Charles Kingsley: I

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[00:00:52] Made for Germany. Powered by Shopify. Revived Thoughts is a production of Revive Studios. This is Troy and Joel, and you are listening to Revived Thoughts. Each one of us says I. I think, I know, I feel, I ought, I ought not.

[00:01:17] I did that and cannot undo it. And why? Because we are not things nor mere animals but persons. Every episode we bring you a different voice from history in a sermon that they delivered. Today, we're going back to the middle of the 19th century in England

[00:01:34] to hear a sermon by Charles Kingsley. Troy, oh my goodness, it feels like it has been a millennia. I haven't spoken to you in over a month. How are you doing? I'm doing okay. We were really, my wife and I, we were pretty sick this week.

[00:01:49] I had to leave work early sick, so it was that kind of sick week. I feel mostly recovered, but it was so sick that I actually forgot our recording day one day. So that was bad. So it was that style.

[00:02:00] Other than that, we've been good. We've had Thanksgiving and we've done tons of things. It is the longest, Joel, you and I have not talked to each other. I know. I feel like I need an update. How are the kids? How's life? What's been going on?

[00:02:14] Are your kids engaged, married yet? Do they have kids? Yeah, exactly. No, Ezra, he took that gap year, right? It's what it feels like. It's been a while. But you, Joel, you've been gone. You've been traveling.

[00:02:24] Why don't you tell everyone about your exciting adventures or what you can? Yeah, it's actually kind of funny because in our travels, we were on the same island that you were. Granted, it was a big island and we were on the other side of it.

[00:02:37] Well, you were in the middle. We were kind of on the east side. But in theory, I feel like I could have thrown a stone and hit your backyard.

[00:02:46] I mean, we were more like eight hours away, but it's the closest we've been on that side of the planet, which was kind of neat. But our paths, alas, did not cross. But yeah, we were working over there, filming with various folk.

[00:03:02] And man, it is beautiful over in the Indonesian area, Troy. Hot, but beautiful. It is hot. It is hot, but it is also quite pretty. I do enjoy it. The hot and the bugs. We have a phenomenon happening right now.

[00:03:21] I don't know what the name of it, but it's just flying termites. As you know, there are termites in the world. And these are really big ones. They're the size of your fingernail, basically. And they just sprout wings right when the rainy season officially starts.

[00:03:35] And they just start flying everywhere. And if you leave a light on outside, they'll swarm you. 60 or 80 of them will suddenly show up all at once. And I have friends of mine and people who have done this in the past where they leave a window open

[00:03:48] and they don't realize it's gotten to that time when the flying termites come out and suddenly their entire house is just covered in flying giant termites, basically. And we've had them too. And yesterday I had to go driving during the hour when they come out.

[00:04:01] It was like driving through a fall day. You know how when you drive on a fall day, the leaves are scattering and dancing? But instead of leaves, it was flying termite wings.

[00:04:10] And I was flying into them and they were just hitting me in the face as I drove. And I was like, this is pretty gross. If you can look past that, it is a really beautiful place to be. I'm thankful I didn't encounter anything like that.

[00:04:24] I actually had a quite pleasant experience. The most odd thing for me was the lizards. I'm not opposed to lizards or anything like that, but to have lizards in my room on the ceiling above me,

[00:04:37] I feel like it's going to drop on me in the middle of the night type of thing. They do sometimes. Do they really? Oh yeah, everyone has stories of a lizard falling on them or something at some point. You're like, oh gosh.

[00:04:48] Oh boy, I blocked that out of my head because I thought surely that can't happen. But, well, that's terrifying. At least it's only a lizard. I told you about the time in Cambodia when it was not a lizard that fell,

[00:05:00] but it was a giant spider in the middle of the night that was on my wife while she was doing a video call with a friend. And she just screams and it's a huge spider that is running around our bed.

[00:05:10] It took me like half an hour to find it under the bed and kill it. Oh, it was a nightmare. Wow. Yeah, so for listeners, I was actually out there on an unrelated Detroit general.

[00:05:21] We just happened to kind of be in the same country as part of my travels, but I was working on some separate projects. But it was kind of neat. That's why I've been out for so long. But now I'm back and it feels so good.

[00:05:36] It feels so right to be in the chair, talking church history. It was a big part of my life that I have not had in the past month. There you go. And so what better way to jump in and jump back in there with Charles Kingsley,

[00:05:51] that guy, everyone knows him. He's OK. He's not super famous, but we're going to talk about Charles Kingsley first. I want to read some positive responses we had to provide thoughts, trying to keep everyone reminding you we are reading your comments and we love to hear from you.

[00:06:03] So please continue sending messages and letting us know you're out there. It's one of our favorite things to see. And also, quite frankly, it really helps us with the show. When you leave comments and send messages and say, hey, check this out. It helps us out.

[00:06:15] Plez left a message for us on Spotify, and this was on our Peter Kierkegaard episode. He said, I listened on Google Podcasts but swung over here to say I loved this episode. Thank you, Plez, for listening.

[00:06:25] Thank you so much for swinging over and leaving a comment on there for Spotify for us. It's one of the places we try to check pretty regularly now that Spotify lets you do comments, which is kind of a new thing. It only started a few months ago.

[00:06:36] Another one we had was such an interesting and solid address of Mormonism by an unexpected fellow. Thanks, Phil, on Peter Kierkegaard. That one was over on X or Twitter, whatever we're supposed to call that these days. We also had some new Patreons.

