Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero - "The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1"

G. Harvey Ralphson - "Boy Scouts in the Philippines"

James Russell Lowell - "Among My Books"

Anon - "The Diary of a U boat Commander"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

True Words for Brave Men

C >> Charles Kingsley >> True Words for Brave Men




And do not your own hearts echo these thoughts at moments when they are
quietest and purest and most happy too? Have you not said to
yourselves--"Those Bible words are good words. After all, if I were like
that, I should be happier than I am now." Ah! my friends, listen to
those thoughts when they come into your hearts--they are not your own
thoughts--they are the voice of One holier than you--wiser than you--One
who loves you better than you love yourselves--One pleading with you,
stirring you up by His Spirit, if it be but for a moment, to see the
things which belong to your peace.

But what can you say for yourselves, if having once had these thoughts,
having once settled in your own minds that the Gospel of God is right and
you are wrong, if you persist in disobeying that gospel--if you agree one
minute with the inner voice, which says, "Do this and live, do this and
be at peace with God and man, and your own conscience"--and then fall
back the next moment into the same worldly, selfish, peevish,
sense-bound, miserable life-in-death as ever?

The reason, my friends, I am afraid, with most of us is, sheer folly--not
want of cunning and cleverness, but want of heart--want of feeling--what
Solomon calls folly (Prov. i. 22-27), stupidity of soul, when he calls on
the simple souls, How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity or
silliness, and the scorners delight in their scorning (delight in
laughing at what is good), and fools hate knowledge--hate to think
earnestly or steadily about anything--the stupidity of the ass, who is
too stubborn and thick-skinned to turn out of his way for any one--or the
stupidity of the swine, who cares for his food and nothing further--or
worse than all, the stupidity of the ape, who cares for nothing but play
and curiosity, and the vain and frivolous amusements of the moment.

All these tempers are common enough, and they may be joined with
cleverness enough. What beast so clever as an ape? yet what beast so
foolish, so mean, so useless? But this is the fault of stupidity--it
blinds our eyes to the world of spirits; it makes us forget God; it makes
us see first what we can lay our hands on, and nothing more; it makes us
forget that we have souls. Our glorious minds and thoughts, which should
be stretching on through all eternity, are cramped down to thinking of
nothing further than this little hour of earthly life. Our glorious
hearts, which should be delighting in everything which is lovely, and
generous, and pure, and beautiful, and God-like--ay, delighting in God
Himself--are turned in upon themselves, and set upon our own gain, our
own ease, our own credit. In short, our immortal souls, made in God's
image, become no use to us by this stupidity--they seem for mere salt to
keep our bodies from decaying.

Whose work is that? The devil's. But whose _fault_ is it? Do you
suppose that the devil has any right in you, any power in you, who have
been washed in the waters of baptism and redeemed by Christ from the
service of the devil, and signed with His Cross on your foreheads,
_unless you give him power_? Not he. Men's sins open the door to the
devil, and when he is in, he will soon trample down the good seed that is
springing up, and stamp the mellow soil as hard as iron, so that nothing
but his own seeds can grow there, and so keep off the dews of God's
spirit, and the working of God's own gospel from making any impression on
that hardened stupified soil.

Alas! poor soul. And thy misery is double, because thou knowest not that
thou art miserable; and thy misery is treble, because thou hast brought
it on thyself!

My friends--there is an ancient fable of the Jews, which, though it is
not true, yet has a deep and holy meaning, and teaches an awful lesson.

