History & Heritage

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Comments and questions this week come from George Grant’s Almanac sketches, Bill
Bennett’s America, vol.1, and the daily Bible studies in Tabletalk as indicated.

September 22 — Oxford
A vignette on perhaps the greatest university city in the world, “crowded with incident
and achievement,” Oxford, England. The astronomer Edmund Halley, architect
Christopher Wren, moral philosopher (and economist) Adam Smith, historian Edward
Gibbon, and playwright Oscar Wilde were among many, many notable figures to have
studied and labored there. It was the inspired milieu of Oxford where J.R.R. Tolkien
crafted his inventive fantasy of Middle Earth: The Hobbit (1937) and its sequel The Lord
of the Rings (1954-55). C.S. Lewis said of Tolkien and his work, “such a tale, told by
such an imaginative mind, could only have been spawned in such a place as Oxford.”

September 27 — The “acknowledged dean” of American Evangelicalism
The man described here is colonial New England’s Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758),
first-rate theologian and philosopher, Congregational pastor in Northampton, MA, and
frontier missionary to the Indians in Stockbridge, MA. For the record, the author of
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” spoke as much or more about the heavenliness
of heaven as he did the hellishness of hell. The emphasis of our text was on Edwards’
unwillingness to compromise the Word of God, to dilute either theological or ethical
standards, for the sake of either influential critics or the will of the masses. He suffered
loss of status and standing on account of this (being dismissed from the congregation
he served for over 25 years), but his role in the Great Awakening and the profundity of
his writings have secured his reputation for all time among the learned and the pious.

September 29 — Kipling Meets Twain
An entertaining account of an 1889 meeting between English poet and novelist Rudyard
Kipling (d. 1939) and an American writer he deeply admired, Mark Twain (d. 1910).
Kipling was fairly young (in his 20s) and still working his way up the literary ladder at the
time, while Twain was enjoying immense popularity and the financial rewards that
usually accompany it. “Reading his books,” Kipling revealed, “I had striven to get an
idea of his personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the
reality. Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with
a revered writer. That was a moment to be remembered; the landing of a twelve-pound
salmon was nothing to it. I had hooked Mark Twain, and he was treating me as though
under certain circumstances I might be an equal.”
Now if we could cultivate something of the depth of feeling for a favored author that
Kipling had for Twain, we might be teachable yet.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil — (Tabletalk, Sept. 26-28)
Biblical theologians through the ages have identified generally these three entities as
the chief enemies of Christians in their quest for spiritual growth? The first foe listed
represents that persistent pattern of life in society that deviates from the standards of
God, while the second calls attention to the wayward impulses that remain in the hearts
even of true Christians. The third, foremost of all, is the supernatural origin of evil itself
specializing in accusing the saints of (and inciting them to) sin.

Out of Africa: White Men and Black Slaves — (Bennett’s America 1, pp. 2-3)
Today’s critics of the West (Western Civilization) often give the impression that white
European Christians introduced slavery to an otherwise peaceful and prosperous
African continent. Did they? Hardly. What they did do, however, was purchase legions
already enslaved by fellow Africans and Arabs and remove them to their own lands and
overseas possessions. Sometimes the slaves were treated well and their lives were
improved, but more often than not they were simply exploited and abused.

Bennett writes: “Slavery was an inescapable part of African life. Mansa Musa, a devout
Muslim, was the king of Mali (currently part of Niger). He sold fourteen thousand female
slaves to finance his journey to Cairo in 1324. The Arabs were always .seizing our
people as merchandise,’ complained the black king of Bornu (in present-day Nigeria) to
the sultan of Egypt in the 1390s. With the extension of Islam into West Africa’s .Gold
Coast’ came an increasingly vigorous trade in black slaves. The Christian Portuguese
emulated this practice. Three hundred years before adoption of the U.S. Constitution,
decisions made in Europe and Africa would have great and terrible consequences for a
nation as yet unimagined and a people still unnamed.”

Students, parents, & friends: we continue our study of our Western inheritance with
some recent Almanac entries and some thoughts on Bill Bennett’s introduction to his
America, Volume 1.

