#Great Sermon Handicap

[nycreligion]

102 years ago, hilarious "The Great Sermon Handicap" published in NYC

In 1922, Cosmopolitan magazine published English humourist P.G. Wodehouse’s take-down of the fluffy sermons of the Anglican Church. Entitled “The Great Sermon Handicap,” the satire features a scheme by his friend Bingo Little to score a big bet on which vicar in the summer retreat area of the Cotswalds has the longest sermon. Bingo has launched this scheme so that he can make a sudden show of…

[eirinstiva]

Inside information

I'm so happy with the last letter from my friend Bertie Wooster. His friend Cynthia is engaged, Wooster used his connections to try to win, Bingo has a new failed love on his history and Jeeves won a lot of money.

Maybe Bertie would have a chance to win if he made a plan together with Jeeves, but at least he tried. Butlers, maids and valets have a lot of information that even their bosses with their status can't have. Jeeves would be an amazing spy~

[may-darling]

Bertie: “Revoking my support for straight relationships until further notice. Direct all complaints and haikus at @B.Little”

If Bertie had a twitter he’d be one of those people constantly blathering about “They need to make a grocery store where kids aren’t allowed” and so forth

[sukithebrave]

My Man Jeeves

It hit me the other day as I was reading Wodehouse’s “What Ho!” (A great read BTW, no one write comedy like Wodehouse did), when I stumbled upon the section for the character Jeeves. Great stories in this section, like Jeeves and the Impending Doom, Jeeves and the Song of Songs, and The Great Sermon Handicap, just to name a few.

And I don’t know why it took me this long to realize the connection between Wodehouse’s Jeeves and the Jeeves in SpyxFamily. For those who don’t know, Wodehouse’s Jeeves isn’t a butler, but rather a valet for a man named Bertie Wooster, meaning he is responcible for serving specifically Wooster, rather than a whole household as a Butler tends to do. There was a joke that Jeeves could, “Buttle with the best of them,” but I digress.

We know shockingly little about the Jeeves in SpyxFamily, but of the few times we have? I always got the feeling that he would be important, but his character eluded me for so long that every theory I made was little more than baseless speculation. Now, however? I think his overall plot relevance is determenant on which character in SpyxFamily is the standin for Wooster.

Bertie Wooster is the standard English richman, but not a snob like many others in fiction. He’s the type of guy to cheer you on whenever you tell him about an aspiration of yours, and doesn’t look down on other people’s social standing. While at times naive and quite gullible, he has a heart of gold, and his friendship with Jeeves is downright ICONIC. So who do I think will be the one to be the Wooster SpyxFamily needs? Well, it can ONLY be the one, the only, scion of the Desmond family: Damian Desmond.

Well, to be more specific, a Damian who’s a little bit more mature. Look, we all know that Damian right now has… well flaws. He doesn’t fit the whole “not looking down on other people’s social standing”, with him calling Anya and the rest of the Forgers commeners, but honestly? It’s only a matter of time in that regard. We’ve already seen tremendous character growth from our boy, and it will only go up from here. As for everything else, we know he’s selfless (the bus incident speaks for itself), and he’s really starting to step into Wooster’s shoes. Just wait guys, soon we will have the TRUE best SpyxFamily comedic duo, assuming Damian stops being a lil shit and grows up a little more. But the wait WILL be worth it. And the person who helps him get this level of growth? Well besides for Anya, Jeeves, being a butler/valet in SpyxFamily, will also help ground the young boy and turn him into a young man.

This was a VERY poorly put together analysis but I hope I was able to put everything I wanted to say across in a way people understand. This is my first Tumblr post, which I am sure is obvious. Either way, thank you for reading these blocks of text, I shall now bid you adieu!

[appendingfic]

Okay the combination of Bertie's slang and the gambling terminology is making "The Great Sermon Handicap" unreadable

[wotwotleigh-prime]

Jeeves and Wooster vs. Plum, Part 3

The Purity of the Turf

The third episode of Season 1 is a departure from what came before in a couple of ways. First of all, it’s primarily based on two short stories instead of three: “Indian Summer of an Uncle” and “The Purity of the Turf.” It also takes greater liberties with the source material than either of the previous episodes.

“Indian Summer of an Uncle” was published in 1930, while “The Purity of the Turf” goes back to 1922. I feel like this episode makes a pretty clumsy attempt to link the two stories together—they don’t fit nearly as seamlessly as the previous mashups we’ve seen. Still, there’s a lot of good stuff here. 

The first segment of the show is actually a very faithful adaptation of “Indian Summer of an Uncle.” The differences are subtle, but some of them make a significant difference in the tone of the story. For the most part, it’s little things, like changes in the settings of various scenes. At the beginning of the short story, for example, Uncle George is visiting Bertie at his apartment, but in the show he asks Bertie to come to his club. They also have some more extended business at the Drones with Bertie’s pool game, and we get to meet a couple more of the Drones (most notably Oofy Prosser). Plus, there’s little scene where Bertie finds Jeeves chilling at the pub on his night off, which is kind of neat!  

By far the biggest difference is in the Bertie-Jeeves-Aunt Agatha dynamic, and I think it’s a shame they left some of this stuff out. In the TV version, Bertie tells Aunt Agatha about his failure to bribe Uncle George’s fiancée. Then he meets Jeeves in a subsequent scene, where they come up with the inviting-Aunt-Maudie-over scheme. Originally, these events happened in the same scene.

In the short story version, while Bertie is talking to Aunt Agatha, Jeeves tactfully inserts himself into the conversation by pretending that he thought he’d heard Bertie calling him from the next room. This gives Bertie an opening to ask for Jeeves’s advice—right in front of Aunt Agatha! She’s horrified at the notion of Bertie discussing family business with his servant, but Bertie boldly defies her, bolstered by Jeeves’s calming presence. Aunt Agatha dismisses Jeeves’s scheme and lectures Bertie at length about it after he leaves the room, but Bertie goes ahead with Jeeves’s plan.

(Later, there’s a cute moment when Bertie comments that Jeeves knows “all the family history” when he’s reminding Jeeves about Uncle George’s past fling with the Criterion barmaid. I love these little hints at how familiar they’ve become with each other over the course of the stories.)  

The TV episode also tones down the class friction between Bertie and Jeeves just a little bit, although it’s a fairly subtle difference. In the story, Jeeves seems just a tad sterner in his reproach when Bertie comments on the class differences between Uncle George and Maudie. He also gives a lengthier explanation of why he thinks they’ll be good for each other—it’s actually kind of sweet, and it shows a side of Jeeves we don’t usually see. He seems genuinely to be rooting for George and Maudie, and is not concerned about trying to pretend that this particular scheme was to Bertie’s advantage in some way.