[00:06:50] Joel, can you thank the Patreons for joining up? Yeah, big shout out to Julie, Ben, and Jean for joining our Patreon team and enabling us to make the show. Yeah, we really want to thank each person who joins us on Patreon.

[00:07:05] We could not do this show without the help that support comes. We don't get a lot of support from advertising revenue. This show is mostly funded by the Patreon, so we really appreciate each of you who have come on.

[00:07:14] I also want to say a special thanks to you, Ben, because you sent us some very heartfelt messages. Granted, I think you were more aiming it at my wife's show over at Martyrs and Missionaries, but I still appreciate it.

[00:07:24] You had a lot to say, and we really appreciated that you were just sharing with us. It was very encouraging. I know it really made Elise feel great too, so we really thank you for that. Yeah, we've got to watch out over here at Revive Thoughts.

[00:07:35] Martyrs and Missionaries is going to put us into obscurity because of her fame and popularity over there. Absolutely, she will. Charles Kingsley, born in the year 1819 in Devon, England. His father was a high member of the Church of England.

[00:07:54] Not a lot is known about his childhood, but he graduated from Cambridge in 1842 and became a rector in 1844. A rector is just a position in the English church that's over a particular region. Kingsley was very much an academic and scholarly type of theologian.

[00:08:13] In 1848, he became the founding member of the Church Socialist Movement. This was born out of a frustration he had with people suffering in the industrialism movement that he saw going on in England. In 1819, he wrote a book called Yeast. That's how I say it in my head.

[00:08:34] It's Y-E-A-S-T. I don't know why I imagine it with an exclamation point, but it's hard for me to just say yeast. Whenever I see it, I say yeast with an exclamation point because that's how I imagine saying it.

[00:08:47] This was a novel that covered the way that the rich, the wealthy, the aristocrats lived very different lives from the peasants at that time. Imagine England in the mid to late 1800s, industrial revolution. You have poor factory workers, child labor, that type of stuff.

[00:09:09] That's the environment that he is affected by and wanting to reach. Kingsley is really more famous for his novels. He wrote another book besides Yeast called Alton Locke. It's about a tailor poet who rebelled against the labor factories that he was

[00:09:26] working on and joined kind of the socialist labor movement. This led to his works being seen as a cornerstone of the broad church movement, which I did not know about. But in the Church of England at that time, there were a couple different

[00:09:38] warring factions over who would run the Church of England in the late 1800s. Some of them wanted to stick to the old Puritan doctrine kind of way. Not Puritan. The Church of England ran the Puritan thought, but the kind of doctrine ways

[00:09:49] that started the J.C. Ryle side of it, the group that we would normally want to put on our show. Then there was this middle group called the broad church. This is the group that Charles Kingsley is.

[00:09:59] And then there's kind of another group that's like, what if the Church of England joined the Catholic Church again? Charles Kingsley is kind of famous for fighting that group off. But the broad church is this middle group here. They were like, hey, we have these great doctrines.

[00:10:11] We have these great creeds, but if we're not helping people, if we're not doing anything for the poor, the poor are suffering really bad here. They're having a terrible time during this industrial revolution. I don't know if they called it that yet.

[00:10:23] But they can realize that the average person is suffering greatly, and the church is just kind of sitting there to the side not doing anything. And they wanted the Church of England to be known for lifting people out of

[00:10:31] poverty and helping these people out and not just stuck on whether or not their theological definitions were correct. And Kingsley was one of those guys who just loved being a part of different things. He loved being a part of different movements. He specifically had a love for outdoors.

[00:10:47] He was an early sportsman. This is kind of that era when sports start to take on effect. And the broad church really, even though they were all like, let's go social gospel stuff, they were also really into being outdoorsmen.

[00:10:57] Like this is the early days of sports taking shape, and the church was really supportive of this. They were like men should be men. Men should be out there being a part of sports. They called themselves the masculine church at the same time too.

[00:11:09] They said men should do things that are very manly. They loved science, and Kingsley loved science a lot. He really enjoyed the academic elite style. I almost think it's kind of like what we would call today like a renaissance man, a guy who's got, you know,

[00:11:20] trying to do a little bit of everything and enjoys all of it. He spent a lot of time though with evolutionists and was a really big fan of the evolutionist movement, but he saw it as something that could be completely compatible with Christianity.

[00:11:32] And this is common at this time in the late 1800s too. These academic elites looked at evolution and said, yeah, we can find a way to fit this with the Bible, no problem. Two other examples of the kind of academic elites that did that during this

[00:11:44] time period are B.B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen. Now this is some of the people who were pro this evolutionary movement, but we actually covered on our show, William Bacon Stevens, very recently a sermon on human anatomy where he stands before an entire crowd

[00:11:58] of scientists before in fact Charles Darwin had published Origin of the Species. And he just says basically, yeah, you're wrong. And here's how we can tell that God created the human body. If you haven't listened to that episode,

[00:12:09] I think it's one of the best episodes that we put out this year. And it's just a powerful episode and it's showing that this was certainly not, there were plenty of intellectual smart people like Dr. William Bacon Stevens that stood up to this and said, no,

[00:12:21] you guys got it wrong. I may not have every single scientific detail to prove it, but your doctors look at the human body. There's no way you can say that that came by anything other than God. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:32] Cause you gotta remember Darwin's got his publications that are rolling out. It's like a hot topic item to discuss and talk about in an interview. And it's new. And for a lot of people, it was making a lot of sense.