September 20 — St. Francis and the Stigmata
Here the author drew our attention to an intense mystical encounter with Christ said to
have been experienced by St. Francis of Assisi late in his life (in 1224; Francis died in
1226). Francis’s monastic commitment to a life of “poverty, chastity, and obedience”
was dramatically confirmed for him when he apparently bore in his own body the
wounds of Jesus (known as the stigmata). It’s truly a classic incident in what is called
hagiography (the history of the saints), though one not subject to easy or certain
evaluation. The Roman Catholic Church, incidentally, claims about 300 Christians have
experienced something similar, though Francis is believed to have been the first.

September 20 — Chester A. Arthur Gets “Religion”
Arthur (1830–1886) was a Republican party politician in New York with a reputation for luxurious living and the misuse of public office for his own and his friends’ gain. His
party nevertheless nominated him for U.S. Vice President on the ticket with victorious
presidential candidate James Garfield in 1880, and he succeeded to the presidency
when the latter, an Ohio college president and Union veteran, was assassinated a year
later. Arthur apparently amended some of his ways in his one term as chief executive
(1881–1885). Rather than merely hand out lots of federal jobs to cronies and his
party’s supporters (the “spoils system”), he approved a Civil Service System that
sought to base hiring and promotions on professional merit.

“This Last Best Hope of Earth” — from Bennett’s America 1, p. xiii
The phrase is Lincoln’s (from late 1862), the 16th-president observing, in the throes of
crisis like none other in our history, that “we shall nobly save or meanly lose this last
best hope of earth.” It’s one of countless examples of how his prose sings like poetry.

Bill Bennett wants us, among other reasons for writing his book, to rekindle this
Lincolnian hope in America as the hope of the world. He rightly points out that many
great Americans of the past have so believed, and they were inspired to do great deeds
for which we are all grateful. Moreover, what goes by the name of “American
exceptionalism” sometimes seems to demand such belief.

Permit this teacher, if you will, to demur just a bit or to take exception with this aspect of
our native exceptionalism.

It’s not that it’s a Godless doctrine. Many, after all, will say (and have said) that God
Himself in His providence has called America to play precisely such a role in the world.
But where do we read such a thing in Scripture? How far shall we push our
speculations, particularly when they flatter us so?

It seems far safer, and much more modest, to say simply what the Bible says: Christ
(for, in, and through His Church) is the true and only hope of men on planet earth. Even
the U.S., as fine a land as she has been, is no substitute for the King and His kingdom.

Here’s a question with which we Americans may need to grapple: Can we still be proud
of our country, love her, admire her, and acknowledge her goodness (despite her faults)
if it turns out we’re not #1 after all? What if the 21st-century Chinese, or any other
people, surpass us in economic and military matters? What then? Our response will
surely reveal whether our hearts burn with true patriotism or mere nationalistic pride.

America is not, and never has been, the world’s “best hope.” The good news, however,
is that America surely has had hope, and will continue to have hope, but only to the
degree she longs for the True Hope of the World by receiving His Word, submitting to
His rule, and honoring His Church.

Call it a paradox; call it what you will. A nation becomes an earthly example for others
only by calling attention to a heavenly example. A people find hope for this age when
they hope, first and foremost, for another.

Somehow, somewhere, from the days of John Winthrop and the Puritans to today,
American aspirations exceeded their proper bounds. It’s a noble thing to shine a lamp
or build a city on a hill here below, so long as you want to reflect or imitate in some
measure the light and city above. But when you start to shroud the latter in order to
bask in the former, sooner or later the lights go out and you’re left with a heap of rubble.

One suspects that what you really have in utterances like Lincoln’s on America’s
mission in the world, and the similar but far less elegant assertions of others, is the
secularization of a sacred tradition.

Trying to be the “last best hope of earth” is a burden too big for men, even for
Americans.

p.s. The years listed above for Chester A. Arthur (1830–1886), interestingly
enough, correspond exactly to those of reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson of
Amherst, Massachusetts. This teacher spent his collegiate years (1972–76) in that western MA town.

Students, parents & friends, the following comments or H&H-type questions may assist
you in thinking through our early September Christian Almanac readings:

September 1 — Scots’ Patriotism
An overview of a great revival of Scots’ patriotism in the 19th-century (1800s), its
primary themes being family, faith, and freedom. The revival was fueled by the poetry of
Robert Burns (d. 1796), the novels of Sir Walter Scott (d. 1832), and the preaching
and teaching ministry of Thomas Chalmers (d. 1847). The mid-1800s raising of the
national monument commemorated the heroism of warrior William Wallace (d. 1305),
champion of the struggle for Scottish independence from Edward I’s England.