Both the short story and this segment of the episode end with Jeeves suggesting that they pack their bags and get out of town until things blow over with Aunt Agatha, thus providing a convenient segue into the next story.

(As an interesting side note, “Indian Summer of an Uncle” was the last story in which Aunt Agatha actually appeared “on-screen,” so to speak. For the remainder of the books and stories, she was often mentioned, but her role transitioned to that of a shadowy, always-looming threat that never actually manifested on the page. Of course, we’ll see her many more times throughout the show, since it doesn’t follow the same chronology.)

The next part of the episode veers hard away from the source material. “The Purity of the Turf” was originally a direct sequel to “The Great Sermon Handicap,” aka the other story where Bertie and his friends bet on weird shit. This duo of stories took place shortly after the events of “Comrade Bingo,” which would be adapted for an episode in Season 3 of Jeeves and Wooster. It’s quite a leap back in time from “Indian Summer of an Uncle,” which takes place after Bingo has already settled down and married Rosie M. Banks.

Anyway, the only element that the TV adaptation takes from “The Great Sermon Handicap” is the presence of Cynthia Wickhammersley, who was Bingo Little’s love interest du jour in that story. Otherwise, the plot is based almost entirely on “The Purity of the Turf,” in which Cynthia is mentioned but does not appear. The other differences are numerous, so I think I’m just going to do a bulleted list:

That whole business with Lady Wickhammersley banning gambling? Not in the original story at all. As far as I can remember, she doesn’t make an appearance in either “The Great Sermon Handicap” or “The Purity of the Turf.” 

Myrtle and Beryl, Bingo’s two love interests in the TV episode, were made up for the show. Amazingly, he actually does not have a love interest in the short story version of “Purity,” having struck out with Cynthia in “Handicap.” 

Steggles is younger in the short stories. In fact, he’s a classmate of Claude and Eustace who is at Twing studying for his Oxford exams under the tutelage of the local vicar. He’s also in the choir with Harold the Pageboy, and he’s the one who commits the dirty work of slipping the beetle into his robe. 

In the short story, Bingo describes the animal and potato game that’s briefly summarized by Cynthia and one of her sisters in the TV show. He casts Jeeves and Bertie as players in order to aid his explanation, and TBH it sounds like some wildly kinky shit:

“The competitors enter in couples, each couple being assigned an animal cry and a potato. For instance, let’s suppose that you and Jeeves entered. Jeeves would stand at a fixed point holding a potato. You would have your head in a sack, and you would grope about trying to find Jeeves and making a noise like a cat; Jeeves also making a noise like a cat. Other competitors would be making noises like cows and pigs and dogs, and so on, and groping about for their potato-holders, who would also be making noises like cows and pigs and dogs and so on——”

In the short story, Bingo is the one playing golf when Steggles witnesses Harold’s sprinting abilities. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it at all, and Bertie has to point out to him why this is a Bad Thing. In the TV show, Bertie’s the one at the golf game, and Bingo is the one who points out that Steggles might nobble Harold. 

The games they bet on are different. In fact, as far as I can recall, the only ones that are the same are the Mothers’ Sack Race and the Choir Boys’ Handicap. There’s no three-legged couples’ race in the short story, no Mature Gentlemen’s Dash, and no tough gal named Hildy who breaks the strongman game. (I do wonder if Hildy was based on Madeline’s butch friend Hilda from The Mating Season, though.) Bingo doesn’t compete in any games. 

Instead, the pivotal game in the original “Purity” is the Girls’ Egg and Spoon Race. Jeeves fixes the race by bribing all of the girls to finish except for little Prudence Baxter, a “long-priced outsider” on whom he encourages Bertie to place a bet (“They tell me in the village that she carries a beautiful egg, sir.”). He then ‘fesses up to the village vicar, who disqualifies all the kids except for Prudence. There’s an adorable scene in the short story where Prudence befriends Bertie and hangs out with him for a while before the race, which is sadly 100% absent from the TV adaptation. 

Towards the end of the episode, there’s a rather awkward attempt to reconnect with the events of “Indian Summer.” Uncle George and Maudie show up at the village treat, on the run from Aunt Agatha, and ask if Bertie can direct them to the local vicar so that they can quickly get married on the sly. Of course, this is not in the original story, which wasn’t really connected to “Purity” at all.

Whew! Okay, that was a lot. I’m sure I’m probably missing some things, but that’s the gist of it. Feel free to add any major details I’ve overlooked! @cuddyclothes

[noandnooneelse]

@yeah-thats-probably-it: Oh, I should have thought that Thompson would have something written about this! Let this be a lesson in properly surveying secondary literature before starting to write, and thank you for reminding me to go have a look at it! I skipped ahead a few chapters in Thompson’s Wooster proposes, and first thing I notice is I missed some in “Bertie changes his Mind”! Firstly, the reference to Emerson (Jeeves is quoting his essay “Friendship”), and then goes on to quote Kipling (and now, unless I missed something else, that should be the first bit of poetry Jeeves quotes:

‘I’d no idea small girls were such demons.’ ‘More deadly than the male, sir.’

So that obviously throws a bit of a stone into my proposed timeline (also, I’ll go edit the original post to be less confidently wrong, shall I), which means it needs to be moved up by a bit – Jeeves starts to read poetry at least three short stories earlier, by "Bertie changes his Mind" at the latest.

(I will, however, take this as a confirmation of your point that Jeeves is trying to get his crush to like him: In “The Great Sermon Handicap”, Bertie relates that “Some time after this, Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species to leg it, and they duly stampeded.”, which, well, he doesn't quote it at Jeeves. But then he uses it again in "The Spot of Art" - so clearly, he uses it often enough that one might infer that Jeeves would have heard it, and then Jeeves goes on to quote that exact poem back at him. He so badly wants to talk to Bertie about poetry and literature, and it's a tragedy that we didn't get to properly see Bertie and Jeeves debrief Macbeth after Bertie had to take young Thos. to the theatre)

His knowledge of philosphy is more than proven by the same short story, firstly the aforementioned quote, then the fact that he so readily identifies Professor Mainwaring:

‘Author of the well-known series of philosophical treatises, sir,’ I ventured to interject. ‘They have a great vogue, though, if the young lady will pardon my saying so, many of the Professor’s opinions strike me personally as somewhat empirical. Shall I drive on to the school, sir?’

The complete absence of Spinoza is incredibly suspicious now that you've pointed it out. And as much as Jeeves has influenced Bertie, Bertie has definitely influenced him right back (not to just quote Thompson back at you, but that bit in "Much Obliged, Jeeves" where he doesn't quite know how else to phrase "twenty-minute egg" but obviously cannot use the phrase himself...). I absolutely agree with your point about how it would surprise Jeeves's aunt to hear about him reading poetry, specifically because he is usually so formal! (also that bit in Thompson about Jeeves inserting "Sir" in his quotations - it doesn't quite fit with how he's usually speaking, so he has to alter them to better fit with what he thinks is proper.)