[00:12:45] And it affected like not just the way that people thought animals and humans came to be, but it also affects, like these concepts of genetics and stuff were things that no one had really thought about in this depth before.

[00:12:59] And Kingsley was like a pretty big proponent of this, like a genetical science, a generational effect type of thing. I'm sure that's not the technical term for it, but the idea that your generation acts a certain way because of the way that it was raised.

[00:13:18] Well, when you think of like the words, like, you know, somebody is calling themselves a millennial or generation Z or boomer, those kinds of things that we hear a lot today, we kind of take those terms for granted.

[00:13:28] We all kind of know what they mean and we all kind of understand what the picture connotates, but that wasn't something people have always been doing. And Kingsley is at least the, I'm not going to say he's the earliest proponent of it,

[00:13:42] but he's the earliest proponent of it I've ever seen. Like he's doing this in the 1850s and 60s saying like, no, you're your generation, the things that you grew up experiencing and seeing around you played an effect on how you view the world.

[00:13:56] And he also added like the genetic factors, like what was common in your area. But he's just, he was saying that people in gaps of 10 to 20 years see the world differently. And I don't, I think it's kind of maybe something you could say, well people took for granted.

[00:14:08] The Bible kind of talks a little bit about this almost to a degree too, with the idea of a generation passing and stuff. But he was the first person to kind of like really develop a scientific theory on this idea.

[00:14:17] I think it seems like stuff we take for granted nowadays. Would you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean when I read him basically he was writing this big book called the autobiography of generations or something like that.

[00:14:27] I read like a summary of it and it was everything he was saying. It was like, I feel like a lot of people think that today, but I guess I never thought about the fact that this has not always been something we did. You know,

[00:14:38] we haven't always kind of given names to generations and pointed out that it's not just, so I think the way that people were looking at it before is as you get older, you mature and your maturity allows you to see the world differently.

[00:14:49] And his kind of point was, although that's true, you also see the world differently because of the things that were happening when you were young that affected the way you, you know, the way you viewed the world. Again,

[00:15:00] I don't want to say as early as proponent of this cause I certainly didn't do the research to prove that, but he really seemed to have made a big deal that there were like a lot of scientific journals that were talking about this really revolutionary book

[00:15:10] that he wrote on generations. And so again, it was just another and not that this is, you know, extremely important to his sermon, but more just like this is Kingsley had his hand, it had a lot of hats on.

[00:15:20] He was looking into a lot of different things and he affected a lot of different parts of the world. Yeah. And he was again, a writer at heart throughout all of this. So all the different areas that he was interested in, he also wrote books.

[00:15:33] And one of the areas that he was passionate about was just trying to help children come up in a better way to help children in that process. So he wrote some children's books. He was really concerned about children understanding proper,

[00:15:48] like sanitary and clean environments and types of things like that. Yeah. Some say this kid's book was like a nice story of redemption. Again, it did get its amount of hate at the time because it was, it did seem to be somewhat pro evolution. I personally, I like,

[00:16:04] I am curious to read it. I do have a three, not that I would actually, not that I would show this book to my three year old, but the world of kids books is fascinating. There are some really good kids books and there's awful kids books.

[00:16:15] And so when someone says they wrote a children's book, you know, from 150 years ago, I'm like, I want, you know, and that's a theme with Kingsley. And so I have a lot of books that I'm like, I kind of want to read that. I just,

[00:16:28] I had a pure curiosity, not saying I, I'm going to endorse whatever it's about, but what is this man writing? Another book that he wrote, and this was in direction towards combating a Roman Catholic movement that was happening in the moment. At this time,

[00:16:46] the church of England was at odds with the Roman Catholic church in a new way. And so people were leaving the church of England to rejoin the Catholic church. That was kind of making a comeback in this era at this time.

[00:16:57] And he wrote a book called Westward Ho, and this one does have an exclamation point. So you got to say it. You got to say it with gusto. Westward, Westward Ho! Exclamation point. I do want to say something. It's actually, I had two thoughts real quick.

[00:17:10] First was when I was doing research, Westward Ho is apparently the name of a town named after this book. And it's the only town in England that has an exclamation mark on it. So there's a little trivia fact for you.

[00:17:21] But I was also thinking we have a lot of listeners who are not English speaking. We have a ton of listeners in the Philippines. We have a ton of listeners outside of your normal English speaking places, which is great. But if you hear the name Westward Ho,

[00:17:34] I don't want you to, this is not ho as in the inappropriate slang term. It is more like a pirate, like a hoi ho, kind of like onward ho, kind of an old English. Land ho. Land ho, thank you.

[00:17:48] So I just want to clarify that he wasn't writing. If you're listening and you're hearing like, wait, isn't that the word you call? No, that's not. That's not the word he was using. See, and then for the other people that are even less English speakers,

[00:17:58] you just confused everyone even more because they have no idea what we're talking about now. Writing was in this man's family. He had lots of siblings and folk that were writers. His brother grew up to be a somewhat famous novelist who was named Henry Kingsley.

[00:18:13] And his sister Charlotte also grew up to be a novelist. Apparently one of her novels caused many of the aristocrat women in England to start collecting ferns. Again, I want to read that book. I don't know. I don't know what it's about. I don't understand. I mean,

[00:18:31] you dropped me with a one line description of that. And I'm curious what type of novel would start a fern movement within a aristocrat society? My curiosity is perked. His daughter became a writer as well. And his niece,

[00:18:47] Mary Kingsley became a famous writer after sending her young years traveling in Africa and communicating the colonialism that she saw there to the world. With Shopify you can sell products via any channels. Whether personal POS system or comprehensive e-commerce platform.

