Archive: 1, 2011

Childhood and Postcode Students

This week I may as well begin by acceding to a reader’s request that in future I avoid serious subjects and confine myself, instead, to regaling readers with lyrical waxings about my idyllic childhood.

Well, it was idyllic in its own way.  We could get “hurls” on the milk-lorry, a lift to school on Louis Quinn’s ash-cart and a ride on an old mare when we went on holiday.  And yes, we did play cricket all summer on the slopes of the Barvas Hills, we had splendid Halloween parties and even more splendid bonfires, courtesy of Guy Fawkes.

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Demo at St Paul's

Looks like I got it wrong last week over the anti-capitalism demo outside St Paul’s.  It’s the church, not the demonstrators, which now has egg on its face.  No banker has been forced to resign and no chief executive has been forced to take a cut in pay, but the Dean and his Chancellor have found themselves, for different reasons, with no option but to stand down, leaving the media to spin the story as a crisis for Christianity.

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Prejudices and Tolerance

A wise Roman Catholic once remarked that there is no one so prejudiced as someone who thinks he has no prejudices; and what’s true of individuals is equally true of societies.  The more we pride ourselves on our tolerance the more intolerant we seem to become.

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The Spiritual Life of Thomas Chalmers - Part 2

Effects of the change

What Chalmers himself called “the very great transition in sentiment” was accompanied by an inward peace and joy which he never lost.  Reflecting on the experience years later, he wrote: “The righteousness which we try to work out for ourselves eludes our impotent grasp, and never can a soul arrive at true or permanent rest in the pursuit of this object.  The righteousness which, by faith, we put on, secures our acceptance with God and secures out interest in His promises.  We look to God in a new light – we see Him as a reconciled Father; that love to Him which terror scares away re-enters the heart.”

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