Review: When the Swans Fly High

Leave a reply

Who: F. W. Boreham, British pastor and author of 49 books. He spent most of his life pastoring in New Zealand and Australia. (See the article “Who Is F. W. Boreham?”)

Genre: On Boreham’s spiritual essays: F. W. Boreham is difficult to place into a genre. A reviewer wrote in Preacher’s Magazine, “There is only one Boreham.” His writing is a mix of essay writing and what I call “literary preaching”—preaching that is intensely informed by both Christian and classic literature. In the main body of his work (“classic Boreham”), some chapters were originally sermons; others were culled from his 3000 biographical essays. In any case, most of his 49 books are a goldmine of suitable (if light) devotional reading. (See my list of his published works.)

Overview: This is a great book of essays, and very hard to obtain. It is definitely one of my favorite volumes from the pen of F. W. Boreham. Thanks to my collaborators, it is now available for Kindle.

“The Order of Melchizedek” illustrates in several ways the meaning of the somewhat enigmatic figure of Melchizedek in Hebrews: “without beginning of days or end of life” (Heb. 7:3).

“Rainbow Gold” compares the human longing for eternity to the search for the gold at the end of the rainbow.

“The Rainbow” speaks of the meaning of the biblical symbol of the rainbow in its several uses (Genesis, Ezekiel, and Revelation), and also tells the fascinating tale of a etiological myth about the rainbow among the Maori where Boreham spent his first pastorate. (On the rainbow, see also this fine passage from missionary Temple Gairdner.)

“A Pair of Spectacles” is about the tendency to see things, not through your own eyes, but through the eyes of the crowd.

Quotes:

“One of the highest forms of courage is cold-blooded courage, four-o’-clock-in-the-morning courage, the kind of courage that is born of no excitement, is witnessed by no spectators and evokes no cheers.”

“In his Areopagitica, John Milton says that a man may hold an orthodox creed and yet be the worst of heretics.”

“God committed to paper the choicest thoughts of His divine heart.”

“‘Come, wander with me,’ she said,
‘Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.'” (quoted from Longfellow in “A Midwinter Holiday”)

“Each man’s individuality is itself a message to mankind, a message which he, and he alone can faithfully deliver. And the whole art of life lies in giving such genuine and accurate and rational expression to that unique individuality of mine that, by the things that I do and the way in which I do them, men may receive a message from my Father that could have come to them in no other way.”

“He cares, we feel, for certain things—the making of worlds, the control of the universe, the destinies of mighty empires. But does He care for the individual soul with its individual needs? Does He care for Barbara with her passionate prayer for the boon of a quiet night? Does He care for John Ridd? Is He prepared, not only to steer the planets on their fiery courses, but to guide John’s heart amidst its complicated entanglements? Does He care for ordinary mortals? Does He care for me?” (“The Doll’s House”)

Review: Rubble and Roseleaves

2 Replies

Author: F. W. Boreham, British pastor and author of 49 books and thousands of articles. He spent most of his life pastoring in New Zealand and Australia. (See our article “Who Is F. W. Boreham?”)

Genre: On Boreham’s spiritual essays: F. W. Boreham is difficult to place into a genre. A reviewer wrote in Preacher’s Magazine, “There is only one Boreham.” His writing is a mix of essay writing and what I call “literary preaching”—preaching that is intensely informed by both Christian and classic literature. In the main body of his work (“classic Boreham”), some chapters were originally sermons; others were culled from his 3000 biographical essays. In any case, most of his 49 books are a goldmine of suitable (if light) devotional reading. (See my list of his published works.)

Best Essays:

“The Fish-Pens” is my favorite in the book. He describes fish kept muscular for the market by a predator fish in the fish-pens—”an animated compliment”—so that they are forced to struggle and swim. Though this is certainly inspirational for believers in adversity, it also points toward the possibility of a theodicy:

I am the prey of antagonisms of many kinds. . . . Life is full of irritations. . . . I am not my own master. Like Paul, I find a law that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. . . . Paul found it extremely exasperating, and so do I.

In the same essay, he quotes from Martin Luther:

It was my temptations and my corruptions that best prepared me for my pulpit. The devil has been my best professor at exegetical and experimental divinity. Before that great schoolmaster took me in hand, I was a suckling child and not a grown man. It was my combats with sin and with Satan that made me a true minister of the New Testament.

“Whistling Jigs to Milestones” recounts an outback pastor’s feeling that his work and preaching had no results. In the end, the feeling shows how seriously he takes his call, but his pessimism might not be the most accurate reflection of reality.