September 6 — The Mayflower
The Pilgrims, a tight-knit group of English Calvinists separated from the Church of
England (a.k.a. “Separatists”), began their historic voyage to America (original
destination northern Virginia) upon the Mayflower on September 6, 1620. The ship
itself, only 90 feet long and 26 feet wide, carried 101 passengers across the Atlantic in a
little over 2 months, first landing on what is today Cape Cod, Massachusetts. With an
heroic determination to advance the gospel and establish Christian civilization, they built
Plymouth Plantation.
September 6 — William McKinley (1843–1901)
An Ohio lawyer and Republican party politician, McKinley became the third U.S.
president to be victimized by assassination (after fellow Republicans Lincoln & Garfield).
He was elected to the presidency twice (1896 & 1900) and, like most leaders of his
party, promoted aggressively the interests of powerful bankers, industrialists, and
merchants. Pro-big business Republican policies included protective tariffs, financial
grants and subsidies, favorable tax rates and regulations, and the construction of
transportation and communication systems that spanned the continent (like railroads).

September 8 — The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
We are all familiar with Lincoln’s poetic description of democracy at Gettysburg
(November 19,1863) as “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Here’s another gem implying the advisability of democracy in the longterm delivered in
1858 in a speech in Clinton, Illinois: You can fool all of the people some of the time;
some of the people all of the time; but not all of the people all of the time.

September 8 — Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661)
17th-century Scottish professor, pastor, and theologian who participated in England’s
Westminster Assembly and helped shape the influential Westminster Shorter
Catechism, the one that begins with the question, “What is the chief end of man?”
Rutherford is best known, however, for his argument for limited government, even
limitations upon the powers of kings, in Lex Rex (Law is King). Our assigned reading
highlighted his loyalty to everyday people in his small rural parish by noting, “He was
always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always
writing, and always studying.”

September 13 — catechisms
According to English literary giant Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the miniature
questions and answers of these Christian instructional booklets “afford us a glimpse
at the inner framework of the Western view of the world”? The first such booklets,
apparently, were drafted by scholarly monks like Alcuin in the early Middle Ages. But it
was the 16th-century Reformation, through the writings of men like Luther and Calvin,
that revived and advanced the highly effective teaching technique.

September 15 — Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
The following paragraph, from the pen of Founding Father Gouverneur Morris (NY &
PA), forms this section or subdivision of the U.S. Constitution(?):
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

September 15 — Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816)
A New York lawyer, planter, and statesman of distinguished ancestry, this American
Founder (1752–1816) edited and revised the final draft of the U.S. Constitution and the famous words of its Preamble are his? He spoke more often at the Great Convention
than any other delegate (173 times), and his leanings were aristocratic (the president
the Senate, he argued, should be elected for life). Biographer M.E. Bradford called him
the “least sanguine of the Framers, but one of the most brilliant.”

Back to State Schooling

 
The late great economist Milton Friedman often insisted on calling public schools
“government schools.” The distinction reminds us that in modern America, it is indeed
government that claims lordship over our children’s mental and moral upbringing.
Allowance is made for a variety of private initiatives, thankfully, but government certifies
and superintends them and, presumably, can shut them down at will.

There is another sense, however, in which Friedman’s terminology may not be helpful.
The better question is not whether government should play a role in our schools, but
which government and to what end? Turning things over to big cities, the fifty states,
and the United States did nearly irreparable damage to both liberty and learning.

“State schooling,” as opposed to public and private, is a product of the late 1800s and
early 1900s. The leading lights of the movement, like Columbia’s John Dewey, knew
exactly what they wanted and wrote about it candidly. Their aim, believe it or not, was
nothing less than to fashion a new kind of man, basically an individualist divorced from
religion and tradition who would lend his democratic consent to whatever the nationstate
was scheming to do next. Everyone a resource, a worker bee, for the greater
good of man and his mass economy and culture! Local communities, of course, could
still have their school boards and such, but only as administrative arms of larger, more
“enlightened” jurisdictions.

Those who think state schools have failed (probably most of us) should think again.
Given their original purpose, they’ve been wildly successful.

