"For spreading truth, and making love expand"

Erwin Canham's book "Commitment to Freedom" was written 58 years ago, exactly 50 years after the founding of The Christian Science Monitor. So this newspaper is now 108 years old. 

Opening up Canham's book last night, I was intrigued to read the first 5 lines from a short but powerful poem by the Romantic English poet William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850). Wordsworth was born the same year as Beethoven, and of course the year James Cook set foot on Australia. 

Here is the entire poem:

Illustrated Books And Newspapers

by William Wordsworth

Discourse was deemed Man's noblest attribute,
And written words the glory of his hand;
Then followed Printing with enlarged command
For thought -- dominion vast and absolute
For spreading truth, and making love expand.
Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute
Must lackey a dumb Art that best can suit
The taste of this once-intellectual Land.
A backward movement surely have we here,
From manhood, -- back to childhood; for the age --
Back towards caverned life's first rude career.
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!
Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear

Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!

I love to think on such concepts as "discourse", "written words", and "printing" as vehicles for "spreading truth, and making love expand"! Canham's excerpt finishes there, and the rest of the poem may not be quite so highly toned (!), but it's interesting nonetheless, to contemplate his reasoning, which seems to indicate mankind's preference for the visual image over the heard thought contemplated.

Whatever message we deem is ours in reading this poem today, I love the idea of "spreading truth, and making love expand".

Juliet Swannell 

Roman coins

Before we leave Paul and the Roman Empire, here is news from The Christian Science Monitor of an interesting find of Roman coins in Japan! It seems probable that the two empires were trading partners. 

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0929/What-were-ancient-Roman-coins-doing-underneath-a-Japanese-castle

Caesar's household

I was surprised to read about Caesar's household in Philippians 4: 22. The verse reads: "All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household." How amazing that Paul was able to pass on news of fellow Christians right in the heart of Rome - in the very court of the Roman emperor, Nero.

Bible Hub has this entry:

Caesar's. The cruel, worthless, and diabolical Nero was at this time emperor of Rome; but it is not improbable that the empress Poppaea was favourably inclined to Christianity, as Josephus relates that ([theosebes gar en]) 'she was a worshipper of the true God.' Jerome states, (in Phm.) that Paul had converted many in Caesar's family; for 'being by the emperor cast into prison, he became more known to his family, and turned the house of Christ's persecutor into a church.'  http://biblehub.com/philippians/4-22.htm

Paul's deep and abiding affection for Christ penetrated to the very heart of the opposition against him. How firmly he trod his pathway "forgetting those things... behind, and reaching forth unto those things... before", "press[ing] toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil 3: 13, 14). 

He never seemed to be waiting for anyone else to join him - he just shone the light, and those who were ready, followed.

Juliet Swannell