“Achmed’s Investment” tells of an Egyptian casting seed abroad in a floodplain (the Nile). Like “Whistling Jigs to Milestones,” it deals with feelings of futility in ministry. This essay is an incredible exhortation to risk and unselfishness.

The only way to keep a thing is to throw it away.

“A Box of Blocks”, describing Jesus as Alpha and Omega, asks:

Which, I ask myself, is the greater—the literature or the alphabet? And I see at once that the alphabet is the greater because it is so inexhaustible. . . .

As the disciples discovered on the road to Emmaus, I cannot understand my Bible unless I take Him as being the Key to it all.

“Be Shod with Sandals” also has an interesting take on ministry and work”

The ox is ready for service in the field or for sacrifice in the temple. . . . “Be shod with sandals;” so that, whether the Revelation or the Road shall call you, you are ready for either. The ministry is neither mundane nor monastic; the minister wears sandals that he may keep in touch with two worlds.

Who Is Watchman Nee?

2 Replies

Living Stream Ministry has kindly kept Watchman Nee’s entire written works available online, barring three or four in which copyright belongs to the publisher.

I was going to just post a list of his books, but I thought it would be better to put down some thoughts about his life, suffering, and theology, since these are so much less known than his books, which are sold everywhere.

Watchman Nee’s Life and Suffering

Watchman Nee (Chinese name: Ni Tuosheng) was a Chinese pastor who was considered a key pioneer in a Chinese church-planting movement from 1922. His parents baptized him as a Methodist; from age 13 he was educated at a CMS (i.e. Church of England) school; and he was profoundly impacted by the writings of the Plymouth Brethren. He was a great lover of the works of T. Austin-Sparks and helped to keep them in print. You can see how, theologically, he was not just connected to one stream, though the Brethren probably had the largest influence on him.

Nee suffered ongoing persecution for much of his lifetime. Churches in China came under great pressure from the government after the 1949 Communist Revolution under the infamous Mao Zedong. Watchman Nee was arrested in 1952 under trumped-up charges, and had to undergo “re-education.” Many of his co-workers were arrested or coerced into bringing accusations against him. His scheduled release date in 1967 came and went, and the years continued to roll by. Nee’s wife, Charity, died during his last year in prison, but he was not allowed to attend her funeral. Finally, in 1972, Watchman Nee himself died after twenty years in prison.

His Theology and Writing Style

Because of his orthodox preaching, his voluminous writings, and his endurance under pressure, he is regarded as one of the treasures of the Chinese church.

His treatment of Scripture is always accessible and written in simple language. Perhaps because he is not European, his illustrations rarely come from expected directions; but they are always homely, brief, and straightforward.

Theologically, he was orthodox, but never dull. On the central topics, like soteriology or Christology, his stance would be utterly orthodox; he approaches other topics in ways that are more speculative.

Essential Books By Watchman Nee

His most popular books are those where he talks about the basic elements of walking with Christ:

  • Sit, Walk, Stand is my personal favorite, where he pulls the titular metaphor for Christian life from Ephesians;
  • The Normal Christian Life deals with topics like Christ’s blood, sin, and “the flesh” and “the spirit”;
  • Several of his books, like The Messenger of the Cross, Spiritual Knowledge and The Release of the Spirit, have been deeply challenging to me as they focus on the meaning of being conformed to Christ in his death and resurrection.

Other books include straightforward, devotional Bible studies. Three that come to mind are:

  • The Practical Issues of This Life (on various topics);
  • Changed into His Likeness (on the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and
  • Love Not the World (1 John 2:15).

On some topics he takes more of an independent or speculative line—usually with great confidence. In some places, he is following the ideas of Brethren writers, but in other places his thought processes are quite novel. I can think of four books that I have read with mixed enjoyment, where he is (for good or for ill!) definitely outside of mainstream evangelical thought:

  • Mystery of Creation promotes gap theory, an idea which had several prominent Brethren advocates, but is definitely not in the main stream;
  • His book on The Song of Songs is mainly allegorical, a mode of interpretation roundly criticized in Western seminaries;
  • The Latent Power of the Soul is not exactly recommended for family devotions, as it deals with the occult;
  • Lastly, whatever your pastor says, Nee’s ideas on Authority and Submission (or Spiritual Authority) were undoubtedly influenced by East Asian culture!