But yes, his love for poetry is definitely genuine – he wouldn’t keep going on lengthy deliberations about different poets if it weren’t. I do think that he becomes, particularly in the later books, rather talkative, about pretty much anything he encounters (this is something that keeps getting to me: how much they talk to each other, and how the first thing Bertie does whenever any topic at all comes up is relate Jeeves’s opinion). In “Jeeves in the Offing”, he talks about Jeeves, who told him about the Völkerwanderungen of the middle ages:

‘Oh, I see. That puts a different complexion on the matter. Odd how all these pillars of the home seem to be dashing away on toots these days. It’s like what Jeeves was telling me about the great race movements of the Middle Ages.

Or in Much Obliged, Jeeves, where Jeeves apparently shares his opinion on the daily news with Bertie:

‘I’m all of a twitter. It never occurred to me that when I came here I would be getting into a sort of population explosion.’ ‘Who ever told you about population explosions?’ ‘Jeeves. They are rather a favourite subject of his. He says if something isn’t done pretty soon—’

Jeeves’s iffy political opinions aside, I can’t imagine that that’s something Bertie independently brought up – Jeeves, on the other hand, as we know, reads the newspaper. The most likely explanation in my opinion is that Bertie asks Jeeves, just like he asks him about the weather, what he'd read in the news today, and that this is a usual and natural enough thing for them to talk about that Jeeves has favourite subjects he goes on about.

But yes, absolutely, good point about Miss Moon! Your point about Jeeves not being able to just out and say that he wasn't thinking about poetry yet at that point is incredibly good, and definitely very accurate (he couldn't! He'd think it would be overly familiar, and inappropriate, and he's just quickly moving the conversation along) and god I'm finding it actually quite tragic. This is the one where they are basically settled - they're already so comfortable with each other, but there are still barriers they keep up.

Having had another look at the scene in Jeeves Excerts the Old Cerebellum, I’m not sure he’s preliminarily deflecting from Rosie M. Banks – the sequence of the scene doesn’t lend itself to that interpretation: He offers that information before Bertie even explains the particulars of Bingo’s problem. So while I definitely believe that Jeeves, thinking of his stack of Rosie M. Bankses lying on his bedside table that he’d really like to get back to replaces that with an employer-approved activity, I’m not sure he’d need to prime Bertie into believing he only reads highbrow material – he doesn’t know he’d need to share his knowledge of the Rosie M. Bankses yet.

I absolutely adore your theory that Bertie pretends to have forgotten just so that Jeeves can remind him. This ties in nicely with what Thompson said, about them just stopping to appreciate the language they share. This is obviously part of how they talk to each other, and, as you said, the language they've built together. They just want to talk to each other, and they like each other so much!

@nemo-me-impune: Thank you so much for the background information! It’s good to have confirmation that that’s probably about when the family was away! Thank you also for your clarification regarding improving books – it’d make sense, with everything I’ve read about the british class system at the time, that the notion of what is considered “improving” would be different for different groups of people! (I’ll have to go look that essay up) And you are absolutely right in saying that Bertie referring to his detective novels as improving should be taken with a grain of salt!

About Bertie assuming that Jeeves doesn’t know the sources of the quotations he uses: I absolutely agree that he’d, simply because of how he was raised, would have all sorts of assumptions about Jeeves/someone who wasn’t raised to be a gentleman, but I’m not sure how conscious Bertie is of the assumptions he’d be led to making, and thus how consequently he makes them: There is this bit in “Jeeves in the Offing”:

‘And the margarine. Recalling this last, it’s going to be a strain having to sit and watch him getting outside pounds of best country butter. Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, as he shimmered in to clear the table, ‘you never went to a preparatory school on the south coast of England, did you?’ ‘No, sir, I was privately educated.’ ‘Ah, then you wouldn’t understand.

wherein Bertie is either being deliberately cruel, or completely unthinking. No, his valet did not go to preparatory school. (I’m assuming, btw, that „privately educated“ in this context means private as opposed to in a public school, and not private as in educated at home, by a parent/relative, and not in any kind of school, which is something you may be able to confirm?) But I don’t think that Bertie would ever be deliberately cruel (see also how quick he is to reassure Jeeves that he himself doesn’t mind Uncle George wanting to marry a waitress, it’s simply that he doesn’t want to be in between Uncle George and Aunt Agatha when they fight it out), so I’d assume that he just doesn’t think about what Jeeves would know, or wouldn’t know, or would or wouldn’t have lived. He’s never surprised that Jeeves knows vocabulary he doesn’t know, and he regularly asks Jeeves to remind him of some word or other. As Thompson points out, it’s already in „Jeeves and the Kid Clementina“ that he talks about having „picked up a vocabulary of sorts from Jeeves“. But you are definitely right in that Bertie is always the radical in regards to class divisions.

About Jeeves quoting the poem in the original Scots while Bertie quotes a translation: That actually reminds me a bit of the Kipling-quotation from Bertie changes his Mind: while Bertie quotes the title, Jeeves got a little further into the poem (well, he quotes the fourth verse). Which could also be something indicating that while Bertie is merely familiar with the quotes because he has to be, while Jeeves, as you said, reads for enjoyment.

Here's the thing about how Jeeves, at the beginning of the stories, doesn't quote, and only starts after a certain amount of time. I've been digging around in the Annotations again, and found this:

About this scene:

‘You want time to think, eh?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Take it, Jeeves, take it. You may feel brainier after a night’s sleep. What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?’ ‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, sir.’ ‘Exactly. Well, there you are, then.’

This is the very first time in the entire series that Jeeves is quoting anything. Now, Bertie is usually the one who gets quotes wrong. But But we know that, later on, that's Jeeves' thing, he does that frequently, he regularly monologues about poetry, to the point where Bertie has to ask him to return to the point at hand. But he doesn't do that yet, and here, he's mixing up his quotations - this one isn't by Shakespeare, instead, it's from Edward Young's Night-Thoughts.

So if this is a new thing for him, something he's only just learning, that'd explain it, because he just plain doesn't know. He is, in this scene, just saying the first thing that comes to mind, absolutely panicking, and meanwhile, Bertie is blithely unaware of the crisis he's just caused Jeeves, because of course Jeeves knows everything and is 100% trustworthy

[thatringboy]

Kinda of a Coming Out Rant

For context, my grandparents on my Dad’s side of the family live in a rual valley in Colorado. The town has only ~5,000 people and 2/5 of the population is religious. My Grandparents’ church, the First Baptist Church (FBC), is the largest in the valley with close to 200 members - most of them being elderly and handicapped people. The FBC does many out reach programs to people in poverty and regularly sends groups to third world countries to help deliver supplies and teach children. The FBC also holds a huge Vacation Bible School (VBS) during the summer that I grew up going to. It always has 200 or so kids from the community and this was going to be the first year I could volunteer to help. The FBC was like my second family.