There lived, says an ancient Jewish Scribe, by the shores of the Dead
Sea, a certain tribe of men, utterly given up to pleasure and
covetousness, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride
of life. To them the prophet Moses was sent, and preached to them,
warning them of repentance and of judgment to come--trying to awaken
their souls to high and holy thoughts, and bring them back to the thought
of God and heaven. And they, poor fools, listened to Him, admired his
preaching, agreed that it all sounded very good--but that he went too
far--that it was too difficult--that their present way of life was very
pleasant--that they saw no such great need of change, and so on, one
excuse after another, till they began to be tired of Moses, and gave him
to understand that he was impertinent, troublesome--that they could see
nothing wise in him--nothing great; how could they? So Moses went his
way, and left them to go theirs. And long after, when some travellers
came by, says the fable, they found these foolish people were all changed
into dumb beasts; what they had tried to be, now they really were. They
had made no use of their souls, and now they had lost them; they had
given themselves up to folly, and now folly had taken to her own; they
had fancied, as people do every day, that this world is a great
play-ground, wherein every one has to amuse himself as he likes best, or
at all events a great shop and gambling-house, where the most cunning
wins most of his neighbour's money; and now according to their faith it
was to them. They had forgotten God and spiritual things, and now they
were hid from their eyes. And these travellers found them sitting,
playing antics, quarrelling for the fruits of the field--mere
beasts--reaping as they had sown, and filled full with the fruit of their
own devices.

Only every Sabbath day, says the fable, there came over these poor
wretches an awful sense of a piercing Eye watching them from above--a dim
feeling that they had been something better and nobler once--a faint
recollection of heavenly things which they once knew when they were
little children--a blind dread of some awful unseen ruin, into which
their miserable empty beast-life was swiftly and steadily sweeping them
down;--and then they tried to think and could not--and tried to remember
and could not--and so they sat there every Sabbath day, cowering with
fear, uneasy and moaning, and half-remembered that they once had souls!

My friends, my friends, are there not too many now-a-days like these poor
dwellers by the Dead Sea, who seem to have lost all of God's image except
their bodies? who all the week dote on the business and the pleasures of
this life, going on very comfortably till they seem to have quite
hardened their own souls; and now and then on Sabbath days when they come
to church, and pretend to pray and worship, sit all vacant, stupid, their
hearts far away, or with a sort of passing uneasiness and dim feeling
that all is not right--_try to think and cannot_--_try to pray and
cannot_--and, like those dwellers by the Dead Sea, once a week on Sabbath
day half remember that they once had souls?

So true it is, that from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that
which he seemeth to have. So true it is, that the wages of sin is death;
death to the soul even in this life. So true it is that why men do not
believe Christ, is because they cannot hear His word. So true it is,
that only the pure in heart shall see God, or love god-like men and god-
like words. So true it is, that he that soweth the wind shall reap the
whirlwind, and that he who _will_ not hear Christ's words, shall soon not
be _able_ to hear them; that he who will not have Christ for his master,
must soon be content to have the devil for his master, and for his wages,
spiritual death. From which sad fate of spiritual death may the blessed
Saviour, in His infinite mercy, deliver us.




IV. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE TREE OF LIFE; OR, THE FALL.


"Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which
the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God
said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman
said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch
it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and
that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one
wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto
her husband with her; and he did eat."--GENESIS iii. 1-6.

Here is a lesson for us all. You and I, and all men brought into the
world with us a nature which fell in Adam; and, as it fell _before_ we
were born, it is certain enough to fall, again and again, after we are
born, in this life; ay, and unless we take care, to fall lower and lower,
every day, acting Adam's sin over again, until we surely die. This is
what I mean--What God said to Adam and Eve, He says to every one of us.
And what the devil said to Adam and Eve, he will say to every one of us.

First. God says to us, "Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest
freely eat: but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat, lest thou die."

Of all the trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat. God grudges you
nothing good for you. He has put you into this good and pleasant world,
where you will find pleasures enough, and comforts enough, to satisfy
you, if you are wise; but there are things which God has forbidden you,
not out of any spite or arbitrariness, but because they are bad for you;
because they will hurt you if you indulge in them, and sooner or later,
kill both body and soul.

Now, many of those wrong things look pleasant enough, and reasonable
enough, as the forbidden fruit did. Pleasant to the eyes and good for
food--and to be desired to make you wise. As people grow up and go out
into life, they are tempted to do many things which their parents forbid,
which the Bible forbids, which the law of the land forbids, and they do
not understand at first why they are forbidden any more than Adam and Eve
understood why they were not to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Then the devil (who is always trying to slander God to us) whispers to
them, as he did to Eve, "How unreasonable! how hard on you. People say
that this is wrong, and you must not do it, and yet how pleasant it must
be! How much money you might get by it--how much wiser, and cleverer,
and more able to help yourself you would become, if you went your own
way, and did what you like. Surely God is hard on you, and grudges you
pleasure. Never mind--don't be afraid. Surely you can judge best what
is good for you. Surely you know your own business best. Use your own
common sense and do what you like, and what you think will profit you.
Are you to be a slave to old rules which your parents or the clergyman
taught you?"