The “Local Churches”

Before I conclude, Watchman Nee’s connection to the local church movement needs to be mentioned. The “local churches” are a global movement that grew out of the church-planting movement with which Nee was connected. Some sources say that he founded the movement, but this is probably a little misleading, since the movement has obviously metamorphosed over the decades since his death. “Local church” leaders say that, according to a strict interpretation of 1 Corinthians 3, adopting a name (or denomination, which is just a fancy word for a name) or organization other than the name of Christ is heresy——and, I might add, I have argued elsewhere that this kind of exclusion itself is exactly what Scripture means by ‘heresy’! “Local churches” only take names like “the church of Jesus in Owensville,” and they typically can be found handing out their “approved” Recovery Version of the Bible, another sign of their cultish tendencies.

It is not easy to trace Nee’s connection to the “local church” movement, but it didn’t spread to the West until Nee had already been imprisoned for many years. Apparently, Witness Lee—whose books are also online—is the one who more or less codified their mode of worship and ecclesiology, following off of Nee’s principles. And it is not all wrong. I sympathize with their point that denominations can be unhelpful. But I find it to be an utter abomination to cast off the billions of Christians who accept a church orientation or a theological name like “Protestant,” “Baptist,” or “Calvinist.” These names are only powerful inasmuch as we believe what they entail; and they are only divisive inasmuch as we empower them to be so. In a rare inversion, I believe the “local church” movement is actually right about what’s right but they’re wrong about what’s wrong.

Conclusion

Watchman Nee’s life speaks for itself. China was known for many years as one of the places of dire need in evangelical missions; now it is known for its vast networks of underground churches, often functioning, as far as we can tell, without any institutional backing (like in Korea), or any British colonial influence (like in Uganda and Fiji), or any unscriptural prosperity preaching (as is disappointingly widespread in Kenya and much of subsaharan Africa). In terms of both Nee’s writings and the Chinese underground church, “great is the company that has published” the word, and it would be as unjust to give all the credit to a simple preacher like Watchman Nee as it would to give him none.

Review: Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country

Leave a reply

Rating: ★★★★½

Authors: Amy E. Zwemer is the co-author of Topsy-Turvy Land and Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country. A native Australian, she met Samuel M. Zwemer while she was serving as a pioneer missionary in Basra, present-day Iraq.

Samuel M. Zwemer was a pioneer missionary among Arabs along the Persian Gulf. His later career was spent writing, teaching and mobilizing for missions among Muslims while he was based in Egypt for many years, and later at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Overview:

Where Topsy-Turvy Land was focused on daily life in the Arab world—which has, needless to say, changed—Zigzag Journeys has a narrative basis. Although it’s not always clear who is narrating (whether Amy Zwemer or her husband), the chapters that recount journeys are easy to read and fascinating in their detail.

Meat:

There is a wealth of interest and irony in the Zwemers’ accounts of their journeys, such as “A Pioneer Journey on the Pirate Coast” and “Along Unbeaten Traces in Yemen.” “The Jews in Kheibar” is a particularly interesting and seldom-told tale of the Jews who once inhabited the Arabian Peninsula.

Bones:

This book maintains everything that’s best about Topsy-Turvy Land but in a much less childish style. Adult readers who felt patronized by Topsy-Turvy will find this book much more engaging.

The Father of Evangelical Missions—And It’s Not William Carey!

1 Reply
321 years ago, on September 19, 1698, the Francke Foundation’s orphanage was officially chartered in Halle (now Germany) by the King of Prussia. Most evangelicals haven’t heard of August Hermann Francke, but in 1893, the Missionary Review of the World called him “the father of evangelical missions.” Here are a few of the things accomplished under the umbrella of Francke’s multifaceted foundations:
• Along with many friends A. H. Francke was at the epicenter of an evangelical revival among university students at the University of Leipzig. The keynotes of the movement were love of the Bible and personal conversions: “collegia philobiblica” was the name used for their Bible study sessions, and many testified of being “born again” through these meetings.
• At the revival in Leipzig, they were first called “Pietists” (Pietisten). Count Zinzendorf’s parents were connected to the Pietist movement, and so the influence of Pietism on the Moravians, and afterwards the Methodists, is incalculable; John Wesley also personally edited and published some of A. H. Francke’s works.
• Professor Francke was eventually forced out of Leipzig because of institutional disdain for their small group-style meetings.
• Francke started providing personally for orphans in 1695 after he found that the poor in his city did not know the most foundational truths of the Christian faith.
• Francke funded his orphanage “by faith” along the lines of Hudson Taylor and George Müller, although he preceded them both by more than a century. The account of his many answered prayers was published in English as The Footsteps of Divine Providence.
• Francke personally chose the first Lutheran missionaries for the Tranquebar mission, including Bartholomew Ziegenbalg who went to India in 1706—87 years before William Carey sailed for the region.
• Francke relentlessly supported the Tranquebar mission with his famous “Halle Reports.” After corresponding with the missionaries, Francke (and his son after him) published reports of their progress in India, which perhaps did more than anything to make Europeans aware of the possibilities overseas missions.
• A friend volunteered to set up a printing press and bookshop, funded by Francke’s Foundations. Over the years, this printing press distributed more than a million copies of Scripture in Europe.
• Although the Reformation had been around for almost two centuries, the “Pietists” of Germany were the first European Christians whose theology closely aligned with the distinctives of modern evangelicals: personal prayer life, daily Bible reading, overseas missions, and the importance of conversion.
If this summary of A. H. Francke’s life has piqued your interest, you can read a 55-page biography of Francke in the Kindle Store for just $5.99.
Be on the lookout, too, for an announcement about Francke’s remarkable account of his orphanage, Footsteps of Divine Providence, which we hope to put back in print as well!