Was.

Two Winters ago, before they renovated the entire campus, I think it was the Sunday after Christmas, we were listening to the Pastor’s sermon when he brought up the Coexist sign

At the time, I still had very limited access to the internet and didn’t know what the symbols meant. The Pastor was always like another Grandfather to me and I cared for him deeply, but thinking back to this memory makes me loose my respect for him.

He started reading out the symbols and he stopped on the “e” - the one with the gender markings. He then proceeded to joke and laugh about “how his nephew things he’s a girl!” and other transphobic comments.

I had no idea was transgenderism was at the time, but I knew him making fun of his niece (the trans nephew) was wrong. Of course, I couldn’t say anything, but I wish I had. I haven’t heard anything new about the niece and I hope she is doing well.

It only occurred to me during last summer - the last time I was at the town - just how homophobic and transphobic they were. I was only there for a week last year and another kid my age had cyan colored hair. He was completely straight, but simply because he had colored hair - the pastor’s daughters (who ran the Youth Group meetings) conveniently forgot about him during activities. It was total bullshit!

Flash foward to the 2019 Christmas and my grandparents drove down from Colorado to Texas to spend the Holidays with us. They’re actually on their way down for the Summer as I’m typing this, but that’s off topic.

The Holidays are going great - I was pretending to be cis, I had started rereading the Percy Jackson books and everything was really merry until my parents called me downstairs the night my grandparents had to return to Colorado. They sat me down in the kitchenette - all four adults - and proceeded to ask me questions about my faith in Jesus and why I felt the “need to want to be a boy”.

I was appalled! My own parents had outed me to my grandparents! I didn’t want to come out to them until after I had started my transition!

And to this day, whenever my dad gets onto me for not being trust worthy and hiding things from him, I think of this.

My grandparents legitimately think that I am dammed and will go to hell for “wanting to be a boy”.

I didn’t think it could get any worse until earlier today when I was doing the dishes. I started thinking about how I’d be stuck with my grandparents for a while this up coming week, which isn’t a bad thing! I love them and their 50th anniversary is coming up! I’m just pissed at my parents for telling them that I’m trans.

And then I remembered the FBC of their town.

My grandfather is a Deacon at the FBC and does the morning prayers on Sundays. Many people share prayer requests about family members to the congregation and they all pray about it together.

I realized that there is a good chance that my grandparents also outed me to their church, my use-to-be home away from home. Am I anxious about that thought? Extremely so. A little nauseous actually.

Even though my grandparents mean well and love me with the bottom of their hearts, my beloved secret is no longer mine to share.

I’ve never had the chance of coming out to my immediate family because my parents check all of my electronics on a regular basis and give me privacy “only when I’ve earned it”, so my fricking youtube algorithm outed me. I was really looking forward to one day going to my grandparents in my early 20′s - already on testosterone - and proudly say:

“Nane, Papa, I am your grandson, Percy.”

But I don’t get to do that anymore.

Coming out is scary and hard and can change a person’s life. I don’t get the chance to come out and it hurts. It hurts more than the dysphoria I get when on my period. I’ve been betrayed and my trust in my parents is gone. It has been gone for a while and they don’t even know it.

So to all of you who know someone who is LGBTQIA+ who trusted you with the knowledge of their gender/sexuality, listen up:

Please don’t out them.

Please.

Even if it means having to misgender them in public and you later calling to apologize, don’t out them before they’re ready.

Put in the effort to keep your loved ones safe.

Think before you speak. Think before you post. Think before you out someone.

We all just wanna Coexist.

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc II: Watt Outta Hell (12)

Chapter 12: We Meet Underworld Justice. Meaty, Crispy Underworld Justice

           One of the nice things about the First Circle is that since it’s for lesser sinners, they don’t punish you nearly as bad as they would in some of the other places. Take the poles F-Bomb and I found ourselves tied to, for instance. They had adjustable seating and a massage option, which I eagerly took advantage of. Real nice, considering the hall of condemnation we now found ourselves in looked like every heavy metal album cover ever made. But the weirdest thing of all was it reminded me of church, somehow. The whole place was just a very long , dark, edgy hallway covered in stained (though with what, I never found out) glass windows with a pulpit at the very end. Raposa settled her rear into this pulpit, while F-Bomb and I were put down in front of it, a pair of sinners put down before the Lord. Behind us, rows upon rows of underworld denizens were crying for our blood in every tongue imaginable. Though if our punishment was church, I did have one advantage: Miss Princess couldn’t make this place duller than Father McAllister’s sermons if she tried (thanks to that guy, I know more about cubits then I will ever care -or need- to know).

           Unfortunately, it was special moments when the luck of the Tostigs tended to bail on me, and being tied to a stake in front of a pulpit, with a grape juice swilling devil princess looking into your soul was one of them.

Having sucked the last ounce of delicious liquid from her sippy pouch, she raised the thing as if to make a toast, somehow hushing up everyone in the hall.

“Alright losers, listen up! These horrible souls have committed one of the greatest sins of the zeroth circle: Parking in the handicapped space without actually being handicapped!”

Once more, the crowd booed us.

“But believe it or not, I’m feeling generous today, so I’m gonna let these NERDS pick their own poison!” She turned to us (though more to me, since F-Bomb was still moping over sailor Woon’s betrayal) “Listen, kid, you have two options, you can either have the usual punishment we give people like you-“

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Pulling out your bones, pulverizing them in a blender, and feeding them to the homeless as protein shakes.”

I don’t know what my expression was at the time, but whatever it was, it made the Hell Princess smirk, revealing her rows of serrated teeth.

“Or, you can get a surprise punishment, as suggested by our live studio audience!” She gestured to the crowd, who proceeded to roar with applause.

I turned to my friend, hoping for guidance.

F-Bomb sighed “Just go for the forkin’ surprise. Half those forkin’ ballots are usually just plain forkin’  ‘torture’ ‘cause nobody here knows how to be forkin’ origional, anyway.”

I nodded in agreement “Yeah. Surprise us.”

“In that case… Stensa, bring me the SKULL OF HORRIFICALLY UNSPEAKABLE CONDEMNATION OF ETERNAL DARKNESS!!!!”

The crowd roared as really bad wedding music began playing, followed by a devil that looked like a very ugly, hairless dog sauntering down the aisle with a skull in its paws. At least, I assumed they were paws. They looked like they’d been sharpened until they were pointy hand-spikes. When he reached the pulpit, I saw the head of the skull had been hollowed out, its’ noggin filled with folded pieces of paper. Raposa reached into this fishing her hand around in a way that reminded me all too much of the times Grandpa took me to bingo night.

