SmokingFlax
Puritan Board Sophomore
Here are some observations about Calvinistic thinking that I thought were of interest. I thought that I should share them here.
Taken from: Anarchy In Worship (pp 26-27) James Begg 1875
quoting from the Pall Mall Gazette
Mental indolence is a bad thing, and people would be a great deal happier and probably better if they would avoid it. A sound and effective popular education is the only remedy which Mr. Gladstone can suggest for the indolence he deplores, and he hopes great things from it. We are not so sanguine, remembering that school training is only the first step in education. It does what Sir Walter Scott said a knowledge of languages does -it puts tools in men's hands.
There is little good in teaching a man to read unless he forms a habit of reading. The Scotch have been made an educated people, not because the habit was general of teaching children the three R's - that was all very well - but it was only preliminary.
The Scotchman, even in humble life, found himself in an atmosphere of theory which compelled him to exercise his reasoning faculties. Sir Walter Scott's pictures of ploughmen and humble dependents who were expert theologians are no fancy sketches. Whatever be said of Calvinism, it was at least a theory of human life and destiny, which was wrought into the very bone and muscle of their Scottish natures.
Its tenets brought the meanest peasant into direct contact with the most recondite problems. When this was the case there was no place for mental indolence; and the example of Robert Burns, stored with the mythology of Christianity peculiar to Scotland, shows how real was the process of training. Burns had no particular aptitude for theology, but he could not help his mind being furnished through the influences that surrounded him, and which invigorated intellect even where the dogmas they represented were disbelieved.
It is of little use telling English peasants and ploughmen to go and be like their Scotch fellows, now that they have the means of education provided for them, for that is only half the work. You must give them habits of thought and introspection; you must bring them to take a living interest in some reality, or what will represent reality to them. When once their energies are stimulated by exercise in this way, you may hope that they will shake off mental indolence, and find in thinking and reading a better attraction than in lolling, loitering, whistling, playing marbles, other trifling occupations.
But where is the prospect of any such provision, far less any appetite for it? The great mass
of the clergy either teach the Christian myths as something too sacred, too good for human nature's daily food, or excite interest by ecclesiastical costumery, which is not even made to seem alive or to represent any living idea. Anything more hardening and deadening than such a mode of dealing with religion, the strong feelings connected with which must always make it the most powerful medium through which the feelings of the mass of the community are excited, could not be invented.
Taken from: Anarchy In Worship (pp 26-27) James Begg 1875
quoting from the Pall Mall Gazette
Mental indolence is a bad thing, and people would be a great deal happier and probably better if they would avoid it. A sound and effective popular education is the only remedy which Mr. Gladstone can suggest for the indolence he deplores, and he hopes great things from it. We are not so sanguine, remembering that school training is only the first step in education. It does what Sir Walter Scott said a knowledge of languages does -it puts tools in men's hands.
There is little good in teaching a man to read unless he forms a habit of reading. The Scotch have been made an educated people, not because the habit was general of teaching children the three R's - that was all very well - but it was only preliminary.
The Scotchman, even in humble life, found himself in an atmosphere of theory which compelled him to exercise his reasoning faculties. Sir Walter Scott's pictures of ploughmen and humble dependents who were expert theologians are no fancy sketches. Whatever be said of Calvinism, it was at least a theory of human life and destiny, which was wrought into the very bone and muscle of their Scottish natures.
Its tenets brought the meanest peasant into direct contact with the most recondite problems. When this was the case there was no place for mental indolence; and the example of Robert Burns, stored with the mythology of Christianity peculiar to Scotland, shows how real was the process of training. Burns had no particular aptitude for theology, but he could not help his mind being furnished through the influences that surrounded him, and which invigorated intellect even where the dogmas they represented were disbelieved.
It is of little use telling English peasants and ploughmen to go and be like their Scotch fellows, now that they have the means of education provided for them, for that is only half the work. You must give them habits of thought and introspection; you must bring them to take a living interest in some reality, or what will represent reality to them. When once their energies are stimulated by exercise in this way, you may hope that they will shake off mental indolence, and find in thinking and reading a better attraction than in lolling, loitering, whistling, playing marbles, other trifling occupations.
But where is the prospect of any such provision, far less any appetite for it? The great mass
of the clergy either teach the Christian myths as something too sacred, too good for human nature's daily food, or excite interest by ecclesiastical costumery, which is not even made to seem alive or to represent any living idea. Anything more hardening and deadening than such a mode of dealing with religion, the strong feelings connected with which must always make it the most powerful medium through which the feelings of the mass of the community are excited, could not be invented.
This reminds me of the abuse of Tyndales statement now-a-days to make the Word understandable to the ploughboy. This can be a good start, but that is ALL it should be... a <b>start</b>. We must give them habits of thought and introspection; you must bring them to a REAL knowledge and understanding of the truth of the Gospel, and its application in our lives.