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[00:20:42] She had long-term bone injections and extensive surgeries removing every female organ in her body and transgendered herself into a man for 10 years. But after every surgery she discovered to her horror that she was just as miserable as before. Could anything or anyone fill the void in her heart?

[00:20:59] And if Jesus was actually real, would he even want someone like her? Listen to Laura Perry tell her complete story on Compelled episode number 37 titled, Transgendered to Transformed. You can search for Compelled on your podcast app of choice or visit the compelledpodcast.com website. Again, that's compelledpodcast.com.

[00:21:24] Kingsley was an influential man too. We're talking about just his novelism and his whole family of writers that he has here. Children and brothers, sisters and a niece. But he also ended up becoming the chaplain to Queen Victoria herself.

[00:21:38] So Queen Victoria, one of the most famous monarchs of England's history and maybe even just in general in world history. And her chaplain for a few years was this guy Kingsley. Now I really try to find information on that.

[00:21:51] You'd think that would be – you'd find some articles talking about the chaplain to Queen Victoria. But actually no, I really couldn't find anything. I feel like that's an interesting – we've actually did an episode about a year ago talking,

[00:22:03] a revived conversation talking about world leaders and how they had chaplains and people. I remember specifically, Joel, you telling this great story about a chaplain to Abraham Lincoln who was kind of by his side through a lot of things.

[00:22:15] These people are – a lot of times world leaders have a Christian spiritual mentor sitting in the room with them talking this stuff out. And Charles Kingsley is another example of those. And sadly, just like we said, a lot of times that aspect of things gets overlooked.

[00:22:29] And I wish I could tell you more about his time. All I know is that she is quoted as having called him – considered him one of the friends of the queen.

[00:22:37] So I don't know what that means and what that would exactly stand for, but that was a role he had. Another person that he was very famous for interacting with is Thomas Huxley. Now you probably maybe have not heard of Thomas Huxley.

[00:22:49] He is the father of the famous Aldous Huxley of the writer of the book Brave New World. But Thomas Huxley is a big deal. He was a huge eugenicist. He was a huge humanist. He did a ton of things that a lot of us would really not like.

[00:23:05] And he was very much related to the recent episodes we did on Woodrow Wilson. A lot of the ideas that Woodrow Wilson got for segregating and those kind of things came from Thomas Huxley.

[00:23:16] Well, before Thomas Huxley kind of went down this dark road that he ends up becoming famous in world history for going down, his friends had said, hey, you should try contacting Charles Kingsley. This is a great Christian guy. Maybe he can help you out with your faith.

[00:23:31] And Charles Kingsley and him exchanged letters. I read a few of them, and Thomas Huxley was just pretty much like, I don't know how to believe in God. I don't see how God is something I can put my faith in.

[00:23:43] Science makes more sense to me, and science is what drew me out of the pit. And Charles Kingsley was writing, trying to explain to him how God and science are not at war with each other. You can have both.

[00:23:55] They seem to end it on very friendly terms where Thomas was like, I think you're a great guy, but we're just not on the same page.

[00:24:02] And it's a little bit of a sad story because Kingsley clearly was really trying to bring him back and failed to do so. And Huxley goes into history books as having had a very terrible influence on the world.

[00:24:12] But I do think it says something about Kingsley's character that when Huxley's friends saw him going down this path, they wanted to grab Kingsley and said, can you help us get him back on the road?

[00:24:26] It tells you something about Kingsley that he was seen as somebody that you could rely on to share the faith in a meaningful way. Again, didn't work out for Huxley, and that's pretty sad.

[00:24:35] But it certainly does show you that Kingsley was a man that people thought had a good character and could help bring you back to the path. Honestly, this episode is really kind of difficult in some ways because what do you make of Kingsley?

[00:24:47] In a lot of ways, the movements, you know, Christian socialism and things, people he rubbed shoulders with, Huxley, Darwin, they aren't great people. They aren't the people in history that go down as movements that you want to be part of.

[00:25:00] You know, the Woodrow Wilson episode that we did, the bad things that he did was kind of founded on the ideas that Kingsley's friends were putting together in Kingsley's lifetime. This is not great.

[00:25:12] And the way I would say it is it looks like, to me, Kingsley kind of got caught up in that intellectualism that we see sometimes with these guys. He must have been a fairly devout guy because people were, like Huxley, were being pushed towards him.

[00:25:25] You know, go to Kingsley. He can help you out with your faith. He can get you back on track. At the same time, though, he seemed to be really into the intellectual movements, the academics, all of that stuff, and the hobbies and that stuff.

[00:25:37] He reminds me of a guy we actually covered a really long time ago. We haven't done an episode on him in quite a while. His name is Alexander White. Both of these guys pursued academics really hardcore.

[00:25:46] Both of them were very intellectual, but they almost get caught up in what you could almost call like an intellectual Sodom and Gomorrah. If you remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, Lot is kind of rubbing shoulders with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

[00:25:58] Eventually, he's living in the city. He's become like the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it didn't seem to happen overnight. It seemed to happen slowly. He was drawn in, and he didn't realize he had surrounded himself with this wickedness.

[00:26:10] I think there's kind of an intellectual parallel between what happens to people like Kingsley and Alexander White, especially in this era that we're talking about, the late 1800s, where they just have so much fun. They're having such a great time. They love the books. They love the writing.