“And the punishment is…” The music mercifully stopped, replaced by a drumroll that made my heart race.  

Silence. Raposa squinted at the paper, trying to read it.

“W-Were-“

“Werebacon.” The creature that called itself Stensa replied “It says Werebacon. Sorry the handwriting’s bad, but it’s kinda hard to do when you’ve only got stumps.” He showed them off.

For a brief moment, the crowd was no longer on F-Bomb, now staring down the helpless little devil.

“Stensa,” Raposa called, gesturing with a finger “Come here please.”

Shaking, the pathetic dog-thing stepped up to the podium. “Yes, your Unholiness- accckkk!”

The crowd watched in awe as Raposa chocked the demon using only a single hand. Some even took out their cameras to commemorate the event (or just get a spot on ‘Underworld’s Funniest Home Videos’).

“Stensaaa…,” Raposa began, her voice sounding way too much like A-Hole for it to be anything good “What did I tell you about putting joke requests in the SKULL OF HORRIFICALLY UNSPEAKABLE CONDEMNATION OF ETERNAL DARKNESS!!!???”

Stensa tried to eke out an answer, but by that point his eyes had rolled back so far I could see where they attached to the skull.

Then Raposa’s face changed. It became all sharp and pointed, like it was made of glass shards. Poor Larry was being shaken around like a rubber chicken in an earthquake. “You do not put joke answers in the SKULL OF HORRIFICALLY UNSPEAKABLE CONDEMNATION OF ETERNAL DARKNESS! I THOUGHT we went over this already! Also, don’t call me ‘Your Unholiness’ my name is Raposa, you moron!”

With one final snap of what I assumed was Larry’s neck bones, the dread princess tossed his body to the floor so hard it cracked on the tiles. But you want to know what he really crazy part was? Larry got up again, head still dangling limply from his neck, like it was nothing, and said

“I was going to say it wasn’t a joke answer. Werebacon’s a real thing. Bacon bitten by werewolves, I think. They sell it at Wegmart for 2.99 a pound.”

“AND HOW WOULD I KNOW THIS IS TRUE?!” Demanded the Hell Princess.

Larry shrugged “It’s called going to Wegmart? Dumba$$.”

And that’s how we got a fifteen minute recess while Raposa went to check this stuff out. Since everyone went outside, taking bets on whether she would actually find the werebacon or not, that meant it was just F-Bomb and I in the hall. All was quiet, save for the soft rumbling of my stake, which I’d set to ‘massage’.

Then, out of nowhere “Well, now forkin’ what?”

I looked around to see where the voice had come from.

I shrugged, or tried to.  “Well, who knows, if those anime you’ve made me watch has taught me anything, maybe we’ll unlock some secret superpower to save our butts at the last minute.”

F-Bomb smiled a bit at that.

“Well, at least you’ve been learning, Watter-chan.”

“And as a matter of fact, I think I feel a new power coming in…NOW!”

A great force surged through me before coming out as a weak toot from my behind.

Just like that, F-Bomb got all sullen again.

“Whelp. We are FORKED.”

“But you can bet your toe claws we aren’t going down without a fight!”

.   .   .

As if on cue, in walked Raposa and her posse of subjects. In her hand she carried a reusable shopping bag made of flayed human skin.

“Hey guys, guess who just brought home the bacon?!”

“Uhh…you did?”

The Hell Princess smiled at me, flashing her serrated teeth. “If that was you trying to be funny, then you failed miserably and you should feel bad.” She took out the the demonic delicacy. “Now, prepare to DIE!”

“But we’re already-“

“It’s an expression, nerd! And just for that, prepare to ULTRA die!”

“What’s that even-“

“Turd,” F-Bomb hissed “please just shut the fork up for one forkin’ second. I’m not exactly in the mood to get SUPER MEGA ULTRA killed.”

           From there, Raposa and company wasted no time. With the press of a button the whole place rumbled, the ground beneath F-Bomb and I sinking lower and lower until we were stuck in the bottom of a funnel-like pit, kind of like the ones where Romans fed their prisoners to lions. On the rim of the pit, glareing down at us fierce, the crowd was going crazy, chanting “EAT THEM! EAT THEM! EAT THEM!” while punk rock with a lot of brass in it blared loud enough to make my ears explode. For some reason, this reminded me of the time my parents took me roller skating. Maybe it was the flashing strobe lights.

           Moments later Raposa stood on the edge of the pit, wearing a black and white referee shirt and carrying a microphone in one hand. “Hellspawn and gentledemons!” She clamored, her voice so loud even at the bottom of the lit I could hear it clearly. “Are you itching for a fight?”

She paused, just long enough for the crowd to holler their all too enthusiastic response.

“’Cause boy do we have about tonight! On the left side of the arena we have the dastardly duo, the irredeemable of irredeemables, Mr. WEENIE AND WEENIE HUT JR!”

Cue the crowd booing and throwing Dora the Explorer DVD box sets at our heads.

“And on the other side, the greatest breakfast meat in this underworld, this continent, I daresay even this universe… WEREBAAAACCCCOOOONNNNN!”

She threw it, still in the package, into the pit, where it hit the ground with a hearty SLAP!

The crowd, as expected, went so nuts they literally started turning into peanuts, which the other demons tore apart and began eating. Despite having not eaten in a few days, I wasn’t really jealous of them. If communion at church taught me anything, it was that drinking a guy’s blood and eating his flesh was a very overrated experience.

“Hey!” I screamed, trying to buy us time “C-couldn’t you at least cook it first? I don’t want to die by raw bacon!”

Amazingly, Raposa somehow heard me over everything else that was going on. “Oh, we’ll cook it alright… in unhallowed moonlight!”

           A disco ball the size of the Hell Princess’ ego was lowered into the arena, its’ sparling light nearly blinding me. Slowly, but them more quickly, I could see the bacon begin to change. Something on the inside pushed and shoved against its’ plastic prison, struggling to get out, like a bag of popcorn in the microwave. And if microwave popcorn has taught me anything, it’s that once the package explodes, things go downhill fast. (Then again, this was at a time when I thought you didn’t take popcorn bags out of the plastic before microwaving them.)

“Couldn’t you at least untie us?!” I pleaded, giving my best puppy dog eyes.

“Suck it, NERD!”

And wouldn’t you know it, that was it! You see, I’ve always been a twig my whole life, and with the competition and being cast in the woods and all, I didn’t exactly have the time to eat stuff. So all it took was one suck of my guts and I slipped out of my ropes. Followed up with a slash of the old toe claws,  F-Bomb was free, too. Meanwhile, the package had swollen  tall as I was and still the werebacon couldn’t escape.

