Comfortable Words
The King James Bible of 1611, a model of straightforward English made for reading aloud.
The King James Bible of 1611, a model of straightforward English made for reading aloud.
One of the best-loved of all hymns in the English language.
One Sunday evening in 1847, the Revd Henry Lyte was overwhelmed with sadness. He had just celebrated his last communion service at Brixham after twenty-four years of ministry, and was preparing to go abroad in a last effort to save his failing health. As he looked out to sea these words came to him, as they came to nurse Edith Cavell shortly before she was shot in 1915.
A superlative Christian poem based on Righteous Jacob’s encounter with an angel.
The great English hymn-writer Isaac Watts said of this poem by his contemporary, Charles Wesley, that it was worth all that he himself had ever written. In Genesis 32, Jacob, whose family and friends have gone on ahead, is forced to spend a night wrestling with an angel. He yields after receiving a leg injury, and asks his opponent’s name. ‘Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?’ replies the angel — and is gone.
A meditation on the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.
Some Christians of Galatia, to avoid State persecution as Christians, tried to get their fellows to be circumcised so all could claim to be Jews. Isaac Watts shared St Paul’s conviction that to exchange the cross for any other badge of identity, however socially respectable, would be the saddest of bargains.
The text of the famous Oratorio written to raise funds for a children’s shelter in London.
‘Messiah’ is an oratorio written by Charles Jennens and set to music by George Frideric Handel. First performed in 1742 to raise money for various charitable causes, including the Foundling Hospital in London, the libretto is a brilliant patchwork of quotations from the Authorized Version.
A short collection of prayers taken from the writings of Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the days of Ethelred the Unready.
Elfric (?955-?1010) was Abbot of Eynsham Abbey in Oxfordshire from 1005. He is one of the towering figures of the English Church in Anglo-Saxon times, sometimes even mentioned in the same breath as St Bede. The following prayers are taken from Benjamin Thorpe’s translation of Elfric’s Sermons, originally in Old English.
Three prayers by much-loved novelist Jane Austen, who intended them for use by her family at evening time.
These three prayers were written by novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) for family use, and preserved for posterity by her elder sister Cassandra. The first is displayed in abridged form in the parish church in Steventon where her father George Austen and later her brother James were Rector; it focuses on self-knowledge, and on thankfulness for comforts and blessings received.