Lubbock’s List: The Original ‘Must-Read’ List

Leave a reply

This post is a break from “our usual programming” to look at a surprisingly modern phenomenon in publishing: “must-read lists.” Included below is probably the most famous example, with links to free copies of over 100 books, mostly classics.

“The choice of books, like that of friends, is a serious duty.”
—Sir John Lubbock.

What Did People Read in Victorian Times?

I came across something in F. W. Boreham’s Ships of Pearl the other day, where he mentioned in passing that Sir John Lubbock had created a list of 100 books that anyone should read if they want to think of themselves as “well-read.” Out of pure curiosity, I found the list online, and I wanted to take a closer look at what’s there. Note: The list was partially reported in The Spectator on the day the speech was given in 1886, but it was  later published fully with comments (and a few changes) in a book by Sir John Lubbock (see chapter 4 of The Pleasures of Life).

F. W. Boreham, who informed me of the list, read many of the philosophers, historians, playwrights, and poets on this list. I would guess that he read close to half of the works on this list. The list, therefore, is a pretty strong indicator of what was popular then. It is interesting to think that a preacher in the 1910s and 1920s might be reading substantially the same literature as the layman, whereas today I would expect that I have almost no books in common with the library of non-churchgoers.

Three books on this list that were hugely influential, but are rarely explored today, would be: Boswell’s Life of Johnson (seminal in the field of biography), Keble’s Christian Year (popularized 365-day devotionals), and Smiles’ Self-Help (foundational to the modern genre of self-help).

The Widespread Influence of Lubbock’s List

Lubbock’s list was originally presented to the Working Men’s College in London, of which he was the principal from 1883 to 1899. Notably, the list set working-class men running for the Classics: Lubbock had high praise not just for Plato and Homer, but Plutarch, Xenophon, and Epictetus, names the mere mention of which would set most Americans yawning today. Lubbock also comments about omitting novels, modern historians (all “kings and queens . . . dates of battles and wars”), and modern science (“so rapidly progressive”).

This list also set off a chain reaction in English literary circles: first, of comments and criticisms; then, of scholars and academies creating their own lists; thirdly, of publishers creating series like Great Books, which were very successful into the first decades of the twentieth century.

The Purpose of the List

In a way, Lubbock’s list is the original ‘must-read’ list, but it is not by any means a list of his personal favorites. If you’re surprised by what’s there (a Victorian MP recommending the Qurʼān?), note Lubbock’s comment:

I drew up the list, not as that of the hundred best books, but, which is very different, of those which have been most frequently recommended as best worth reading.

On the Qurʼān, for instance, he writes:

The Koran, like the Analects of Confucius, will to most of us derive its principal interest from the effect it has exercised, and still exercises, on so many millions of our fellow-men. I doubt whether in any other respect it will seem to repay perusal, and to most persons probably certain extracts, not too numerous, would appear sufficient.

Nabeel Qureshi, though, would point out the cultural mismatch of making an analogy between Christians’ view of the Bible and Muslims’ views of the Qurʼān—especially noting the orality of many Muslim-majority cultures, and the recentness of widespread literacy.

More Like a Hundred-ish

The list is purported to be “a hundred,” but many of the “books” listed are either volume sets or series, and as listed it even exceeds 100 works, so that the actual number of “books” here is about 189 (!) by my count. (Some are very short, though, right?)