“Oh, screw it!” Hollered Raposa. With one well-placed toss, a pair of the sharpest scissors I’ve ever seen sliced right through the plastic packaging, sticking in the Earth with a Tong! From there, the werebacon burst out, looking furry and crispy and horribly overcooked.

“So, uh, any ideas?” I asked F-Bomb.

“Well, we could always run for our lives.”

I shrugged. It was as good an idea as any.

[ucnk]

A Peep Into English Poetry

Poetry of John Dunne and Milton

The period from John Dunne to Milton spans just half a century. Both poets are considered among the foremost English poets and have an assured place in the history of English literature. John Donne lived from1572 - 1631, while Milton lived from 1608-1674. For some time the life of both poets overlapped. Both poets have made a mark in English literature. Milton became famous earlier and the value of John Donne as a poet was recognized much later. In fact a good 200 years later.

John Dunne

John Dunne was a satirist, lawyer and cleric in the Church of England. He is considered one of the foremost exponents of metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical when applied to poetry means poems with love, science, romance and sensuality integrated with man's relationship with God. These poems are lyrical poems containing intense meditations. John Dunne was greatly influenced by the church as such his poetry had a religious bent.

Metaphysical poets

Along with Dunne the other metaphysical poets were George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughn. They had their own distinct styles which was sensual and included love poetry, religious poems and sermons. The Metaphysical poets were overtaken by the romantic poets a century later. Marvell had a connection with John Milton. He was his secretary and once when Milton was jailed during the Restoration; it was Marvell who had him set free after he had petitioned for his release.

The poets Andrew Marvell and George Herbert never published their poems during their life time and their verses were published posthumously.

John Milton

John Milton who lived during the same period was a scholarly man of letters. He was also a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England, led by Oliver Cromwell. His monumental work 'Paradise Lost' puts him in the top bracket of English literature. Milton had the mortification of losing his eyesight towards the end of his life, yet he took it in his stride and there is no remorse or self pity at this handicap being thrust on him.

In contrast to John Dunne and his compatriots, Milton was not a metaphysical poet. Though he lived during the same period his style and themes were of an entirely different genre. Milton concentrated on social issues and religion. In his epic 'Paradise Lost' Milton's goal was to justify the ways of God. His primary aim was to explain the ways of God to man.

Milton achieved international recognition during his lifetime. During this period he wrote 'Areopagitica' a condemnation of pre-publication censorship. Milton was an erudite man and wrote in English, Latin and Italian.

Milton and Dunne's interpretation of Mans Relationship with God.

Milton and Dunne are studies in contrast. Milton in 'Paradise Lost' recounts the fall of man in the Genesis. He relates graphic conversations of Adam and Eve with God. He describes the demons and their exile to Hell. Donne on the other hand in 'Holy Sonnet XIV' creates an entirely different scenario. He illustrates man's utter dependence on God. John Dunne was highly religious and his poetry brings out the rationality and beauty of faith in God.

Both the poets thus wrote poetry touching two different aspects of man's relationship with god. The fact is that both poets had god as a central theme, though they interpreted man's relations with the almighty differently.

Milton and Politics

Milton was aware of John Donne. He travelled every day from school to home and crossed St Paul's. In all probability he listened to the sermons put on during this time by John Donne. Milton's poetry had a different approach from Donne and the Metaphysical poets. He was more alive to the political scenario of that period.

England was in turmoil with Cromwell and Milton sided with him. Cromwell is a towering figure in English history and at that time he was all powerful. That may have rubbed off on Milton, as he sided with Cromwell. John Donne was not that politically inclined, influenced as he was more by the church.

Last Word

Poetry of both poets Dunne and Milton is a treasure. The short period saw other poets emerge during the time of these two poets. Nothing however matches the luminosity of these two. Both poets made the English language richer and now almost 400 years later we can appreciate the greatness of these two poets.

[gritandgrace40]

TEND YOUR GARDEN

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Quiet time as a tool.

By: Emily Miller

For the past few months, my family has been house hunting. It’s a seller’s market here in Florida (and most of the US), so every time a house made an appearance on Zillow, we would make an appearance at that house.

One of the first homes we saw had half an acre of beautifully landscaped gardens and lawn. I rarely allow myself to get attached to something until I examine it from all angles, but, at the sight of those gardens, I was very attached. (There was even a gasp and some tears involved.)

After the first love faded a bit, my pragmatic side reasserted itself and I pondered the reality of the time, effort, and tools required to keep such a garden lovely. I didn’t need to imagine much because, on that same property, there was a large shed devoted to a couple mowers, trimmers, edgers, wheelbarrows, shears, and an assortment of other gardening items. I concluded that, if we were to live there, our evenings and weekends would be spent landscaping.

We did not get the house (though we tried) but that garden left an impression on me.

I think my soul is like a garden. It’s a wild thing, constantly growing and changing. When left to itself, it rambles past its proper boundaries, chokes itself with weeds, and becomes littered with treacherous and barren places. When well-tended, it submissively thrives in its place, free of unhealthy growths; a beautiful refuge.

Souls -like gardens- take time, effort, and the proper tools. Thankfully, we don’t tend our souls alone.

When we believed in Christ, we went from being a forsaken wasteland to a new creation, filled with the blood-bought life of Jesus. (2 Corinthians 5:17) He’s the source of our life and the great Gardener: planting us in place, providing what we need, and pruning us to make us more and more life-giving. (John 15:1-8)

He also gives us a role in tending our own soul. He strengthens those who seek Him (2 Chronicles 16:19), He calls us to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23), and He transforms us as we obediently renew our minds with His word (Romans 12:2). He supplies the life, and we participate in the gardening.

God also provides us with the tools we need to nourish and tame our souls. These tools are as numerous and varying as those in that garden shed: The Bible, Christian community, devotionals, blogs, the Quiet Time Companion, prayer, fasting, worship, giving, memorizing, and a daily quiet time are all available to aid us in this task.

Unfortunately we can easily value the tools for themselves, instead of using them for their intended purpose. Like an enthusiastic collector with an impressive shed and a neglected garden, we amass seminary, books, journals, sermons, and devotionals. We can show off our knowledge and neglect our godliness. We can buy stacks of Bibles that we never read. We can get a degree in theology and never become like Jesus. When we value tools for their own sake, their whole point is lost.

My neighbor is an expert gardener. With discarded sticks he builds glorious trellises, brimming with squash and exotic fruits. He has no shed and few tools, but his backyard overflows with life resulting from the hours of effort he gives to it daily. He is skilled in using what he has and committed to his task, and so his garden flourishes.

Tools are only as good as the time, effort, and consistency with which we use them. This is good news! This means that the Bible is for the illiterate who cherish what they hear, and not just seminary students. This means that the mentally handicapped soul who loves Jesus knows Him better than the apathetic theologian. This means that if you’re applying the little you know of the Gospel to your life, your soul is better tended than those who have memorized scripture and don’t live it out.