[00:26:23] They're all doing philosophy together. Before you know it, these otherwise pretty good Christians are mired in legacies that are not really great. I think it's just something that we can all look out for.

[00:26:36] I do feel like—and I completely agree with you, 100%, but we can say that here with hindsight. In that era, in that time, they would not have viewed that in the same way. I don't think they could have been convinced of it.

[00:26:53] If we went in a time machine and went back and talked to them, I don't think that you would ever be able to convince them of what you just said.

[00:27:02] It's with, I feel like, the value of being able to look back on society and where things have shifted that we can understand that. But if you're in it in the moment of those discoveries unfolding, I feel like it is different.

[00:27:18] Not to say that it's better or worse. No. I guess we are saying that. That's why I think it's better or worse. It is worse. I think that's what makes it such a dangerous—and that's why I would say it's an intellectual, in a sense, Sodom and Gomorrah.

[00:27:30] Sodom and Gomorrah pulled Lot in, and it took an angel quite literally dragging him out to get him to go and leave the city. He wasn't going to see that what he was doing was wrong. And I think that's what happened at Kingsley.

[00:27:41] We talked a little bit about what that seems to be what happened in Princeton Theological Seminary with Woodrow Wilson. That seems to—way back in the day we talked about how that's what happened with Alexander White.

[00:27:50] It's a real threat to people that you can get so caught up in the intellectual pursuit and the joy of it all, and your friends are there, and that you don't realize you've strayed from the path.

[00:28:00] Now, to give him a little bit of credit, he died at 55 in 1875, way before evolution turned into the eugenics monster that it would become, and way before Christian socialism and socialism in general became the Marxism of the 20th century.

[00:28:16] So I think if we can give him a little bit of grace too, he died long before any of these philosophies and ideas that he was maybe toying around with and theoretically enjoying came to fruition. You know what I'm saying?

[00:28:27] Like he didn't—it's a big difference between saying I'm a socialist in 1875, I think, and I'm a socialist in 1985, right? There's one of these two people has a lot of history and evidence of what's going to happen, and Kingsley didn't have that.

[00:28:42] And so you've heard people say sometimes like, oh, on paper it looks great. Well, Kingsley only has these ideas on paper. He hasn't yet seen what they will become. And so even though I don't think those were great ideas and shouldn't have played with them,

[00:28:54] I can see—I'm going to give him more grace than I would someone today who's coming to me and saying, oh, these are all great ideas. No, they're not. We have history to back it up. Kingsley hadn't yet seen these ideas play out.

[00:29:04] He died far too early for any—in fact, when he dies in 1875, there really is nobody yet sounding alarm bells. The first alarm bell that we really see is maybe Charles Spurgeon in 1892 and three with the downgrade controversy.

[00:29:18] So it's a long time before people really start to kind of wake up and see what's going on here. I don't know. Whenever I see stuff like this and talk about stuff like this,

[00:29:28] I always wonder if people are going to be saying the same thing about people in our generation 200 years from now. You know? Like—because again, when you're in the moment, you don't notice it as much. But it makes you think.

[00:29:42] You know, a lot of our speakers that we look up to today, are they going to—you know, are there going to be two guys on a podcast 200 years from now that are going to be like,

[00:29:51] oof, these guys were missing the mark, you know, kind of heading down the wrong path? It's possible. I actually—I always tell my students when we talk about history, I do some history classes and stuff, and I always say it's easy to judge them.

[00:30:06] I guarantee you, we're doing something right now. We don't see it. We don't even notice it. It's something that's just a part of our lives that we don't even recognize as bad, that people will look at us and go, how did you not see it?

[00:30:17] And the problem is, every culture has that blind spot that they're in the middle of that they don't see. And people from the outside can see it clear as day, but when you're living in it, you just don't see it.

[00:30:27] I'd love to say I know what it is, but the problem is, by definition, you won't know what it is until 100 years, 200 years from now when people recognize it, start to clarify it, start to point it out, and then work towards ending it.

[00:30:37] And then, like you said, 200 years from now, people on a podcast, a video cast, a hologram cast or whatever they have in the future, they're going to look back and go,

[00:30:44] how did these guys claim to be Christians? How did they not see whatever this thing, this giant flaw is? Kingsley has the same, is in the same boat. And I give Kingsley that grace because like I said, he really does.

[00:30:55] He passes on way before these ideas really take hold and you can see the results of them. It doesn't mean he's guiltless. He obviously shared some of those ideas, but I just give him a lot more grace than I would somebody alive today espousing the same idea, certainly.

[00:31:10] All right, let us listen to his sermon. This is the shortest sermon title we've ever had on the show's history. I mean, there's no second. It's literally the letter I. Let us think seriously this afternoon of just one word.

[00:31:39] The word which is the keynote of this song. A very short word. For in our language, there is but one letter in it. A very common word. For we are using it all day long when we're awake and even at night in our dreams.

[00:31:52] And yet a very wonderful word for though we know well whom it means, yet what it means we don't know and can't understand. No, nor can the wisest philosopher who ever lived quite figure it out. And a most important word too. For we can't get rid of it.

[00:32:09] We can't help thinking of it, can't help saying it all our life long from childhood to the grave. After death too, we'll probably be saying that word to ourselves, each of us, forever and ever.

