cutler to take charge of it, until their next meeting. He consented to do so, and immediately entered on his duties; and so satisfactorily did he discharge them, that the Trustees, at their next meeting, in September, regularly appointed him Rector. . . .

The new Rector was exceedingly popular with the General Assembly, the Clergy, and the Students; and everything seemed auspicious of peace and usefulness. But, while the bright hopes which were now indulged had scarcely begun to be realized, they were suddenly checked by an event which left the institution again, in a short time, without a Head. The day after the Commencement in 1722, a paper was presented to the Clergy and others assembled in the College Library, signed by the Rector, and one of the Tutors, together with the Ministers of several of the neighbouring parishes, in which they say,—“Some of us doubt of the validity, and the rest are more fully persuaded of the invalidity, of Presbyterian ordination, in opposition to Episcopal.”

There was not, at this time, a single Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and but few Episcopal families, though there was a Missionary of the Church of England,—Mr. Pigot, residing in Stratford, with whom some of these gentlemen had formed an agreeable acquaintance. Such an announcement, therefore, might be expected to occasion great surprise; and fears seem to have been entertained lest the introduction of Episcopal worship into the Colony should have a tendency gradually to undermine the foundations of civil and religious liberty. In these circumstances it was thought expedient that there should be a public discussion of the subject of Episcopacy between the Trustees and the gentlemen who had signed the declaration.

Accordingly, in October following, at a meeting of the Trustees in the College Library, the Divine Right of Episcopacy was freely debated, in the presence of a large number of both Clergy and Laity, the Rector and Mr. Johnson (afterwards Dr. Johnson of Stratford) being the chief speakers on the affirmative, and Governor Saltonstall on the negative. The result of the discussion was that three of the clergymen who had doubted concerning the validity of Presbyterian ordination, professed to be satisfied with their former views; while the rest, and among them the Rector, were more fully confirmed in their Episcopal tendencies. On the 27th of October, the Trustees voted to “excuse the Rev. Mr. Cutler from all further service, as Rector of Yale College.”

Mr. Cutler now lost no time in making his arrangements to procure Episcopal ordination. Early in November following he sailed from Boston for England, in company with Mr. Johnson and Mr. Browne, and on his arrival there, about the middle of December, was received with every demonstration of respect and kindness. In March of the next year, he was ordained both as Deacon and Priest, by Dr. Green, Bishop of Norwich. He also received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, from both Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Dr. Cutler, having accomplished his object in England, embarked for America in July, and arrived in Boston in November. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had accepted him as their Missionary, and designated him to a new church, (Christ Church,) which had just been established in Boston. They erected a new edifice in the course of the year 1723, and, on the 29th of December, it was first opened for public worship, on which occasion Dr. Cutler commenced his labours as Rector by preaching from the text,—“My house shall be called an House of Prayer for all people.” At the commencement of his ministry here, his audience usually consisted of about four hundred; but it gradually increased to nearly double that number.

Dr. Cutler continued in the diligent discharge of his ministerial duties, until he was far advanced in life. He seems to have had little to do with the controversies of his time, though he always showed himself a consistent and earnest Episcopalian. About the year 1756, his labours were interrupted by an attack of illness from which he never recovered.

From Annals of the American Episcopal pulpit or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished Clergymen of the Episcopal Church in the United States, from the Early Settlement of the Country to the Close of the Year 1855 by William B. Sprague (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1859).

Daily Reading for August 18 • William Porcher DuBose, Priest, 1918

My own firm conviction is that the variant conceptions of the Gospel in the New Testament, so far from being different gospels, are consistent and mutually completive aspects of the one and only Gospel. In proportion as we conceive the Gospel of God in its entirety and in its immensity, in just that degree do all scriptural, as well as all truly Christian and catholic, statements of it, no matter how partial and seemingly contradictory in themselves, fall into their proper places and serve to magnify the greatness and harmony of the whole. If the Gospel is divine at all, it is the divinest fact of the universe, the final cause of creation, the end for which all else exists. Mistake any one fragment or aspect of it for the whole, and all the other fragments and aspects will be involved in confused and hopeless contention with it for the usurped position. Let the whole stand out for itself in its complete proportions, and every part falls of itself into its proper place, and is confirmed and supported in it by every other part. . . .