In the excerpt below from the most recent issue of Chronicles, classics scholar Thomas
Fleming discusses the state school phenomenon and the American educational scene:

Schools have been the factories in which we cranked out the perpetual adolescents
who hated everything their ancestors had accomplished. No one today can praise
Jefferson without piously denouncing him as a slaveholder and citing the Sally Hemings
affair as if it were an established historical fact rather than a theory perpetrated by a
known liar. *

Anyone who has gone to high school .knows’ that before the 20th century American
men spent their lives lynching Negroes, beating women, abusing children, and keeping
Jews out of country clubs. State schooling in the United States, from the very
beginning, has been a political and ideological project that had little to do with training
young minds and everything to do with liberating American children from the shackles of tradition, which can be loosely defined as anything their grandparents ever believed.

By and large, state schooling developed in the decades after the War Between the
States. Some New England schools, it is true, had state superintendents or agencies
even before the war, but for the most part public schools were still public–that is,
controlled by the people of local communities. It is only when large cities and state
agencies assume control over local schools, standardizing curricula and textbook
selection and amalgamating dozens of community schools into consolidated assembly-line systems, that it becomes proper to speak of state schooling.

Pseudo-professional educationists staged a coup in the decades before and after 1900.
They were clear in enunciating their agenda: Parents were too stupid and selfish to be
trusted to make decisions; the traditional curriculum had to be destroyed and replaced
by a curriculum designed by so-called social so-called scientists, who would create a
new democratic man.

* The reference here (“a known liar”) is probably to Pulitzer Prize winning author Joseph
Ellis, whose books on the Founding Fathers have proved a commercial success. Ellis
long maintained that he had seen action in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne, but this
was not the case. He never went to Vietnam. When exposed by an author from Texas
in Chronicles, and then by The Boston Globe, he apologized publicly.

(Fleming’s entire essay, entitled “Deforming Education,” appears on pages 10-11 of the
September 2011 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Chronicles is
the monthly periodical of The Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois.)

Veritas history students will take our Summer 2011 History & Heritage Quiz in class
this Friday, September 2. Faculty and families will receive the bright yellow hard copy of
the test in their folders the week after. It will subsequently be posted on our website.
What follows is commentary on this weekʼs Almanac readings. Please note that this is
the 12th-and-final installment of Summer H&H for this year.

August 23 — “The Poet”
The New England transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a noteworthy lecture
by this title in New York City in the summer of 1842, a talk that inspired a young Walt
Whitman to write his acclaimed Leaves of Grass (1855)? Emerson called for a uniquely
American artistry to celebrate everyday life in the U.S. with its small farms, factorytowns,
and railroads. Whitman, who heard Emerson speak that day, later claimed his
creative juices had been “simmering” until Emerson brought them “to a boil.”

August 25 — Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) called him “the marvelous boy;” other English literary
giants couldnʼt help but laud his astonishing ability to craft poetry, essays, journal
accounts, and stories. Chatterton claimed to be merely translating the works of
medieval monks from “brittle old manuscripts,” but that seemed fanciful to many.

Like many child prodigies of our day, too much success too early, along with severe
character flaws, proved his undoing.

Some words from the sketch that you should be able to define include scrivener,
elegies, eclogues, neophyte, precocious, profligately, unimpeachable. (Do not
merely consult a dictionary, but try to use the clues yielded by the context.)

Hereʼs a sentence worthy of careful attention: “Though most of the medieval academics
of the day questioned the authenticity of the manuscripts, the undeniable beauty and
stunning maturity of the pastoral eclogues made them doubt that a neophyte like
Chatterton could have manufactured such an elaborate ruse much less have written
such magnificent literature.”

Lastly, students of history should note when the teen prodigy lived: Chatterton passed
from this world (1770) just before the struggle of the American colonies for
independence from Great Britain heated up.

August 30 — Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826): Americaʼs Farmer
Jefferson, in Baltimore during his vice-presidential term (1797–1801), finds thereʼs no
room for him in the inn and proves his personal connection to everyday people and
everyday work (“democratic solidarity”).

As Americaʼs foremost agrarian theorist, Jefferson believed the land was the chief
material asset, and proper care of it the chief virtue, of a people. His words on this
matter bear repeating: “Widespread distribution and careful stewardship over property
is the most tangible attribute of liberty. The faith of a people, the vision of a people, the
destiny of a people may be divined by its corporate concern for the soil.”

Perhaps it behooves us today to consider the contrast between, and the relative
importance of, “corporate concern for the soil” and corporate concern for money.
Whereas the former nudges us closer to nature and a more enduring bond with our
geographic place in the world, our community and our neighbors, the latter typically
does not. With money, as they say, itʼs easy come and easy go. The earthʼs a bit
harder to move and take with us when we seek greener pastures.

