The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
And indeed it is to be admitted that there is a great and
much-forgotten truth implied here. It is a very poor, and low, and
inadequate idea of Christianity, to think of it merely as something
which saves from suffering--as something which saves us from hell,
regarded merely as a place of misery. The Christian salvation is
mainly a deliverance from sin. The deliverance is primarily from
moral evil; and only secondarily from physical or moral pain. 'Thou
shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their
sins.' No doubt this is very commonly forgotten. No doubt the vulgar
idea of salvation and perdition founds on the vulgar belief that
pain is the worst of all things, and happiness the best of all
things. It is well that the coarse and selfish type of religion
which founds on the mere desire to escape from burning and to lay
hold of bliss, should be corrected by the diligent instilling of
the belief, that sin is worse than sorrow. The Saviour's compassion,
though ever ready to well out at the sight of suffering, went forth
most warmly at the sight of sin.
Here I close the book, not because there is not much more in it
that well deserves notice, but because I hope that what has here
been said of it will induce the thoughtful reader to study it for
himself, and because I have space to write no more. It is a May
afternoon; not that on which the earliest pages of my article were
written, but a week after it. I have gone at the ox-fence at last,
and got over it with several contusions. Pardon me, unknown author,
much admired for your ingenuity, your earnestness, your originality,
your eloquence, if I have written with some show of lightness
concerning your grave book. Very far, if you could know it, was
any reality of lightness from your reviewer's feeling. He is non
ignarus mali: he has had his full allotment of anxiety and care;
and he hails with you the prospect of a day when human nature shall
cast off its load of death, and when sinful and sorrowful man shall
be brought into a beautiful conformity to external nature. Would
that Man were worthy of his Dwelling-place as it looks upon this
summer-like day! Open, you latticed window: let the cool breeze
come into this somewhat feverish room. Again, the tree-tops; again
the white stones and green graves; again the lambs, somewhat larger;
again the distant hill. Again I think of Cheapside, far away. Yet
there is trouble here. Not a yard of any of those hedges but has
worried its owner in watching that it be kept tight, that sheep or
cattle may not break through. Not a gate I see but screwed a few
shillings out of the anxious farmer's pocket, and is always going
wrong. Not a field but either the landlord squeezed the tenant in
the matter of rent, or the tenant cheated the landlord. Not the
smoke of a cottage but marks where pass lives weighted down with
constant care, and with little end save the sore struggle to keep
the wolf from the door. Not one of these graves, save perhaps the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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