I have recognized the fact that even within the narrower limits of the Gospels which give us our record of the Gospel, there are not only possible but actual diverse impressions of what the Gospel is; and that not only is full justice due to each such impression, taken by itself and for its own sake, but that the very fullest justice to each is the only way of arriving at the truth of all, or at the truth of the whole of which they are the complementary and necessary parts. The one great lesson that must forerun and make ready the Christian unity of the future is this: that contraries do not necessarily contradict, nor need opposites always oppose. What we want is not to surrender or abolish our differences, but to unite and compose them. We need the truth of every variant opinion and the light from every opposite point of view. The least fragment is right in so far as it stands for a part of the truth. It is wrong only when, as so often, it elevates into a ground of division from the other fragments just that which in reality fits it to unite with and supplement them. . . .

So let us agree to disagree, if conscientiously we must, in all our manifold differences; and, bringing all our differences together, let us see if they are not wiser than we, and if they cannot and will not of themselves find agreement in a unity that is higher and vaster than we.

From the preface to The Gospel in the Gospels by William Porcher Du Bose (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908).

Daily Reading for August 19

If God had not intended that women should use their reason, He would not have given them any, for He does nothing in vain. If they are to use their reason, certainly it ought to be employed about the noblest objects, and in business of the greatest consequence, therefore, in religion. That our Godfathers and Godmothers answer’d for us at the font, was an act of charity in them, and will be a great benefit to us if we make a right use of it; but it will be our own condemnation if we are Christians merely upon this account, for that only can be imputed to a free agent which is done with understanding and choice. A Christian woman therefore must not be a child in understanding; she must serve God with understanding as well as with affection; must love Him with all her mind and soul, as well as with all her heart and strength; in a word, must perform a reasonable service if she means to be acceptable to her maker. . . .

If God had not given us sufficient light to discern between the evil and the good, nor motives strong enough to incline us to pursue the one and to avoid the other; if He had not put happiness in our own choice, but had inevitably determined us to destruction, this indeed had been a want of mercy and goodness, if not a want of justice towards His creatures.

From Mary Astell’s The Christian Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England (London, 1705).

Daily Reading for August 20 • Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, 1153

It is good that faith is shadowy. It tempers the light to the dim-sighted eye and prepares the eye for the light. It is written: “By faith he cleanses their hearts” [Ac 15:19]. Faith, therefore does not extinguish the light but protects it. All that which an angel sees clearly, the shadow of faith delivers to me, stored up now in the embrace of the faithful, to be revealed in due time. Is it not expedient to hold that which is obscure when you cannot comprehend it in its nakedness?

The Lord’s mother so lived in the shadow of faith that it is said of her: “Blessed are you who have believed” [Lk 1:45]. Even the body of Christ was a shadow for her, as we hear: “The power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow” [Lk 1:35]. This is no mean shadow which is formed by the power of the Most High. Truly there was power in Christ’s flesh which overshadowed the Virgin, since, by the enveloping shield of his quickening body, she could bear the presence of his majesty and sustain the inaccessible light [1Tm 6:16]—something impossible to mortal woman. That was power indeed, by which all opposing power was defeated. Both the power and the shadow [Lm 4:20] put demons to flight and shield humans—surely a quickening power, surely a refreshing shadow. We who walk by faith [2 Co 5:7] live in the shadow of Christ.

From Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs 31.9-10, quoted in John R. Sommerfeldt, “Bernard of Clairvaux On the Truth Accessible Through Faith,” in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Essays in Honor of Jean Leclercq, edited by E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1995).

