Summer History & Heritage #4 — (week of July 4)

Students & friends, what follows are some of my questions & answers on the last two
weeks of Christian Almanac readings (and an additional entry from Tabletalk):

June 21 — Christopher Wren
After London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, Charles II
chose this ingenious English architect (1632-1723) to oversee its rebuilding? His
elegant vision for the structure, including its magnificent dome, survived the fierce
opposition of a royal committee, and he saw the project to completion in the relatively
short time of 35 years. A devout Protestant, he made the pulpit the focal point of the
cathedral’s interior.

June 23 — Thomas Malthus
The demographic theories of this 19th-century English clergyman (1766-1834) led
many to believe overpopulation was the deepest source of the world’s woes? In An
Essay on the Principle of Population, he dismissed charity as counterproductive and
actually welcomed disease and plague as nature’s way of redressing the imbalance
between the unwashed masses and an inadequate food supply. His modern disciples
are zealous for contraception and abortion around the globe.

June 28 — Fourteen Points
With the end of World War I in 1918, Woodrow Wilson did all he could at home and
abroad to advance his comprehensive peace proposal known by this title (it names
the number of its provisions)? The proposal included not only the formation of a
league of nations but such things as an end to all secret diplomacy as well as all trade
barriers among countries. Wilson’s notions can be seen as either ahead of their time or
hopelessly naive and unrealistic.

June 30 — the Welsh
Several claims to the discovery of America predating that of Columbus have been
advanced, including one involving an expedition party of this European people led by
Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd around 1200 AD? Cherokee legends made the claim, as did
American artist George Catlin in his North American Indians (1841). Catlin figured the
lighter-skinned, blue-and-grey-eyed Mandan Sioux he saw were likely descended in
part from the Europeans.

Mystery — (Tabletalk magazine daily lessons, June 27-30)
This New Testament term refers not to something inscrutable or impossible to
understand, but to doctrine that was revealed only vaguely to Old Testament Israel in
anticipation of greater enlightenment in the era of Christ and His apostles? As St.
Augustine memorably put it, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New
revealed.” When used in connection with the Gospel, the term refers to God’s purpose
in Christ to save His people from all nations, and not merely from ethnic Israel.