[00:32:23] If the whole universe, sun, moon, and stars, and all that we ever thought of or can think of were destroyed and became nothing, that word would probably be left for us. And we should be left alone with it.

[00:32:35] And on what we meant by that little word would depend on our everlasting happiness or misery. And what is that wonderful little word? What but the word I.

[00:32:46] Each one of us says I. I think, I know, I feel, I ought, I ought not, I did that and cannot undo it. And why? Because we are not things nor mere animals, but persons. Living souls, though our bodies are like the bodies of animals, only more perfect.

[00:33:06] So they may be fit dwelling places for more perfect souls. The animals, as far as we know, do not think of themselves each as I. Little children don't at first. They call themselves by names by which they hear others call them.

[00:33:20] Not in the first, but in the third person. After a while, there grows up in them the wonderful thought that they are persons, different from any other person around them. And they begin to say, I want this, I like that.

[00:33:34] I trust that I won't seem to you as one who's crazy when I say that I believe that is a revelation from God to each child. And just what makes the difference between Him and an animal?

[00:33:46] That God teaches each child to say I. To know that it's not a mere thing, but a person, a living soul with a will of its own and a duty of its own, responsible for itself. They ought to do some things and ought not to do other things.

[00:34:04] And what a solemn and awful revelation that is we'll see more clearly the more we think on it. It may be a dreadful and tormenting thought. Now, it doesn't torment the mere savage beast who has no sense of right or wrong.

[00:34:18] They follow their own appetites and passions and have never learned to say I ought and I ought not. But it does torment man and it's tormented mankind in all ages. It tormented the old Greeks and Romans. It torments some Eastern people still.

[00:34:33] That terrible thought, I am I myself and can't be anyone else. I'm answerable for all that I've ever done or will do. And I can't put the blame on anyone else. All the bad deeds I ever did, all the bad thoughts I ever thought are mine.

[00:34:48] They're all parts of me and will be forever. I can no more escape from them than I can cast off my own shadow. But men have always been trying to escape, to escape from the burden of their own self and the dread of an evil conscience.

[00:35:03] They've invested religion after religion, often fantastic enough, often pathetic enough, likewise, in hopes of hiding from themselves the secret thought. I am I and must be myself forever. But I'm not what I ought to be and therefore I may be wrong and miserable forever.

[00:35:21] And how many people in this Christian land are saying at this very moment to themselves, Oh, that I could get rid of this I myself and me, which is so discontented and unhappy. Oh, that I had no conscience. Oh, that I could forget myself.

[00:35:37] And they try to forget themselves by sensual pleasures, by gaming, by drinking, by taking narcotic drugs, even sometimes by suicide as a last desperate attempt to escape from themselves. They don't know and don't care where. It's all vain. There's no escape from self.

[00:35:55] As the pious poet whose bus stands beneath the nearby tower has said, each in a separate sphere of joy and woe, our hermit spirits dwell and range apart. I must be I, you must be you, he must be he, she must be she

[00:36:11] and no one else throughout our mortal lives and for all we can tell forever. Alone each of us with our own souls, our own thoughts, our own actions, our own hopes, our own fears, our own deservings. Stay alone with all these? Yes, and alone with one more.

[00:36:32] Each of us is alone with God, face to face with God, seen by him through and through and directly answerable to him at every moment of our lives, every deed and word and thought. And isn't that a more frightening thought than any? Ah, my friends, it may be.

[00:36:53] But it may be also the most comforting of all thoughts, the only really comforting thought, if we'll but look at the question as the psalmist looks at it and cry with him to God, I am yours, oh save the me that you have made.

[00:37:07] There are those and those who deserve a respectful hearing who will differ from all that I've been saying and will see the beliefs of 999 out of 1000 of the human race in every age. They'll say, this fancy that you are an I, a self, individual, is just a fantasy.

[00:37:26] It's one of the many idols which man creates for himself by bestowing reality and personality on mere abstractions like this I and self. Each man is not one indivisible, much less indestructible thing or being. He's really many things.

[00:37:42] He's the net result of all the organic cells of his body and all the forces which act through them within and of all the circumstances which influence them from outside. Yes, and all of the forces and circumstances

[00:37:56] which have influenced his ancestors ever since man appeared on the earth. But because he remembers many states of consciousness, many moments in which he was aware of sensations within him and circumstances outside him, therefore, he strings all these together

[00:38:11] and talks of them as one thing which he calls I and speaks of them as his remembrances of himself when really the many things are but links of a chain which is perpetually growing at one end and dropping off at the other.

[00:38:25] To say then that he's the same person as when he was a child or as he'd be when an old man is, when we know that every atom of his physical frame has changed again and again during the course of years,

[00:38:36] a popular delusion or at least a misnomer for convenience sake. As when we say that the sun rises and sets when we know that the earth moves and not the sun. A man, therefore, according to this school of thought, is really no more a person, one and indivisible,

[00:38:53] than is a coral with its million polyps, the tree with its million buds or even the thunderstorms each piece of the lightning. Now that a part truth is in such a theory as this, I'm the last to deny. How much of the character of each man's inherited,

[00:39:10] how much of it depends on his actual bodily organization, how much of it all? Does it depend on the circumstances of his youth? How much of it changes with a mere physical change from youth to old age? If someone doesn't know all this,

[00:39:25] then they've never needed to fight for himself the battle of life. Only I say this is but half the truth. And these philosophers cannot state their half-truth without employing the very words which they repudiate, without using the very personal pronouns,