Daily Reading for August 21

We have some idea, perhaps, what prayer is, but what is meditation? Well may we ask; for meditation is a lost art today, and Christian people suffer grievously from their ignorance of the practice.

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is the activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart.

It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear appreciation of God’s power and grace. Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us—“comfort” us, in the old, strong, Bible sense of the word—as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

From J. I. Packer’s Knowing God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).

Daily Reading for August 22 • The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The whole human race, like this woman, was bent over and bowed down to the ground. Someone already understands these enemies. He cries out against them and says to God, “They have bowed my soul down.” The devil and his angels have bowed the souls of men and women to the ground. He has bent them forward to be intent on temporary and earthly things and has stopped them from seeking the things that are above.

Since that is what the Lord says about the woman whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, it was not time for her to be released from her bondage on the Sabbath day. Quite unjustly, they criticized him for straightening her up. Who were these, except people bent over themselves? Since they quite failed to understand the very things God had commanded, they regarded them with earthbound hearts. They used to celebrate the sacrament of the Sabbath in a literal, material manner and did not notice its spiritual meaning.

From Sermon 162B of Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III, Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just, Jr. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for August 23 • Martin de Porres, 1639, Rosa de Lima, 1617, and Toribio de Mogrovejo, 1606, Witnesses to the Faith in South America

Although not many English-speaking Catholics are familiar with St. Martín, he is one of the most popular saints in Latin America. St. Martín was the son of the white, blue-eyed hidalgo (a Spanish noble) Don Juan de Porres and the freed black slave Ana Velázquez. Born in Lima on Dec. 9, 1575, Martín also was born into a kind of exile. His own father would not acknowledge him as his son in public. The baptismal entry in the registry of the church of San Sebastian in Lima reads simply: “On Wednesday the ninth of November of 1579, I baptized Martín, son of an unknown father.”

At the age of 16, Martín presented himself as donado to the Dominican friars of the Monastery of the Holy Rosary. Donados were members of the Third Order who received food and lodging for the work they did as lay helpers. In Spanish eyes this work was menial and not fit even for the lay brothers of the monastery.

St. Martín, however, saw things differently. At the door of the monastery, he began to greet the conquered Inca, the African slave, the homeless Spanish poor, and even dogs and cats who had been brutally abused. Standing at the door, a border between the friar’s holy life and the city’s crushing cruelty, made St. Martín a guide for the people of Lima in his day and also for us today. Out of that menial position, St. Martín became known for his skill in healing; his social work among widows, orphans, and prostitutes; his founding of hospitals and orphanages; his work with the indigenous, black, and mixed-race poor of the city; and for his love of animals. Indeed San Martín was known as the “St. Francis of the Americas.”

St. Martín transformed living at the margins of society into service at the door of the kingdom of God. He saw attending the monastery’s entrance as attending the very entrance of God’s kingdom. For this reason, St. Martín has been my guide and light. Rather than curse the marginal life that was my exile, I began to see it as a door into God’s home. I believe it is also the reason so many in Latin America see Martín as a guide as well. Those who find themselves outside of society find themselves welcomed home at the door attended by St. Martín.

From “Come Together: St. Martín de Porres” by Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, in U. S. Catholic 73:2 (February 2008): 47-48.

Daily Reading for August 24 • Saint Bartholomew the Apostle

An even, unvaried life is the lot of most men, in spite of occasional troubles or other accidents; and we are apt to despise it, and to get tired of it, and to long to see the world,—or, at all events, we think such a life affords no great opportunity for religious obedience. To rise up, and go through the same duties, and then to rest again, day after day,—to pass week after week, beginning with God’s service on Sunday, and then to our worldly tasks,—so to continue till year follows year, and we gradually get old,—an unvaried life like this is apt to seem unprofitable to us when we dwell upon the thought of it. Many indeed there are, who do not think at all;—but live in their round of employments, without care about God and religion, driven on by the natural course of things in a dull irrational way like the beasts that perish.