So says the devil to every young man as he goes out in life. And to
many, alas!--to many, the devil's words sound reasonable enough; they
flatter our fallen nature, they flatter our pride and our self-will, and
make us fancy we are going up hill, and becoming very fine and manly, and
independent and knowing. "_Knowing_"! How many a young man have I seen
run into sin just that he might be _knowing_; and say, "Why should I not
see life for myself? Why should I not know the world, and try what is
good, and how I like that, and what is bad too, and how I like that--and
then choose for myself like a man, instead of being kept in like a baby?"

So he says exactly what Adam and Eve said in their hearts--"I will eat of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil." He says in his heart, too, just
what Solomon the wise said, when he, too, determined to eat of the fruit
of the tree of knowledge.

Ay, young people, who love to see the world, and to choose for
yourselves, read that Book of Ecclesiastes, the saddest book on earth,
and get a golden lesson in every verse of it. See how Solomon determined
to see life, from the top to the bottom of it. How he "gave his heart to
know, seek, and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done
under heaven. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and
behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit," (Eccles. i. 13).

And then, how he turned round and gave his heart to know mirth, and
madness, and folly, and see whether _that_ was good for him, and, "I said
of laughter, it is mad: and of mirth, what doeth it?" (Eccles. ii. 2-26).
And then he gave himself to wine and revelling, and after that to riches,
and pomp, and glory, and music, and the "fine arts," as we call them. "I
made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made
me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of
fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that
bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants
born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle
above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and
gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me
men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as
musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and
increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom
remained with me." And what was the end? "Then I looked on all the
works that my hand had done, and on the labour that I had laboured to do:
and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
under the sun." Therefore, he says, that he hated all the labour he had
taken under the sun, because he must leave it to the men who came after
him, and found out at last, after years of labour and sorrow, trying to
make himself happy with this and that, and finding no rest with any of
them, that the conclusion of the whole matter was to "Fear God and keep
his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring
every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or
evil" (Eccles. xii. 13).

So said Solomon--and God knows, my dear friends, God knows, he said
truly. Ay, and I know it to be true; and I entreat you this day, in
God's name, to hear the conclusion of the whole matter. All this you
will find out by eating of the tree of knowledge, and "_seeing life_,"
and going your own way, and falling into sin, and smarting for it, for
weary years, in anxiety and perplexity, and shame, and sorrow of heart.

All that you will find out thereby--all that Solomon found out
thereby,--is just what you know already, and nothing more--just what you
have been taught ever since you could speak. "Fear God and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." Why buy your own
experience dear, when you can get it gratis, for nothing already?

Yes; a simple, godly, industrious life, doing the duty which lies nearest
you, avoiding sin as you would an adder, because it is sure sooner or
later to sting you, if you touch it, is the straight road, and the only
road, to happiness, either in this life, or in the life to come. Pleasure
and amusement, drinking and jollity, will not make you happy. Money will
not make you happy. Cleverness, and cunning, and knowledge of the world
will not make you happy. Scholarship and learning will not. But plain,
simple righteousness, simply doing right, _will_.

Do right then and be happy. Obey God's commandments, and you will find
that His commandments are _Life_, and in the pathway thereof there is no
death.

Make up your minds to do right, to be right, to keep right by the help of
God's Right and Holy Spirit, in the right road. Make up your minds
whether you will go through the world in God's way, or your own
way--whether you will taste what God has forbidden, and so destroy
yourselves, or obey Him and live with Him in bliss. The longer you
delay, the more difficult you will find it. Make up your minds now, and
ask God to teach you His own heavenly wisdom which is a Tree of Life to
all that lay hold on it.




