On Sunday mornings Joan reads aloud the collect of the day at the breakfast table. This week began with one of my favorites* and set me thinking about both certain eccentricities of the English language and the very powerful ways in which reading has informed my own life and the lives of so many close to me.
The noun collect, denominating the introductory prayer with which the celebration of the Eucharist has begun nearly since time immemorial, is a peculiar one. Like the verb of the same spelling, it derives from the Latin colligere, which means “to gather together, to collect.” But the nominative collect has a vocal emphasis on the first syllable and the verbal form on the second. Participants in the same church service will pray a collect and join in when they collect the offering. In the first instance what is being gathered are prayerful intentions, in the latter pecuniary contributions.
The verbal beauty of Anglican liturgy is in part a resort of historical serendipity. Various early Latin versions of most of the collects are abundant, but the English Reformation coincided with a great increment in humanistic learning and vernacular enrichment that is evident in ecclesiastical translation. Furthermore, many Church leaders were accomplished writers, in particular Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the literary genius behind the Book of Common Prayer of 1549. Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series of novels (and plays) has popularized other less admirable aspects of the ecclesiastical events of the age.
The exhortation that Bible readers should read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the substance of Holy Writ would merit an essay of its own. Particularly rich is the tradition of reading as providing a kind of nutrition through eating. The famous phrase “inwardly digest” from this collect became nearly proverbial in later English literature.
and
HUME
But I realized, unfortunately too late, that what I chose for literary and aesthetic interest compels me to brush up against some dreaded heavy-duty theology. That is because what all the reading, marking, and spiritual manducation in the collect is in aid of is the fostering of hope in one of the most mysterious of Christian doctrines: the immortality of the soul, eternal life, “life after death.”
James Boswell, the biographer of Samuel Johnson, made a visit to his dying friend, the famous philosopher David Hume. Hume was a radical religious skeptic. Boswell, a conventional Christian who recited the Nicene Creed and its clause affirming his belief in "the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting" on a frequent basis, was perhaps hoping for a deathbed conversion. If so, he would be disappointed. Hume was utterly unphased at the prospect of his impending death and, in his own expectation, the definitive annihilation of his being. Both Hume’s belief and his unbelief astonished and terrified Boswell. That meeting took place on July 7, 1776, when the United States was three days old and perhaps five percent of educated people then held ideas closer to those of Hume than to those of Boswell. I suspect that by the bicentenary of 1976 Boswell would have had trouble getting five percent among the same demographic. It has been well said that the Enlightenment project was the “disenchantment of the world.” The more that science could explain, the less room there was for folkloristic legend and myth, however endearing or even fascinating it might be. Anthropologists were wont to speak of “primitive” beliefs, from which the human species gradually emerged in its slow progress toward a fuller rationality. In individuals this process involved overcoming the infantile sensibility, putting away “childish things” as the Apostle Paul himself called them. But putting away childish things can be painful. Wordsworth was a child of the Enlightenment. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” he cried out—that dawn being the French Revolution. “But to be young was very heaven.” Yet one of his most profound and mature poems—usually called the Immortality Ode-- (“Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”)—begins with a lament for a spiritual truth overhwhelmed by an inferior “science”:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight,
To my mind did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore…
It is commonly believed that the origins of our religions are to be found in primal fears, especially the fear of death. The Roman poet Statius put into the mouth of one of his less attractive characters an opinion that became a set piece for atheists in our older literature: “Fear first created the gods!” It is a line that appears in Chaucer. I myself have come to a very different hypothesis and a more positive one. The belief in immortality grows not out of fear but out of affirmation of the goodness of life. This was Cicero’s opinion. He says that he could never deny the immortality of souls even if its impossibility could somehow be definitively demonstrated. In his view life itself was so good that it could not possibly be subject to all the woeful limitations endured by human bodies. I never used to think about any of this too much. Funny how octogenarian thought may differ from that of junior high school. But which of the two is actually more childish?
As the French say,--and of
course they have something snappy to say about practically everything-- “Pour
être mort, il faut mourir.” In order
to be dead, it is necessary to die. But
one can quite honestly express a fearlessness of death while acknowledging the
dread potential of the dying part. On
this front the messiness of the possibilities become ever more obvious, and
they do tend to crowd the mind.
But so do many other things. Hume was an empiricist, an empiricist being someone whose judgements and actions are founded in actual observed experience. I think our worldviews are determined less by what we “believe” than by what we see. What we see is for me best captured in words by poets who have written about their own observed experience in remarkable ways. Here, for example, is Hopkins:
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed…
This is in one way a rather conventional Victorian religious poem. That is what it seems to want to be. But the poet’s extraordinary imagery will not
allow it to be. The grandeur of God
cannot be captured in a simile, only hinted at.
It is bright; it is dynamic in 
its shining. All well and good. But then comes the seeing, the deep
seeing. “It gathers to a greatness, like
the ooze of oil crushed.” What an
amazing line. Read, mark, learn…
* TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: THE COLLECT. Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them: that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our saviour Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
**The are pluses and minuses in having an erudite readership. This post had been mounted for less than two hours when I received an email from Terry Seymour, once an undergraduate of mine and now (among numerous other achievements) one of the worlds leading experts on Samuel Johnson and his circle, suggesting that this painting, purloined for the usual decorative purposes from Google Images, is not of James Boswell but (probably) of Thomas Percy. My feeble reply to this is "Who is Thomas Percy?" But I don't need much research to conclude that he was better looking than Boswell, and since it's still pretty early in the morning, and since only God and Seymour are likely to know the difference, I think I'll leave him there. I also appreciate an email from God relating to other matters touched upon in the essay. But I warmly thank my friend Terry for giving me the opportunity of a little glad if embarrassed learning.