[00:39:40] the I and me, the you and me, the he and him, to which they deny any real existence. Besides, I ask, is the experience and the conclusion of the vast majority of all mankind to go for nothing? For if there's one point on which human beings have been

[00:39:57] and are still agreed, it's this, that each of them is, to his joy or his sorrow, an I, a separate person. And, I should have said, this conviction becomes stronger and stronger in each of them the more human they become,

[00:40:12] civilized and worthy of the respect and affection of their fellow men. For what rises in them, or seems to rise, more and more painfully and fiercely? What but that protest, that battle between the everlasting I within them and their own passions and motives and circumstances,

[00:40:31] which Saint Paul of old called the battle between the spirit on one side and the flesh and the world on the other? The nobler and healthier, even for a moment, the manhood of any man, is the more intense that inward struggle

[00:40:44] which man alone of all the animals endures. Is it in moments of brave endeavor, whether to improve our own character or to benefit our fellow men, or is it in moments of depression, disappointment, bodily sickness that we are tempted to say, I will fight no more?

[00:41:00] I can't mend myself or the world. I am what nature has made me, and what I am I must remain. I and all I know and all I love are things, not persons, parts of nature, even as the birds upon the tree branch, only more miserable,

[00:41:17] because tormented by a hope which will never be fulfilled, an empty pageant of mere phenomena, blown onward toward decay like dying autumn leaves before the everlasting storm which no one guides. Is this the inward voice of health and strength? Or rather, for evil or for good,

[00:41:35] that voice which bids the man, the woman, and the mysterious might of the free eye within trample on their own passions, defy their own circumstances, even to death, fall back in utter need on the absolute instinct of self. And even though all seem lost,

[00:41:53] say with Nadia in the tragedy, Kerastai, yo, Nadia, someone will ask, and have a right to ask, is that the model which you set before us? The imperious sorceress, who from the first has known no law but self, her own passions, her own intellect,

[00:42:10] who at last, maddened by a grievous wrong, asserts that self by the murder of her own children? You might as well set us before the model for life as John Milton's Satan. Just so, remember first nevertheless the old maxim that the best when corrupted is the worst,

[00:42:27] that the higher the nature, when used right in its right place, the baser it becomes when used wrongly in its wrong place. When Satan fell from his right place, said the old Jews, he became, remember, not a mere brute, but worse, a fiend.

[00:42:43] There's a deep and true philosophy in that. As long as he was what he was meant to be, the servant of God, he was an archangel and more, the fairest of all the sons in the morning. When he rebelled, when in pride and self-will

[00:42:57] he tore himself, his person, away from God, in whom he lived and moved and had his being, the personality remained. He could still, like Medea, fall back, even when he knew that he'd rebelled against his Creator, on his indomitable self,

[00:43:11] and reign a self-sufficing king, even in the depths of hell. But the very strength and richness of that personality made him, like Medea, only the more capable of evil. He stood, that is, his moral health endured only by loyalty to God.

[00:43:26] When he lost that, he fell into a moral disease. Disease was even worse, because of how great his abilities were. And so it is with you and me and every soul of man. Only by loyalty can this undying I, this self, this person which each of us has,

[00:43:42] or rather, which each of us is, be anything but a torment and a curse. The more terrible to us and those around us, the stronger and the richer are the nature and faculties through which it works. Would you be a curse to yourself?

[00:43:58] Then cry with him who wrote the 119th Psalm, I am yours, O save the me whom you, O God, have made. For he who wrote that psalm had an intense conviction of his own personality. I and me are words forever in his mouth, but not in self-satisfied conceit

[00:44:17] and not in self-tormenting superstition, crying perpetually, will I be saved? Will I be lost? No. Faith in God delivers him from either of these follies. He is forced to think of himself. Sad, persecuted, seemingly friendless, he is alone with self, yet not alone.

[00:44:35] For at every moment he is referring himself to his true place in the universe, to God and to God's law, God's help. The burden of self, of mingled responsibility and weakness is to him past bearing. It would be utterly past bearing if he couldn't cast it down,

[00:44:51] at least at moments at the foot of the throne of God and cry, I am yours, O save me. And if any should ask, as has been asked even now, but is there not in this tone of mind something undignified, something even abject?

[00:45:07] For to cry for help instead of just helping oneself, to depend on another being instead of bearing stoically with manly independence? I answer, the psalmist does bear stoically because he cries for help. For the old Stoics cried for help.

[00:45:23] The earlier and truer hearted of them did so at least. Some here surely have read Epictetus, the heathen whose thought most exactly coincides with that of the psalmist. If so, do they not see what enabled him? The slave of Nero's minion to assert himself

[00:45:39] in his own unconquerable personality? For to defy circumstances and to preserve his own calm, his honor, his own purity amid such a degrading state which might well have driven a good man to suicide. What stayed with them was it not this, the intensity of his faith in God,

[00:45:56] in God the helper, God the guide? Even more, it's a serious problem whether your ungodliness, by which I mean, as the psalmist means, the assertion of self, independent of God, whether that ungodliness, I say, is ever actually dignified. Whether, as has often been said,

[00:46:14] Milton still dignified Satan is not an impossible character. Whether Gotha's utterly undignified Mephistopheles isn't the real ideal of an utterly evil spirit. Ungodliness as we see it manifested in human beings may be repulsive, as in the mere thug whose mouth is filled with cursing

[00:46:34] and his feet swift to shed blood. It may again be pitiable, as in those human butterflies who live only to enjoy or to minister to what they call luxury and fashion. And it may be again when it calmly and deliberately asserts itself to be a philosophy

[00:46:50] and an explanation of man and of the universe and gives itself magisterial airs, however courteously and kindly it may be then, I dare to think, a little ludicrous. But as for dignity, I leave to you to say which of the two beings is the more dignified?