But when a man begins to feel he has a soul, and a work to do, and a reward to be gained, greater or less, according as he improves the talents committed to him, then he is naturally tempted to be anxious from his very wish to be saved, and he says, “What must I do to please God?” And sometimes he is led to think he ought to be useful on a large scale, and goes out of his line of life, that he may be doing something worth doing, as he considers it. Here we have the history of St. Bartholomew and the other Apostles to recall us to ourselves, and to assure us that we need not give up our usual manner of life, in order to serve God; that the most humble and quietest station is acceptable to Him, if improved duly,—nay, affords means for maturing the highest Christian character, even that of an Apostle. Bartholomew read the Scriptures and prayed to God; and thus was trained at length to give up his life for Christ, when He demanded it.

From Sermon XXVII on the Feast of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle by John Henry Newman, in Parochial and Plain Sermons, volume 2 (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1891).

Daily Reading for August 25 • Louis, King of France, 1270

This excellent learning then of Christ must be established in us, that we think us not to be born unto ourselves, but to the honor of God and wealth of all men. . . . This learning will induce men to desire no vengeance, but to be the sons of their Father in heaven, to overcome evil with good, to suffer hurt rather than to do it, to forgive other men’s offences, to be gentle in manners; . . . that in bearing rule they would not so much to excel as to profit all men; that they turn not to their own profit the things which are common, but bestow that they have, yea, and themselves also, upon the commonwealth; that in their titles of honour they refer all such things unto God. . . . For nothing is so comely, so excellent, so glorious to kings, princes, and rules, as in similitude to draw nigh unto the highest, greatest, and best king even Jesus Christ; instead of violence to exercise charity, and to be minister unto all men.

We must so cleave unto the learning of Christ, and be so circumspect therein, that we cloak not our own vices with other men’s faults. For though holy men have sometime done anything not to be followed, . . . yet ought we to do nothing that varieth from Christ; but as we have been like other men in sin, so should we be companions and partners also with them that repent and turn unto God. And as for other men’s deeds, we ought not churlishly so much to bark against them, neither with cruelness to fear them, as with softness and apt means to amend them, and allure them unto Christ.

From “Abridgement of Erasmus’s Enchiridion, or, The Means to be Used in Christian Warfare” by Myles Coverdale, in Writings and Translations of Myles Coverdale, edited by G. Pearson (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1844).

Daily Reading for August 26

I feel like writing you a rather bracing, disagreeable, east-windy sort of letter. When I read yours my first impulse was to send you a line begging you only to let yourself alone. Don’t keep on pulling yourself to pieces: and please burn that dreadful book with the list of your past sins! If the past really oppresses you, you had far better go to confession, and finish that chapter once and for all! It is emphatically your business now to look forwards and not backwards: and also to look forwards in an eager and optimistic spirit. Any other course is mere ingratitude, you know. . . .

Your responsibility ends when you have made sure that you are honest in will and intention, and are doing your best. There are no unbearable responsibilities in this world but those of our own seeking. Once life is realized as a succession of acts of loving service, undertaken in a spirit of joy, all that moonshine vanishes. . . .

People seem often to forget that Hope is a cardinal virtue necessary to salvation like Faith and Love: an active principle which ought to dominate life. I do think it would be so much better if you would go on quite simply and trustfully for a bit. After all, we value far more in our human relationships the sort of love that gives itself joyously and eagerly without introspection than the sort which is perpetually occupied with its own unworthiness or shortcomings.

From a letter to a friend dated May 30, 1907, in The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, edited with an introduction by Charles Williams (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1943).