For Jefferson, as with all thoughtful agrarians, the land not only belongs to us (under
Godʼs rule and ordination, of course), but we belong to the land. If there is some truth to
this, and the ancient Israelites would probably concur with it, then what lies beneath our
feet is our vital physical and “tangible” link to one another and across generations.

Suffice it to say that any spiritual link we have with each other (and with our ancestors
and descendants) is much harder to preserve without a solid and stable material one.

August 30 — The “Apostle to the Indians”
Highlighted in this entry are the remarkable achievements of John Eliot (1604–1690), a
Puritan clergyman who migrated from England to Massachusetts Bay in 1631 (part of
the “Great Migration”). Eliot, teacher of the church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, for
nearly 60 years (1632–1690), made strenuous efforts to reach the Algonquin Indians
with the gospel. His translations of the Old and New Testaments into the language of
the Algonquins formed the first printed Bible in North America.

Veritas history students, we will take the Summer 2011 History & Heritage Quiz during the first week of school on Friday, September 2.
Do not worry about getting a bad grade; grades will only count if you do well (and they
will count rather handsomely). Our quizzes are about developing cultural memory,
awareness, and thoughtfulness. That’s what matters, so pay careful attention to the
content of each question as you read through the test.
We trust you have kept up with the weekly Almanac biographical sketches (just 2
pages per week) and the summer H&H installments by email or the Veritas blog
(there will be 12 in all). It would be a good idea to print these installments, if you haven’t
already done so, and bring them to class for the first day of school (Monday, August 29).
Our set-up preliminaries complete, we now resume our summer lessons.
August 16 — Rufus King (1755-1827)
One of the youngest of the American Founders at the Constitutional Convention (he was
just 32 in 1787), known for his forceful eloquence in oratory and competence in the law,
particularly maritime and commercial relations. He represented Massachusetts for the
first half of his career (including the Founding era) and New York for the second half. A
High Federalist (an advocate for the U.S. Constitution) and a Unionist, there was still a
good measure of regional and parochial spirit in the man. A strong union was best, in
King’s mind, mostly because he thought it best for New England and the Northeast. He
thought secession was a legitimate option for the states, he threatened it a couple of
times himself, and once recommended it to Virginia’s John Taylor of Caroline (Taylor did
not think the moment was ripe for that option).

Even King’s fierce opposition to slavery seemed to be less about the moral injustice of
the practice than about regional power politics (mounting a challenge to what he
perceived as an ascendant and domineering South). King, by the way, was born in the
district of Maine (part of Massachusetts at the time), the son of a slaveholder. He
owned slaves himself until 1812.
August 18 — Carlyle and Wordsworth in 1840
A verbally sophisticated and enjoyable sketch about men of letters having breakfast (not
readily adaptable to questions and answers). Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a
brilliant Scottish essayist and historian whose work on the French Revolution
established his reputation for wisdom in cultural criticism. William Wordsworth
(1770-1850) was England’s poet laureate from 1843 to his death.
We’ll quote one of Carlyle’s marvelous descriptions of the elderly Wordsworth as he
appeared to the learned Scot that sunny summer morning (make sure you get the
meaning of taciturn, hopefully from context): “You would have said he was a usually
taciturn man; glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such
offered itself.”

There was one somewhat sour note in Carlyle’s account. After noting how Wordsworth
reveled in “the wells of English undefiled,” he complained about his being “stone dumb
as to the deeper rules and wells of Eternal Truth and Harmony, which you were to try
and set forth by said undefiled wells of English or what other speech you had.”

We can thank Mr. Carlyle for here reminding us of something we all know intuitively:
when it comes to rhetoric (speaking & writing), what we say matters more than how we
say it. Better to be true than merely eloquent or elegant.

Subsidiarity — (from Thomas Fleming’s The Morality of Everyday Life)
This term summarizes the substance of Roman Catholic criticism of both nationalism
and internationalism, ideologies that followed in the wake of the French Revolution?
Formulated by popes, including Leo XIII and Pius XI, in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
the Church’s teaching warned against larger jurisdictions swallowing up the functions of
smaller ones when the latter are indeed capable of performing them. Other names for
the concept include decentralization and federalism.

Students & friends, please note that this is our tenth installment of Summer History &
Heritage for 2011. If you missed any of them by email, you can find them on the Veritas
website blog (all 10 of them).