V. I AM.


"I AM hath sent me into you."--EXODUS iii. 10.

Every day I find it more and more true, that the Bible is full of good
news from beginning to end. The _Gospel_--that is good news--and the
best of all good news, is to be found in every book of it; perhaps if we
knew how to search the Scriptures, in every chapter and verse of it, from
beginning to end. For from beginning to end, from Genesis to
Malachi--from the Gospel of St. Matthew to the end of the Revelation--what
our Lord said of the Bible stands true: "They (the Scriptures) are they
which testify of ME" (John v. 39). The whole Bible testifies, bears
witness of Him, the One Unchangeable Christ, who said to Moses, "Say unto
the people, I AM hath sent me unto you."

Now let us think a while what that text means; for it has not to do with
Moses only, but with all God's prophets, evangelists, preachers. David
might have said the same to the Jews in his time, "I AM hath sent me unto
you." Elijah, Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. John, St. Paul, might have said
the same. And so may God's ministers now. And I, however sinful, or
ignorant, or unfaithful to my duty I may be, have still a right to say,
as I do now say solemnly and earnestly to you, "I AM hath sent me unto
you" this day.

But what do I mean by that? That ought to depend on what Moses meant by
it. Moses meant what God meant, and unless I mean the same thing I must
mean something wrong. And this is what I think it does mean:

First. I AM--the Lord Jesus Christ told Moses that his name was I AM.
Now you perhaps think that this is but a very common place name, for
every one can say of himself--I am--and it may seem strange that God
should have chosen for His own especial name, words which you and I might
have chosen for ourselves just as well. I daresay you think that you may
fairly say "_you are_," and that I can say fairly that "I am."

And yet it is not so. If I say "I am," I say what is not true of me. I
must say "I am something--I am a man, I am bad, or I am good, or I am an
Englishman, I am a soldier, I am a sailor, I am a clergyman"--and then I
shall say what is true of me. But God alone can say "I AM" without
saying anything more.

And why? Because God alone _is_. Everybody and everything else in the
world _becomes_: but God _is_. We are all becoming something from our
birth to our death--changing continually and becoming something different
from what we were a minute before; first of all we were created and made,
_and so became men_; and since that we have been every moment changing,
becoming older, becoming wiser, or alas! foolisher; becoming stronger or
weaker; becoming better or worse. Even our bodies are changing and
becoming different day by day.

But God never changes or becomes anything different from what He is now.
What He is, that He was, and ever will be. God does not even become
older. This may seem very strange, but it is true: for God made Time,
God made the years; and once there were no years to count by, no years at
all. Remember how long had God Himself been, before He made Time, when
there was no Time to pass over? Remember always that God must have
created Time. If God did not create Time, no one else did; for there is,
as the Athanasian Creed says, "One uncreated and One eternal," even God
who made Time as well as all things else.

Am I puzzling you? What I want to do is to make you understand that
God's life is quite utterly different from our life, or any way of living
and being which we can fancy or think of; lest you make to yourselves the
likeness of anything in heaven above or of the earth beneath, and think
that God is like that and so worship it, and have other gods beside the
true God, and so break the first and second commandments, as thousands do
who fancy themselves good Protestants, and hate Popery and idolatry, and
yet worship a very different sort of god from the "I AM," who sent Moses
to the children of Israel. Remember then this at least, that God was
before all things, and all worlds, and all Time; so that there was a time
when there were no worlds, and a time when there was no Time--nothing but
God alone, absolute, eternal, neither made nor created, the same that He
is now and will be for ever.

When I say "God is," that is a very different thing from God Himself
saying, "I AM." A different thing? Oh! my friends, here is the root of
the whole Gospel, the root of all our hope for this world and for the
world to come--for ourselves, for our own future, and the future of all
the world. Do you not see how? Then I will try to explain.

