“Long have I held that war is an enormous crime: Long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale” (from – “India’s Ills and England’s Sorrows,” September 6, 1857, Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens).
Barbaric Cosmology
The idea that morality can be simply derived from natural reason is barbaric to say the least. We could apply the source of morality to anything apart from God, and frankly the idea would still be ultimately barbaric. It is a monumental leap of vain imagination for anyone to consider (as most cosmologists do) that the universe arose from nothing, and that this “nothing” in turn was certain to give rise to something. As Maria sang, “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could; so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.” (from Sound of Music). Pathetic theology, to say the least, but she makes a connection. The only way something comes from nothing is if God does it. To think that some random process spontaneously explodes out of nothing is intellectual folly, nevertheless it is indulged in persistently.
Cosmology refers to origins – origins of the universe. Darwin hypothesized about origins. His followers continue the tradition. Uncertainty marks their work. If science is supposed to convince – it has not done a good job here.
Real Pulpit Power
It is not enough to have light & knowledge – We must have the Holy Spirit & his power. We must never settle for less than this, both in our private personal lives, and in the public pulpit.
Proper Pulpit Decorum
The pulpit has become the place for men to glory in, and unless this changes – the ministry is in danger. Rather we preachers must view the pulpit as the place where we are brought to feel our nothingness and insignificance.
War Insanity
If we take away justice, what then are kingdoms, but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”
Augustine, City of God, Book IV, Chapter 4.
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