This week we continue our study of the August Christian Almanac biographical sketches
with a little commentary on some intriguing figures.

August 4 — King Oswald of Northumbria
Here we have a remarkable sketch on the intersection of pagan and Christian belief in
early-medieval (Anglo-Saxon) Britain, roughly covering the period AD 600-1100.
Northumbria is the ancient name for northeast England and southeast Scotland; many
believe it was 1 of 7 major kingdoms of the period (a heptarchy).

Reading of the heroic Oswald, the devout St. Aiden, and the influential monastery on
the isle of Lindisfarne reminded me a comment by author Ray Olson in his review of a
brilliant new anthology of Anglo-Saxon poetry (The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon
Poems in Translation edited by Greg Delanty and Michael Matto). Olson writes:
“Altogether, these heroic monologues, Bible paraphrases, riddles, battle accounts,
saints’ lives, prayers, religious allegories, moral exempla, and white-magical charms
depict a society full of necessary violence that has decided–quite recently, it seems–to
trust in the salvation of Jesus Christ.” Delanty and Matto (an Irish poet and an American
literary scholar) deny that Anglo-Saxon writings, supposedly taken up later and revised
by Christian monks, show us a pagan society (the conventional view of today’s
universities). Rather, they boldly assert that “Christianity is the sea Anglo-Saxon poetry
swims in.” Olson’s fine review entitled Anglo-Saxon Reality appears in the August 2011
issue of Chronicles magazine.

(p.s. Did you notice that Oswald, once he secured Northumbria, visited the villages to
confirm his subjects in the Christian faith and to free slaves by turning them into monks?
Now if only Honest Abe and his generation had thought of an idea like that!)

From Modern Times: An Athlete and a Writer
With respect to the 20th-century, its political oppression, and world wars, I trust you
noted in the reading the remarkable fourfold triumph of Ohio State’s Jesse Owens in
Berlin (1936), and the heartbreaking arrest in Amsterdam (1944) and subsequent
concentration camp death of young Jewish diarist Anne Frank.

August 9 — Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204)
The highly educated lady of the 12th-century (1100s) was a force to be reckoned with in
public affairs, the queen-by-marriage of two kingdoms (France & England) and mother
of two kings (Richard the Lion-hearted and the infamous John).
If asked what acts of Eleanor’s were most pronounced in the reading, your answer
should call attention, I would hope, to her competence in teaching her sons and her
efforts to put Richard on the English throne and keep him there. She actually governed
the realm as Richard’s regent while he was away on the Third Crusade.

August 11 — Augustus Toplady (1740-1778)
18th-century Anglican clergyman and author of beloved hymn “Rock of Ages.” He didn’t
shy away from controversy, the author observing that Toplady was “best known for his
polemical and dogmatic works.” The reference here is to doctrinal dispute largely in
defense of the Calvinistic understanding of the Christian gospel. In other words, he
sought to prove that orthodox Calvinism was not only true to the Bible, but also the
historic creed of the Church of England. Many in the new Methodist camp of that era
took issue with both affirmations, opting instead for what was called an Arminian view of
salvation (named after Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius who died in 1609). The French
theologian John Calvin’s years, by the way, were 1509-1564.

Both Calvinists and Arminians affirm that only those who truly believe, who trust in
Christ for salvation from their sins, will inherit eternal life. Both agree that when man
chooses to believe or not believe he does so freely and under no external compulsion.
Their differences are rather complex but boil down to this:

Whereas Calvinists believe the decisive factor in salvation is what God wills and does
(whomever He has chosen from eternity past to save, out of His own good pleasure, He
will indeed save), Arminians believe that factor is man’s consent and cooperation. In his
free will man is able always, say the latter, to either embrace or spurn God’s gracious
overtures. The outcome depends, ultimately, on man’s choices in the Arminian scheme.

Both historic schools of faith have labored to derive their doctrine from the Bible, which
they affirm is the authoritative Word of God. Our own judgments on such a profound
question, to the extent we form them, should be a product of humility, care, study,
prayer, and heeding the instruction we receive in our churches.

Lastly, we would not be wise to dismiss this as a mere academic quarrel reserved for
professorial types. The conclusions we come to, the beliefs we adopt, have profound
implications for our understanding of both the depth of our sin and the graciousness of
God’s grace. We must not separate, because the Bible doesn’t, our doctrine from our
practice, our thinking from our living, or our theology from our praise (doxology).