The purpose of daily time spent reading the Bible is to weed out our sin, water our souls with life-giving truth, and root ourselves more firmly in the great love of Jesus. When we do this in participation with and reliance upon the Holy Spirit, He transforms our sin-filled desert into a life-giving garden.

A quiet time is a tool, not an achievement to show off. Studying the Bible is not a new year’s resolution that we buy stuff for and then neglect. Devotion to God is the goal; not devotions for devotions sake.

[nycreligion]

102 years ago, hilarious "The Great Sermon Handicap" published in NYC

In 1922, Cosmopolitan magazine published English humourist P.G. Wodehouse’s take-down of the fluffy sermons of the Anglican Church. Entitled “The Great Sermon Handicap,” the satire features a scheme by his friend Bingo Little to score a big bet on which vicar in the summer retreat area of the Cotswalds has the longest sermon. Bingo has launched this scheme so that he can make a sudden show of…

[eirinstiva]

Perfect storm

Letter!!! Bertie Wooster sent a letter and I'm already scared because maybe Bingo Little will be here~ Brace yourself, this can get rummy...

Claude and Eustace are so dangerous together, I like that, the image of them doing stupid things like in the manga Please, Jeeves (by Morimura Tamaki and Katsuta Bun) lives rent free in my heart.

I handed this to Jeeves. He studied it thoughtfully. “What do you make of it? A rummy communication, what?” “Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir, Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace. Up to some game, I should be disposed to imagine.” “Yes. But what game, do you think?” “It is impossible to say, sir. Did you observe that the letter continues over the page?” “Eh, what?”

Jeeves has Kowalski vibes~

Great pals we’ve always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she’s the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and whatnot.

Bertie has a girl friend, a friend who is a girl, a friend called Cynthia~ that's cute. I really like to read about friendship between people of different gender.

“Young Bingo Little. Great pal of mine. He’s tutoring your brother, you know.” “Good gracious! Is he a friend of yours?” “Rather! Known him all my life.” “Then tell me, Bertie, is he at all weak in the head?” “Weak in the head?” “I don’t mean simply because he’s a friend of yours. But he’s so strange in his manner.”

Well, Cynthia has an opinion™ of Bertie and his friends, but there's a chemistry between them like ex lovers turned into friends, or that weird relationship that some people have this their first boyfriend/girlfriend/idon'tknow that can be so cute and weird at the same time. I love that kind of relationship. Platonic? Maybe, I can't find the words right now.

“Well, you might have let your pals know where you were.” He frowned darkly. “I didn’t want them to know where I was. I wanted to creep away and hide myself. I’ve been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine⁠—”

Bingo is heartbroken and Bertie can't sense that. Read the room, dear Bertie~ but Bingo falls in love so easily that it's not a surprise that he fell in love with Cynthia. The surprise factor is the poetry:

“When Cynthia smiles,” said young Bingo, “the skies are blue; the world takes on a roseate hue: birds in the garden trill and sing, and Joy is king of everything, when Cynthia smiles.” He coughed, changing gears. “When Cynthia frowns⁠—” “What the devil are you talking about?” “I’m reading you my poem. The one I wrote to Cynthia last night. I’ll go on, shall I?”

Let this poor man have his morning tea!

Claude and Eustace are troublemakers with brilliant minds, but instead of to use those brains in solving problems like Jeeves, they try to earn money in a easy way. They could start their own multi-level marketing, Ponzi scheme, or even become gentlemen thieves like Raffles and Bunny (but with two Raffles and no Bunny... unless Bertie is Bunny... anyway~)

“I say, old man,” I couldn’t help saying, “aren’t you looking ahead rather far?” “Oh, that’s all right. It’s true nothing’s actually settled yet, but she practically told me the other day she was fond of me.” “What!” “Well, she said that the sort of man she liked was the self-reliant, manly man with strength, good looks, character, ambition, and initiative.” “Leave me, laddie,” I said. “Leave me to my fried egg.”

So we have a possible romance between Bingo and Cynthia, some plan of the mischievous twins, and Jeeves is interested in this deal... Is this the recipe for a perfect storm? Let's see in the next letter. Pip-pip!

[isfjmel-phleg]

The Great Sermon Handicap

Merry Christmas!

The following annotated story has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas but has the virtue of being the next chronological story and already annotated and ready to go (this trip home has afforded nearly no alone time so far to work on annotations, sorry). For some stories that do take place at Christmas, you can also read “The Metropolitan Touch” and “Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit” (annotations only, text in Very Good, Jeeves).

[The Strand, June 1922; Cosmopolitan, June 1922][1]

You can always rely on Jeeves. Just as I was wiping the brow and gasping like a stranded goldfish, in he drifted, merry and bright, with the good old tissue-restorers on a tray.[2]

“Jeeves,” I said,[3] “it’s beastly hot.”

“The weather is oppressive, sir.”

“Not all the soda, Jeeves.”

“No, sir.”

“London in August,” I said, quaffing deeply of the flowing b.,[4] “rather tends to give me the pip. All my pals are away, most of the theatres are shut, and they’re taking up Piccadilly in large spadefuls. The world is empty and smells of burning asphalt.[5] Shift-ho, I think, Jeeves, what?”

“Just as you say, sir. There is a letter on the tray, sir.”

“By Jove, Jeeves, that was practically poetry. Rhymed, did you notice?” I opened the letter. “I say, this is rather extraordinary.”

“Sir?”

“You know Twing Hall?”[6]

“Yes, sir.”[7]

“Well, Mr. Little is there.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Absolutely in the flesh. He’s had to take another of those tutoring jobs.”

I don’t know if you remember, but immediately[8] after that fearful mix-up at Goodwood,[9] young Bingo Little, a broken man, had touched me for a tenner[10] and whizzed silently off into the unknown. I had been all over the place ever since, asking mutual friends if they had heard anything of him,[11] but nobody had. And all the time he had been at Twing Hall. Rummy. And I’ll tell you why it was rummy. Twing Hall belongs to old Lord Wickhammersley, a great pal of my guv’nor’s when he was alive,[12] and I have a standing invitation to pop down there when I like. I generally put in a week or two some time in the summer, and I was thinking of going there before I read the letter.

“And, what’s more, Jeeves, my cousin Claude, and my cousin Eustace—you remember them?”

“Very vividly, sir.”

“Well, they’re down there, too, reading for some exam. or other with the vicar. I used to read with him myself at one time. He’s known far and wide as a pretty hot coach for those of fairly feeble intellect.[13] Well, when I tell you he got me through Smalls,[14] you’ll gather that he’s a bit of a hummer.[15] I call this most extraordinary.”

I read the letter again. It was from Eustace. Claude and Eustace are twins, and more or less generally admitted to be the curse of the human race.