I’ve linked all of them to Project Gutenberg for reference. Out of all 100+ works, less than 10 were not on Project Gutenberg, which is a tribute to the enduring popularity of the books that Lubbock chose.

  1. The Holy Bible (Latin) (Spanish) (Swedish)
  2. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (German)
  3. Epictetus
  4. Aristotle’s Ethics (Greek: NE vol 1, NE vol 2)
  5. The Analects of Confucius
  6. St Hilaire’s Le Bouddha et sa religion . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but it is available here and (in French) here
  7. Wake’s Apostolic Fathers . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but it is available here
  8. Thos. à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ (French)
  9. Confessions of St. Augustine (Dr. Pusey) (Latin)
  10. The Koran (portions of)
  11. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
  12. Comte’s Catechism of Positive Philosophy . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but you can read it here
  13. Pascal’s Pensées [“Thoughts”]
  14. Butler’s Analogy of Religion
  15. Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but you can read it here
  16. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Finnish)
  17. Keble’s Christian Year
  18. Plato’s Dialogues; at any rate, the Apology (Greek), Phædo (Finnish) (Greek), and Republic (Greek)
  19. Xenophon’s Memorabilia [listed twice]
  20. Aristotle’s Politics
  21. Demosthenes’ De Corona [“On the Crown,” excerpt from The Public Orations of Demosthenes, vol. 1]
  22. Cicero’s De Officiis (Latin), De Amicitia [“On Friendship”], and De Senectute [“On Old Age”] (Latin) [the first two are available in English as Treatises on Friendship and Old Age; De Senectute is in English here]
  23. Plutarch’s Lives (Greek) (4 volumes)
  24. Berkeley’s Human Knowledge
  25. Descartes’s Discours sur la Méthode
  26. Locke’s On the Conduct of the Understanding . . . isn’t on Project Gutenberg but you can read it here and here and here 
  27. Homer’s Iliad (French) (Greek) (Latin) (Spanish) and Odyssey (Finnish) (French) (Greek) (Latin) (Spanish) (Swedish)
  28. Hesiod (Latin) (?)
  29. Virgil (Finnish) (Latin) (Scots) (?)
  30. Epitomized in Talboy Wheeler’s History of India, vols i and ii: Maha Bharata (5 volumes), Ramayana
  31. Firdusi’s Shahnameh [an excerpt from The Persian Literature, vol 1]
  32. The Nibelungenlied (only available in German)
  33. Malory’s Morte d’Arthur 
  34. The Sheking [The Shi King] . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but you can read it here
  35. Kalidasa’s Sakuntala or The Lost Ring
  36. Aeschylus’s Prometheus [excerpt of Tragedies and Fragments] (Greek)
  37. Aeschylus’s Trilogy (Greek) (Swedish)
  38. Sophocles’s Oedipus (Dutch)
  39. Euripides’s Medea
  40. Aristophanes’s The Knights and Clouds (Greek) [both are excerpts from Eleven Comedies vol 1]
  41. Horace
  42. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Italian) (“perhaps in Morris’ edition; or, if expurgated, in C. Clarke’s, or Mrs. Haweis'”)
  43. Shakespeare (8 volumes)
  44. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus, and minor poems [Lycidas and Comus are included with the minor poems]
  45. Dante’s Divina Commedia (Cary’s tr.) (Longfellow’s tr.) (Finnish) (Friulian) (German) (Italian) (Spanish)
  46. Spenser’s Fairie Queen (1?)
  47. Dryden’s Poems [vol 1 and vol 2] (2 volumes)
  48. Scott’s Poems [such as The Lady of the Lake, Marmion, ?]
  49. Wordsworth (Mr Arnold’s selection) [Wordsworth’s complete poetical works is in 8 volumes . . . presumably Lubbock means Selected Poems of William Wordsworth]
  50. Pope’s Essay on Criticism
  51. Essay on Man
  52. Rape of the Lock [portion from Rape of the Lock and Other Poems]
  53. Burns
  54. Byron’s Childe Harold
  55. Gray [largest selection seems to be in Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett]
  56. Herodotus [vol 1 and vol 2] (Greek: vol 1 and vol 2)
  57. Xenophon’s Anabasis (Greek)
  58. Thucydides (Greek)
  59. Tacitus’s Germania (Finnish) (French) (German)
  60. Livy (4 volumes)
  61. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (6 volumes)
  62. Hume’s History of England (3 volumes)
  63. Grote’s History of Greece (12 volumes!)
  64. Carlyle’s French Revolution (3 volumes)
  65. Green’s Short History of England . . . is surprisingly not on Project Gutenberg but it is here [and Green’s 8-volume “long” history of England is on Gutenberg here]
  66. Lewes’s History of Philosophy . . . is not on Project Gutenberg but it is here: vol 1 and vol 2 
  67. Arabian Nights
  68. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (Dutch)  (Finnish) (French)
  69. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
  70. Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield
  71. Cervante’s Don Quixote (Finnish)
  72. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (2 volumes)
  73. Molière (?) [his complete works are 10 volumes in English]
  74. Schiller’s William Tell
  75. Sheridan’s The Critic, School for Scandal, and The Rivals
  76. Carlyle’s Past and Present
  77. Bacon’s Novum Organum
  78. Smith’s Wealth of Nations (part of)
  79. Mill’s Political Economy
  80. Cook’s Voyages
  81. Humboldt’s Travels [vol 1, vol 2, vol 3] (3 volumes)
  82. White’s Natural History of Selborne
  83. Darwin’s Origin of Species
  84. Naturalist’s Voyage [i.e. The Voyage of the Beagle]
  85. Mill’s Logic
  86. Bacon’s Essays
  87. Montaigne’s Essays (Finnish) (French)
  88. Hume’s Essays
  89. Macaulay’s Essays (6 volumes)
  90. Addison’s Essays
  91. Emerson’s Essays
  92. Burke’s Select Works
  93. Smiles’s Self-Help
  94. Voltaire’s Zadig (Finnish) (French) (Spanish) and Micromegas (Spanish)
  95. Goethe’s Faust (German),  and Autobiography (2 volumes)
  96. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair
  97. Thackeray’s Pendennis
  98. Dickens’ Pickwick
  99. Dickens’ David Copperfield
  100. Lytton’s Last Days of Pompeii
  101. George Eliot’s Adam Bede
  102. Kingsley’s Westward Ho!
  103. Scott’s Novels [28 volumes!!]:  The Abbot; Anne of Geierstein [vol 1 and vol 2]; The Antiquary; The Betrothed; [Bizarro was not in print at the time that J. L. created his list]; The Black Dwarf; The Bride of Lammermoor (Finnish) (Italian); Castle Dangerous [portion of Waverley Novels vol. 12]; Count Robert of Paris [portion of Waverley Novels vol. 12]; The Fair Maid of Perth; The Fortunes of Nigel; Guy Mannering; The Heart of Midlothian; Ivanhoe (Dutch); Kenilworth; A Legend of Montrose; The Monastery; Old Mortality; Peveril of the Peak; The Pirate; Quentin Durward; Redgauntlet; Rob Roy (French); Saint Ronan’s Well; [The Siege of Malta had not been fully printed at the time J. L. created his list]; The Talisman (Dutch); Waverley (Finnish); Woodstock.
  104. [Selections from the Writings of Ruskin (added in 1930 edition)]
  105. [Ruskin’s Modern Painters (added in 1930 edition)] (5 volumes)