Students & friends, we continue our look at the Almanac biographical sketches with
some commentary on Abraham Lincoln. Keep in mind that we are now observing, or
supposed to be observing, the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of the great war of
1861-1865, still the watershed event in our history.

August 2 — Ironies of the Lincoln Legacy
Could it be said, as the author suggested, that Lincoln, in order to save democracy and
the political self-determination of peoples, struck a blow to both (at least as they existed
in the American South)? One might also say the same about Lincolnʼs handling of the
U.S. Constitution. He appeared to skirt its requirements on several occasions, always
citing war necessities and always intending the salvation of that venerable document.
For example, Lincoln as commander-in-chief launched a military invasion of seceded
states (a new independent confederation?) without Congressional approval. He acted
unilaterally to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, incarcerated hundreds of war critics
without trial, and shut down opposition newspapers and journals. (Just wondering how
George W. would have fared had he tried something like that.) The question this raises
for us, and itʼs highly debatable, is about means and ends. Assuming for now that the
ends were legitimate, were the means appropriate and just?

Mastersʼ Lincoln — (based on Clyde Wilsonʼs April 2011 article in Chronicles)
Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), the Illinois poet and author of the Spoon River
Anthology (1915), penned a biography of the iconic 16th-President entitled Lincoln: The
Man (1931). In it he took a dim view of his fellow Illinoisan, even of his soaring political
rhetoric in speeches like The Gettysburg Address (1863). Mastersʼ view is a minority
report to be sure, especially in the North, but there have always been some potent
voices critical of Lincoln — of his character, his policies, and his vision of America — even
north of the Mason-Dixon line. For the most part the critics have been summarily
dismissed by the gatekeepers of respectable opinion in this country, and Masters was
probably the harshest of those critics (and perhaps an embittered one as well).

Whatever the merits or demerits of his biography, his critique of the Gettysburg Address
in that book is worth pondering. Masters believed that Lincoln, in that speech, “carefully
avoided one half of the American story” and proved “unable to deal realistically with the
history of his country.” Thus, the oration “remains a prose poem, but in the inferior
sense that one must not inquire into its truth. One must read it apart from the facts. . .”

What Lincoln really gave us at Gettysburg, said Masters, was “that refusal of the truth
which is written all over the American character and its expressions.”

Thatʼs a “hard saying,” maybe even an offensive one, and it cries out for some
explanation. What in the world is the poet talking about?

Leaving aside the fact that no “new nation,” including one “conceived in liberty” and
inspired by a great “proposition,” was forged in 1776, the speech and the political career
of Lincoln reveal that rock of the republic, as he understood it, consisted in the equal
rights of individuals and the democratic expression of such rights in sacred (and mass)
political entities like The People, The Nation, or The Union. Itʼs not that we canʼt find
such themes in early American political thought, but it seems dangerously reductionistic
to stress them at the expense of everything else. Above all, at the expense of the actual
history of America up to the Civil War.

What about the chartered colonies and their almost seamless transition to states with
their own constitutions and representative bodies? What about local and regional
customs? Communal authority? The various structures of society (beginning with the
family) that mediate relations between citizens and their governments? What about the
Christian religion and its scriptural authority?

These were, and in a gravely weakened state still are, American realities. Historically,
theyʼve served to define, temper, moderate, and in some cases, counterbalance those
broader, more abstract political themes mentioned above.

Lincolnʼs worldview, however, takes little account of such things. His rhetoric is
unquestionably brilliant, but he gives his generation, as Masters says, a half-portrait of
America, and itʼs not the better or stronger half.

This school of thought, then, sees Lincoln, not as savior of the old Union and the old
liberty, but as father and founder of new ones. (Did he not speak of “a new birth of
freedom” at Gettysburg?) It should come as no surprise, however, that succeeding
years have shown that neither the rights of individuals nor the jurisdiction of the nationstate have effectual bounds any longer.

As many of you know, this teacher often finds the case put forth by Lincolnʼs critics
persuasive. The mainstream view, however, says Abe saved the Union, freed the
slaves, and remains Americaʼs greatest spokesman for liberty, virtue, and prosperity.

(Our fine textbook author for the coming school year, William Bennett, sides with the
mainstream; his America volumes are subtitled “The Last Best Hope,” a descriptive
phrase he took from Lincoln.)