[00:47:07] Which the more abject, a little organism of flesh and blood, at most not more than six feet high, liable to be destroyed by a tile off a roof or a blast of foul gas or a hundred other accidents. Yet he's standing self-poised and self-complacent

[00:47:23] in the center of such a universe as this and asserting that it acknowledges no superior and needs no guide. Or the same being awakened to the mystery of his own actual weakness, his possible strength, his own actual ignorance, his possible wisdom, his own actual sinfulness, his possible holiness,

[00:47:42] and then by humility which is the highest daring, by self-distrust which is the truest self-assertion, vindicating the divine element within and crying out directly to the Creator of the sun and stars of the universe, I am yours. Oh, save me which you have made. Make up your minds.

[00:48:02] Which of the two figures is the more abject? Which the more dignified? For me, I have good reasons long since made up mine. I say, I'm a person. And in order that I might be the right kind of person and not the wrong kind,

[00:48:15] I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. I say, I'm a person. And that I may be the right kind of person, I must know and I believe certain things concerning God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

[00:48:34] I'm a person. And that I may be the right kind of person, I must keep certain commandments and do certain duties towards God and my parents and my queen and my country and my neighbor and all toward whom I'm responsible for right behavior.

[00:48:49] The catechism of the Church of England tells us how to be the right kind of person. But in a very few short words after teaching what you can and can't do, the catechism tells the child about that which is not itself. My good child, know this,

[00:49:02] that you're not able to do these things of yourself nor to walk in the commandments of God and to serve him without his special grace, which you must learn at all times to call for by diligent prayer. Now consider these words. There's comfort and strength in them.

[00:49:18] Comfort for the child, comfort for you and me and every human being who's awakened to the sense of his own personal responsibility and finds it too often a burden heavier than he and yes, she can bear. The catechism tells the child

[00:49:31] that it must not merely know the doctrines about God or do duties to God, but more, that it is alone with God himself, face-to-face with God himself, day and night. But does it tell us to dread God and look up to God as a taskmaster and tyrant

[00:49:47] and try to hide from God's awful eye and forget God and forget itself if it can? God forbid, God forbid. The catechism leaves such teachings for those Pharisees who will tell little children that unless they're converted and become just as those Pharisees,

[00:50:02] they'll in no way enter the kingdom of heaven. The catechism says, My good child, not my bad child, know this, know that you're weak, but know that God is strong and look up to him as the father of all fathers, the teacher of all teachers,

[00:50:16] the helper of all helpers, the friend of all friends who's called you into his kingdom of grace that he might show you his graciousness and make you gracious and graceful in all your thoughts and works and ways and therefore far from trying to hide from him.

[00:50:31] Call on him with diligent prayer for the father of all fathers is the father of your soul. The son of all sons died for you upon the cross. The Holy Spirit of all Holy Spirits will make your Holy Spirit and a person

[00:50:43] even as he is holy and person himself. Believe those words. No one will dare to forget to say his prayers for when he prays, he's indeed a person. He's himself and not ashamed, however sinful to be himself and to tell God about himself. Oh, think of that.

[00:51:00] You, each of you have a right as God's children to speak to the God who made the universe. Therefore, be sure that when you dislike to say your prayers, it's because you don't like to be what you really are, a person and prefer, ah foolish soul,

[00:51:15] to be a thing and an animal. Believing those words, no man needs long to forget himself to escape from himself. He can lift up himself to God who made him with reverence and fear and yet with gratitude and trust say, I Lord am I and what I am,

[00:51:33] a very poor, pitiful, sinful person. But you Lord are you and what you are happily for me and for the whole universe, perfect. You are what you need to be, goodness itself. And therefore you can and you will make me what I ought to be at least,

[00:51:53] a good person. To you Lord, I can bring the burden of this undying eye, which I carry with me too often in shame and sadness and ask you to help me bear it saying, you know Lord the secrets of our hearts.

[00:52:06] Shut not your merciful ears to our prayers but spare us, O Lord, most holy, O God most mighty, you worthy judge eternal and do not suffer us for any temptation of the world, the flesh or the devil to fall from you. Guide me, teach me, strengthen me

[00:52:21] till I become such a person as you have me be, pure and gentle, truthful and high-minded, brave and able, courteous and generous, dutiful and useful like your son Jesus Christ when he increased not only in stature but in favor with God and man.

[00:52:38] To which may God in his mercy bring us all. Amen. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Revive Thoughts. Today's sermon was narrated by John Raynard. In 2001, John's voiceover talent earned him the global recognition as a Marconi Radio Award nominee. He currently runs an audio production studio

[00:53:09] and can work on any voiceover project you need help with. John has been a commercial radio announcer in American Samoa since 2006 where he lives with his wife Alice and four children. Thank you for listening to this episode of Revive Thoughts. If you enjoyed this episode,

[00:53:24] please leave a five-star review. If you did not enjoy this episode, maybe don't leave a five-star review but we'd love for you to leave a five-star especially on Apple Podcasts if you're an Apple listener, those always help but you can now leave them on Spotify.

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[00:53:56] This is Troy and Jill and this is Revive Thoughts.