 

Note: Previous Lubbock lists had included:

  1. Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer, The Curse of Kehama (vol 1 and vol 2)
  2. Lucretius [“less generally suitable than most of the others in the list”]
  3. Miss Austen’s Emma, or Pride and Prejudice [Lubbock omitted them, commenting that English novelists were “somewhat over-represented”]
  4. Locke’s Human Understanding (vol 1 and vol 2) [apparently mistaken for Conduct of the Understanding in some lists, since the titles are so similar]

Review: Topsy-Turvy Land

Leave a reply

Authors: Amy E. Zwemer is the co-author of Topsy-Turvy Land and Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country. A native Australian, she met Samuel M. Zwemer while she was serving as a pioneer missionary in Basra, present-day Iraq.

Samuel M. Zwemer

Full Title: Topsy-Turvy Land: Arabia Pictured for Children

Overview:

This is a book designed to introduce the Arab world to children in an off-kilter setting but with a missional mindset. For one characteristic example, the Kaaba in Mecca is called “The Square-House with the Black Overcoat.” After a description of Muslim practices around the Kaaba, readers are reminded:

For thirteen hundred years Moslems [Muslims] have come every year to Mecca, and gone away, with no one ever to tell them of the Son of God, the Saviour of the World. Thirteen hundred years! Don’t you think it is time to go and tell them?

It is rare to find materials that introduce cross-cultural missions to children, so that may be one of the most important things about this book.