Many heathen men have known that there was one eternal God, and that _God
is_. But they did not know that God Himself had said so; and that made
them anxious, puzzled, almost desperate, so that the wiser they were, the
unhappier they were. For what use is it merely knowing that "_God is_"?
The question for poor human creatures is, "But what sort of a being is
God? Is He far off? Millions of miles from this earth? Does He care
nothing about us? Does He let the world go its own way right or wrong?
Is He proud and careless? A self-glorifying Deity whose mercy is _not_
over all His works, or even over any of them? Or does He care for us?
Does He see us? Will He speak to us? Has He ever spoken to any one? Has
He ever told any one about Himself?" _There is the question_--the
question of all questions. And if a man once begins thinking about his
own soul, and this world, and God,--till he gets that question answered,
he can have no comfort about himself or the world, or anything--till in
fact he knows whether God has ever spoken to men or not.

And the glory of the Bible, the power of God revealed in the Bible, is,
that it answers the question, and says, "God _does_ care for men, God
_does_ see men, God is not far off from any one of us." Ay, God speaks
to men--God spoke to Moses and said, not "God is" but "I AM." God in
sundry times and in divers manners _spoke_ to our fathers by the Prophets
and said "I AM."

But more--Moses said, "I AM hath sent me." God does not merely love us,
and yet leave us to ourselves. He sends after us. He sends to us. In
old times He sent prophets and wise men one after the other to preach
repentance and righteousness, and to teach men all that was good for
them; and when men would not listen to them, but shut their ears to them
and drove them out, killing some and beating some, God was so determined
to send to men, so unwearied, so patient, so earnest, so loving still,
that He said, "I will send now my own Son, surely they will hear Him."

Yes, my friends, this is the I AM. This is God--this is our God--this is
our Heavenly Father; not a proud and selfish Being, who looks down
haughtily from afar off on all the misery and ignorance of the world, but
as a wise man of old said, "A most merciful God, a revealer of secrets,
who showeth to man the things which he knew not." This is our God--not a
tyrant, but a Deliverer--not a condemning God, but a saving God, who
wills that none should perish, who sends to seek and to save those who
are lost, who sends His sun to shine on the just and the unjust, and is
good to the unthankful and the evil. A God who so loved the world which
He had made, in spite of all its sin and follies, that He spared not His
only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. A God who sits on His
throne for ever judging right, and ministering true judgment among the
people, who from His throne beholds all those who dwell upon the earth,
and fashions the hearts of them, and understandeth all their works. A
God who comes out of His place to visit the wrong done on the earth, and
be a refuge for the oppressed, and a help in time of trouble, to help the
fatherless and poor unto their right, that the men of this world be no
more exalted against them.

This is _our God_. This is our Father--always condescending, always
patient, always loving, always just. And always active, always working
to _do good_ to all his creatures, like that exact pattern and copy of
Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, "My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work." (John v. 17).

But again: "I AM hath sent me unto _you_."

Unto whom? Who was Moses sent to? To the Children of Israel in Egypt.
And what sort of people were they? Were they wise and learned? On the
contrary they were stupid, ignorant, and brutish. Were they pious and
godly? On the contrary they were worshipping the foolish idols of the
Egyptians--so fond of idolatry that they must needs make a golden calf
and worship it. Were they respectable and cleanly livers? Were they
teachable and obedient? On the contrary, they were profligate, stiff-
necked, murmurers, disobedient, unwilling to trust God's goodness, though
He had shown them all those glorious signs and wonders for their sakes,
and brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm.
Were they high-spirited and brave? On the contrary, they were
mean-spirited and cowards, murmuring against Moses and against God, if
anything went wrong, for setting them free; ready to go back and be
slaves to the Egyptians rather than face danger and fight; looking back
and longing after the flesh-pots of Egypt, where they eat bread to the
full, and willing to be slaves again and have all their men children
drowned in the river, and themselves put to hard labour in the brick
kilns, if they could only fill their stomachs. And even at best when
Moses had brought them to the very edge of that rich land of Canaan,
which God had promised them, they were afraid to go into it, and win it
for themselves; and God had to send them back again, to wander forty
years in the wilderness, till all that cowardly, base, first generation,
who came up out of Egypt was dead, and a new generation had grown up,
made brave and hardy by their long training in the deserts, and taught to
trust and obey God from their youth; and so able and willing to conquer
the good land which God had promised them.

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