Daily Reading for August 27 • Thomas Gallaudet, 1902, with Henry Winter Syle, 1890

Mr. Syle was born, November 9th, 1846, in Shanghai, China, where his father was stationed as a missionary. When in his fifth year, he was sent to America, on account of his health. At the age of six, he lost his hearing from scarlet fever. His education, which was carried on in the private school of Mr. D. E. Bartlett, at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, England, was interrupted more than once, and by various causes; but whenever he studied, he won high distinction. He took his Bachelor’s degree at Yale, in 1869, by the unusual and very trying course of presenting himself for a vigorous written examination in all the branches of the four years’ curriculum, which he passed with the highest credit. For five years, he taught in the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, pursuing meanwhile a course of professional study in the Columbia College School of Mines.

Leaving New York, he received an appointment as assayer in the Philadelphia Mint, and, while holding this position, pursued a course of theological study, preparing himself for the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in which he was ordained priest in 1887. He resigned his position at the Mint, to devote himself to religions work among the deaf, and, as the nucleus of this work, he gathered a congregation which, under his ministrations, grew into an independent church. His field of labor expanded in many directions, until his time and strength, freely expended, were largely overdrawn, and an attack of the epidemic influenza found him with no vital force left to resist its attack. . . .

It is not too much to say, that in point of scholarship and literary culture he was easily first among the deaf persons of this country, and perhaps of the world. Every ambition common to noble minds he shared—the love of distinction, the consuming thirst for knowledge, the desire for association with his intellectual peers; but his crowning glory is this, that he unhesitatingly sacrificed every one of these, as well as all less exalted aims, whenever they conflicted with the ruling purpose of his life. . . . As philanthropy underlay his studies, his social activities and his professional work, so a sincere but unostentatious piety inspired and pervaded his philanthropy. No more brilliant intellect, no more strenuous will, no purer soul has ever adorned our profession.

From a paper presented by Professor Weston Jenkins on the life of Henry Winter Syle, in Proceedings of the Eleventh National Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf, held at Berkeley, California, July 1886.

Daily Reading for August 28 • Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, and Theologian, 430 and Moses the Black, Desert Father and Martyr, c. 405

If the listeners are to be moved rather than instructed, so as not to become sluggish in acting upon what they know, and so as to give a real assent to things they admit are true, more forceful kinds of speaking are called for. Here what is necessary is words that implore, that rebuke, that stir, that check, and whatever other styles may avail to move the audience’s minds and spirits. Some people, of course, do it all in a dull, unattractive, and cold sort of way, while others do it with wit, elegance, and feeling. In any case, those who can speak and discuss things wisely, even though they cannot do so eloquently, must now undertake the task we are concerned with in such a way as to benefit their listeners. Beware, on the other hand, of those whose unwisdom has a flood of eloquence at its command, and all the more so, the more their audience takes pleasure in things it is profitless to hear, and assumes that because they hear them speaking fluently, they are also speaking the truth. . . .

Precisely this is eloquence, then, in the matter of teaching: to ensure, not that what was thought repellent should be found to be pleasing, or that something disliked should still be done, but that a point that was obscure or simply missed should be indicated and cleared up. If this is done, however, in a disagreeable way, only a few listeners will get any profit from it, and those the most serious, who are eager to know what there is to be learned, however dismally and crudely it is expressed. When they have attained this object, they feed enjoyably on truth itself; it is indeed the characteristic trait of good minds and dispositions to love in words what is true, not the words themselves.

What, after all, is the use of a golden key if it cannot open what we want, or what is wrong with a wooden key if it can, since all we are looking for is that closed doors should be opened to us? But yes, there is a certain similarity between feeding and learning; so because so many people are fussy and fastidious, even those foodstuffs without which life cannot be supported need their pickles and spices.

From The Uses of Rhetoric by Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Richard Lischer, ed., The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002).

Daily Reading for August 29 • The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and John Bunyan, Writer, 1688

This book will make a traveller of thee,
If by its counsels thou wilt ruled be;
It will direct thee to the Holy Land,
If thou wilt its directions understand:
Yea, it will make the slothful active be;
The blind also delightful things to see.

Art thou for something rare and profitable?
Wouldest thou see a truth within a fable?
Art thou forgetful? Wouldest thou remember
From New-year’s day to the last of December?
Then read my fancies: they will stick like burs.
And may be, to the helpless, comforters.