Meat:

This little book that can be read in an hour or two presents numerous aspects of daily life in the Arabian Peninsula at the turn of the twentieth century. Although the book is dated, it is usually obvious when the authors’ accounts are no longer reliable.

I might not recommend it to people with no experience of the Arab world, because so many of the chapters—while they bear a relation to modern practices—no longer reflect the way daily life is. I don’t see Bedouin women grinding at the mill, Arabia no longer has coins that look like clothespins, slavery is no longer openly practiced, and, praise God, it is no longer true that “few can read and even those who can read, are able to read only the Koran and the Moslem traditions. ”

Bones:

Zwemer’s mode of introducing Arabia, as “topsy-turvy,” clearly would not pass muster in any modern anthropology class. The introduction presents several practices in Arabic culture and Muslim cultures as inherently negative, but modern missiologists would take issue with this mode of writing:

The women wear toe-rings and nose-rings as well as earrings and bracelets. Everything seems different from what it is in a Christian country.

In its worst sections, this book is patronizingly juvenile toward its audience; at its best, it shows the wealth of fascinating detail about the Arab world that was curated and represented in the lives of its authors.

Douglas Hooper’s Plan for East Africa

Leave a reply

Douglas Hooper went to British East Africa in 1885, where he was appointed Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. He was the second to hold that bishopric, his predecessor having been speared to death on his arrival in Uganda. Hooper went as a self-funded missionary, and also funded another missionary to come with him. He was also a close friend of Handley Moule, the prolific New Testament scholar, Keswick speaker, and supporter of evangelical missions. Hooper’s son, Handley,and his grandson, Cyril, both followed in his footsteps in serving in Kenya as missionaries.

Hooper was converted during Moody and Sankey’s Cambridge mission in 1882, an oft-forgotten watershed moment for the global evangelical movement. The revival atmosphere at Cambridge led to the commissioning of a host of new missionaries, such as the C. T. Studd and the “Cambridge Seven,” Douglas Thornton, and Ion Keith-Falconer (to name just a few!). With such an outpouring at one of the world’s top universities, and such a key moment for world missions, it should come as no surprise that Hooper’s four strategic concerns—team mentality, pre-field training, apostolic focus, and indigenous methods—have lost none of their relevance. Although, I would add to #2, that I am quite sure East Africa needed women just as sorely as “men.”

Douglas Hooper (an old Harrovian and Trinity Hall man) has come home, some months ago, from Africa, where he has been working under the Church Missionary Society for four years.

He has come back with a new plan of work on the East of Africa, which he has laid before the Church Missionary Society, and which they have accepted and promised to supply the necessaries for, if he can find the men. It is to take five or six Cambridge men and make a station on a new route to the Victoria Nyanza, between Frere Town and the Lake: on the  principle of living as simply and as much in native style as is possible. There are four points in his plan on which he lays stress:—

(1.) Not less than five or six men.—The deadening effect of heathendom is such that isolated men succumb to it.

(2.) Cambridge men.—Experience has convinced him that educated gentlemen are absolutely needed for Africa.

(3.) A new route.—Virgin soil—because, on the old routes, the natives are so habituated to the old system of buying the chiefs’ favour by innumerable presents, that those who go on another principle are not tolerated.

(4.) Native style.—As far cheaper and healthier—so he says by experience—and also as the right way of getting into touch with the natives.

Source: Letter of George L. Pilkington to his father. Dated November 3, 1889. Pilkington of Uganda.

Review: Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral

Leave a reply

Rating: ★★★

Author: Phyllis Wheatley became the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry in 1773.

Overview: 

Wheatley’s book of poetry was quite at home in the 1770s, but time has not been as kind to them as to the works of Cowper or Watts. Many of them are devotional in content. The compilation includes several funeral poems—writing a poem for a funeral is an ancient custom no longer well kept in the West—including one written at the time of George Whitfield’s death, which is still highly regarded. The paraphrase of Isaiah 63 is also wonderful. But many of the more Classical poems will today induce yawning rather than fawning.

In the 1770s, Phyllis Wheatley’s poems made such a sensation, that Wheatley herself had to be attested by Boston’s illuminaries to prove that she was not a fraud—no one believed that a black woman could write such stirring, intelligent, and beautiful poetry. Wheatley wrote the following reminder to such people (“On Being Brought from Africa to America”):

‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic dye.”
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Wheatley was emancipated after their publication, and, from the age of 20, she was paraded around the highest social circles in Boston and London, meeting leaders like George Washington and the Lord Mayor of London among many others. The Countess of Huntingdon, benefactress of the early Methodist movement, was the patron of Wheatley’s book.

