A Word to the elect by Anne Brontë

I  came across this anti-Calvinist poem by Anne Brontë recently. It is worth reading and you can see her point. I particularly like the fact she knows we do not deserve salvation. That strengthens here argument. However, she starts from the wrong end. If you start with God it is not that it all becomes clear but at least you begin to see why what she offers here is a false hope.

You may rejoice to think yourselves secure;
You may be grateful for the gift divine --
That grace unsought, which made your black hearts pure,
And fits your earth-born souls in Heaven to shine.

But, is it sweet to look around, and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserved, at least, as much as you, --
Their faults not greater, nor their virtues less?

And, wherefore should you love your God the more,
Because to you alone his smiles are given;
Because he chose to pass the many o'er,
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?

And, wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove,
Because for ALL the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?

Say, does your heart expand to all mankind?
And, would you ever to your neighbour do --
The weak, the strong, the enlightened, and the blind -­
As you would have your neighbour do to you?

And, when you, looking on your fellow-men,
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then? --
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!

That none deserve eternal bliss I know;
Unmerited the grace in mercy given:
But, none shall sink to everlasting woe,
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.

And, Oh! there lives within my heart
A hope, long nursed by me;
(And, should its cheering ray depart,
How dark my soul would be!)

That as in Adam all have died,
In Christ shall all men live;
And ever round his throne abide,
Eternal praise to give.

That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies;
And, when their dreadful doom is past,
To life and light arise.

I ask not, how remote the day,
Nor what the sinner's woe,
Before their dross is purged away;
Enough for me, to know

That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.

10 one hit wonder novels

1. Black Beauty Anna Sewell
2. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
3. Dr Zhivago Boris Pasternak
4. Catcher in the Rye J D Salinger
5. Gone with the wind Margaret Mitchell
6. The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
7. Leopard Giuseppe di Lampedusa
8. The God of small things Arundhati Roy
9. Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket Edgar Allan Poe

Unusual words 19 Rodomontade

In The Wilder Shores of Marx by Theodore Dalrymple on page 85 he says

At first I was amused by the palace, by its preposterous architectural rodomontade; then I was fascinated by it, for it seemed to me to raise in tangible ... Sometimes (I was told) the Securitate wish to intimidate you.

The word refers to pretentious boasting or bragging; bluster.

Other examples
James Fenimore Cooper, Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief

She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate.
Anne Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
She knows what she's about; but he, poor fool, deludes himself with the notion that she'll make him a good wife, and because she has amused him with some rodomontade about despising rank and wealth in matters of love and marriage, he flatters himself that she's devotedly attached to him; that she will not refuse him for his poverty, and does not court him for his rank, but loves him for himself alone.

Novelists 23 The Brontes

The Brontës were a 19th century literary family associated with the village of Haworth, high on the Yorkshire moors. The sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849), are well known as poets and novelists. They originally published using masculine pseudonyms (Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell). Their stories immediately attracted attention, though not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works (Charlotte's Villette, Anne's Agnes Grey) were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.

The three sisters and brother, Patrick Branwell (1817-1848), who also wrote, were very close and they developed their childhood imaginations through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories. The confrontation with the deaths first of their mother then two older sisters marked them profoundly and influenced their writing. Their fame at first was due as much to their own tragic destinies as to their precociousness. Since their early deaths, then the death of rector father Patrick in 1861, they were subject to a following that did not cease to grow. Their home, the parsonage at Haworth, is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum and is a mecca for visitors the world over. A recent article reprinted in Evangelical Times said of Anne that she "shines out among them all as a genuine trophy of saving grace". One of her hymns is in Grace Hymns (Believe not those who say). I have enjoyed the older women's best known novels but have never got round to the other works.