This book was writ in such a dialect,
As may the minds of listless men affect:
It seems a novelty, and yet contains
Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains.

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?
Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?
Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation?
Or else be drowned in thy contemplation?
Dost thou love picking meat? Or wouldst thou see
A man in the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?
Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Wouldest thou lose thyself and catch no harm,
And find thyself again without a charm?
Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what,
And yet know whether thou art blest or not,
By reading these same lines? Oh then come hither,
And lay my book, thy head, and heart together.

From the Author’s Apology to The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to that which is to Come by John Bunyan (New York: Robert Carter, 1876).

Daily Reading for August 30 • Charles Chapman Grafton, Bishop of Fond du Lac, and Ecumenist, 1912

Many good Christian people will say about this or like correspondences, “What a pity it is that clergymen should indulge in such discussions. It does no good. It does not convince anyone. It only widens the breach between Christians. It arouses hot, perhaps angry, feelings. It disturbs the peace of the inner life. Let us live together in peace, without fault-finding criticisms!”

There is much of truth in all this. To a devout person, a controversy is always a painful matter. The divisions in Christendom must be weakening to Christianity, and painful to our Lord. But we must remember that, as each one must, as St. Paul declares, give a reason for the faith that is in him, the duty of investigation rests upon all. Our Lord bade His hearers search the Scriptures, and see if these things He taught were so. It will not therefore do for us, any more than for the Jews, to say we were brought up in a certain faith, and therefore will not inquire. Whatever the Holy Spirit has taught us by experience, as for instance our conversion, if a Methodist, or the Real Presence, if a Roman Catholic, we should not reopen. But many questions which divide Christendom, we should, in the spirit of charity, be willing to investigate.

Ought we not at least to try to understand one another? Sad as are the divisions of Christians, is it not likely that each body stands for some truth or practice, which has either been overlooked, or disproportionately stated? In the love of Christ which should bind all Christians together, we should strive, not to exaggerate, but to minimize our differences. We must remember that all who are baptized are members of Christ, and so of His Church. And as the Holy Spirit, given to all at Pentecost, dwells in the whole body, we ought to be willing to learn from one another.

From “An Eirenicon, or Olive-Branch”: A Correspondence between the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Fond du Lac and the Rector of St. Patrick’s Church, Fond du Lac (Fond du Lac: The Daily Commonwealth, 1909).

Daily Reading for August 31 • Aidan, 651, and Cuthbert, 687, Bishops of Lindisfarne

On another occasion, Cuthbert was invited to worship with the community of men and women at the abbey of Coldingham, where Ebba was abbess. This monastery stood high on the cliffs overlooking the North Sea from which Lindisfarne could be seen far away in the south. One night, seeking time for quiet prayer, Cuthbert climbed down the cliffs, secretly followed by one of the brothers who was curious to see what he was up to. He saw Cuthbert wade into the sea until the water was up to his neck: there, with arms outstretched, he spent the night giving praise to God and singing to the sound of the waves. At daybreak, he returned to shore and began to pray again, kneeling on the beach. While he was doing this, two otters ran out of the sea and rubbed themselves against his legs and feet as if to dry them. Cuthbert blessed the creatures, before making his way to the monastic church for the singing of the canonical hymns at their appointed hour.

The watching monk was now filled with fear. He had been privileged to see something special but he was sure Cuthbert was aware of his spying. He approached Cuthbert, stretched himself on the ground and asked for forgiveness. “What is the matter, brother? What have you done? Have you been spying on me in my nightly vigil?” The poor man was too fearful to respond. Cuthbert then said, “Brother, you are forgiven but on one condition: that you promise to tell no one of this until after my death.” The promise was given and Cuthbert blessed the brother. After Cuthbert died, he told as many people as he could.

From The Holy Island of Lindisfarne by David Adam. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com