Meat:

The chief value of this little poetry compilation, in my opinion, is found in the personal poems dealing with grief. The poems themselves are of course beautiful to read, but most of them would bore modern taste.

Wheatley reminds her readers that the body of a dead saint is only “the cold shell of his great soul” (loc. 194). She always presses us toward a biblical view of dead saints: they are better off than us!

Bones:

The shortcomings of this collection include tedious Classical (mythological) references. As a whole, the theology here is not especially profound. Nevertheless, for devotional content and poetic value it rivals most of the great Christian poets I have read.

Quotes:

On grief:

“Let grief no longer damp devotion’s fire.” (loc. 385)

“She feeds on truth and uncreated things.” (loc. 581)

On other topics:

To him, whose works arry’d with mercy shine,
What songs should rise, how constant, how divine!

(“Thoughts on the Works of Providence.” loc. 355)

Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

(“To the Right Honourable William, etc.”, loc. 507)

Enlarg’d he sees unnumber’d systems roll,
Beneath him sees the universal whole,
Planets on planets run their destin’d round,
And circling wonders fill the vast profound.

(“A Funeral Poem on the Death of C. E. an Infant of Twelve Months.” loc. 469)

Why thus enrob’d delights he to appear
In the dread image of the Pow’r of war? . . .

When all forsook I trod the press alone,
And conquer’d by omnipotence my own;
His eye the ample field of battle round
Survey’d, but no created succours found;
His own omnipotence sustain’d the right,
His vengeance sunk the haughty foes in night.

(“Isaiah lxiii. 1-8.”)

New Biographies!

Leave a reply

In the past two months we have published eight new biography editions on the Kindle store.

Margaret Morley Clough: The Letters and Journal of a Pioneer Missionary by Adam Clarke (1761?-1832) (ed.)
Margaret Clough left England on April 11, 1825 at the age of 22. She arrived at her mission field in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) on September 6, 1825, and died in childbirth less than 2 years later. Although her time on the mission field was short, she wrote numerous letters and journal entries that describe her desire for total consecration to the call of missions.

Pilkington of Uganda by C. F. Harford (1864-1925)
George Pilkington was swept up in the evangelical revival that overtook Cambridge after Moody and Sankey visited in 1882. Despite every prospect of a great career in the United Kingdom, he left for East Africa with a group led by Douglas Hooper, eventually settling in Uganda. There, Pilkington was key to the first Luganda Bible translation and was also involved in surveying that area of Africa, which had only opened up to missions efforts since the work of David Livingstone.

Memoirs of Mrs. Elizabeth Harvard Late of the Wesleyan Mission to Ceylon and India with Extracts from Her Diary and Correspondence by William Martin Harvard (1790?-1857)
Elizabeth Harvard was an early modern missionary in Sri Lanka and India, known to us through the compilation 16 Pioneer Women.

The Life of Robert Laws of Livingstonia by William Pringle Livingstone (1864-1950)
Dr. Robert Laws was the energetic leader of the Livingstonia mission in present-day Malawi, founded by a group of Scottish missionaries in memory of David Livingstone. Dr. Laws worked tirelessly to bring technological advantages to the people around Lake Malawi, both to serve the people and to facilitate the longevity of the mission. For many years he was an important figure in leading exploration as well as language documentation in the area.

Two Years in Upper India by John Cameron Lowrie (1808-1900)
John Cameron Lowrie was the first American Presbyterian missionary to go to India. This book was written in the early part of his very long career, describing his early life there.

Seven Years in Sierra Leone: The Story of the Work of William A. B. Johnson, Missionary of the Church Missionary Society from 1816 to 1823 in Regent’s Town, Sierra Leone, Africa by A. T. Pierson (1837-1911)
William Johnson was a quiet but passionate missionary in the colonial era of Sierra Leone.

Philip Jacob Spener and His Work by Marie E. Richard (1851-1920)
August Hermann Francke and His Work by Marie E. Richard (1851-1920)
Philip Jacob Spener and August Hermann Francke were, in some ways, among the founders of evangelicalism as we know it. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they were instrumental in a revival among German Lutheran university students, who eventually became known as Pietists. Francke’s orphanage presaged that of George Müller in almost every distinctive; and Francke personally selected the first Lutheran missionaries for the Tranquebar mission.