“The Vicarage,          “Twing, Glos.[16][17]    

“Dear Bertie,—Do you want to make a bit of money? I hear you had a bad Goodwood, so you probably do. Well, come down here quick and get in on the biggest sporting event of the season. I’ll explain when I see you, but you can take it from me it’s all right.

“Claude and I are with a reading-party[18] at old Heppenstall’s. There are nine of us, not counting your pal Bingo Little, who is tutoring the kid up at the Hall.

“Don’t miss this golden opportunity, which may never occur again. Come and join us.

“Yours,                “Eustace.”    

I handed this to Jeeves. He studied it thoughtfully.

“What do you make of it? A rummy communication, what?”

“Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir, Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace. Up to some game, I should be disposed to imagine.”

“Yes. But what game, do you think?”

“It is impossible to say, sir. Did you observe that the letter continues over the page?”

“Eh, what?” I grabbed the thing. This was what was on the other side of the last page:—

 SERMON HANDICAP RUNNERS AND BETTING PROBABLE STARTERS.

Rev. Joseph Tucker (Badgwick), scratch. Rev. Leonard Starkie (Stapleton), scratch. Rev. Alexander Jones (Upper Bingley), receives three minutes. Rev. W. Dix (Little Clickton-in-the-Wold), receives five minutes. Rev. Francis Heppenstall (Twing), receives eight minutes. Rev. Cuthbert Dibble (Boustead Parva), receives nine minutes. Rev. Orlo Hough (Boustead Magna), receives nine minutes. Rev. J. J. Roberts (Fale-by-the-Water), receives ten minutes. Rev. G. Hayward (Lower Bingley), receives twelve minutes. Rev. James Bates (Gandle-by-the-Hill),[19] receives fifteen minutes.

(The above have arrived.)

Prices.—5–2, Tucker, Starkie; 3–1, Jones; 9–2 Dix; 6–1, Heppenstall, Dibble, Hough; 100–8 any other.

 It baffled me.

“Do you understand it, Jeeves?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I think we ought to have a look into it, anyway, what?”

“Undoubtedly, sir.”

“Right-o, then. Pack our spare dickey[20] and a toothbrush in a neat brown-paper parcel, send a wire to Lord Wickhammersley to say we’re coming, and buy two tickets on the five-ten at Paddington[21] to-morrow.”

 The five-ten was late as usual, and everybody was dressing for dinner when I arrived at the Hall. It was only by getting into my evening things in record time and taking the stairs to the dining-room in a couple of bounds that I managed to dead-heat with the soup.[22] I slid into the vacant chair, and found that I was sitting next to old Wickhammersley’s youngest daughter, Cynthia.

“Oh, hallo, old thing,” I said.

Great pals we’ve always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she’s the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I’ve heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we’re just pals.[23] I think she’s a topper,[24] and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything’s nice and matey.[25]

“Well, Bertie, so you’ve arrived?”

“Oh, yes, I’ve arrived. Yes, here I am. I say, I seem to have plunged into the middle of quite a young dinner-party. Who are all these coves?”[26]

“Oh, just people from round about. You know most of them. You remember Colonel Willis, and the Spencers——”

“Of course, yes. And there’s old Heppenstall. Who’s the other clergyman next to Mrs. Spencer?”

“Mr. Hayward, from Lower Bingley.”

“What an amazing lot of clergymen there are round here. Why, there’s another, next to Mrs. Willis.”

“That’s Mr. Bates, Mr. Heppenstall’s nephew. He’s an assistant-master[27] at Eton. He’s down here during the summer holidays, acting as locum tenens[28] for Mr. Spettigue, the rector[29] of Gandle-by-the-Hill.”

“I thought I knew his face. He was in his fourth year at Oxford when I was a fresher.[30] Rather a blood.[31] Got his rowing-blue[32] and all that.” I took another look round the table, and spotted young Bingo. “Ah, there he is,” I said. “There’s the old egg.”

“There’s who?”

“Young Bingo Little. Great pal of mine. He’s tutoring your brother, you know.”

“Good gracious! Is he a friend of yours?”

“Rather! Known him all my life.”

“Then tell me, Bertie, is he at all weak in the head?”

“Weak in the head?”

“I don’t mean simply because he’s a friend of yours. But he’s so strange in his manner.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he keeps looking at me so oddly.”

“Oddly? How? Give an imitation.”

“I can’t in front of all these people.”

“Yes, you can. I’ll hold my napkin up.”

“All right, then. Quick. There!”

Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognized the symptoms immediately.

“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “No need to be alarmed. He’s simply in love with you.”

“In love with me? Don’t be absurd.”

“My dear old thing, you don’t know young Bingo. He can fall in love with anybody.”

“Thank you!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, you know. I don’t wonder at his taking to you. Why, I was in love with you myself once.”

“Once? Ah! And all that remains now are the cold ashes? This isn’t one of your tactful evenings, Bertie.”

“Well, my dear sweet thing, dash it all, considering that you gave me the bird[33] and nearly laughed yourself into a permanent state of hiccoughs when I asked you——”

“Oh, I’m not reproaching you. No doubt there were faults on both sides. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?”

“Good-looking? Bingo? Bingo good-looking? No, I say, come now, really!”

“I mean, compared with some people,” said Cynthia.

Some time after this, Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species[34] to leg it, and they duly stampeded.[35] I didn’t get a chance of talking to young Bingo when they’d gone, and later, in the drawing-room,[36] he didn’t show up. I found him eventually in his room, lying on the bed with his feet on the rail, smoking a toofah.[37] There was a notebook on the counterpane beside him.

“Hallo, old scream,” I said.

“Hallo, Bertie,” he replied, in what seemed to me rather a moody, distrait sort of manner.

“Rummy finding you down here. I take it your uncle cut off your allowance after that Goodwood binge and you had to take this tutoring job to keep the wolf from the door?”[38]

“Correct,” said young Bingo, tersely.

“Well, you might have let your pals know where you were.”

He frowned darkly.

“I didn’t want them to know where I was. I wanted to creep away and hide myself. I’ve been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine——”

“That’s curious. We’ve had gorgeous weather in London.”

“The birds ceased to sing——”

“What birds?”

“What the devil does it matter what birds?” said young Bingo, with some asperity. “Any birds. The birds round about here. You don’t expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard.”

“What hit you?” I simply couldn’t follow the blighter.

“Charlotte’s calculated callousness.”

“Oh, ah!” I’ve seen poor old Bingo through so many unsuccessful love-affairs that I’d almost forgotten there was a girl mixed up with that Goodwood business. Of course! Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. And she had given him the raspberry, I remembered now, and gone off with Comrade Butt.[39]

“I went through torments. Recently, however, I’ve—er—bucked up a bit. Tell me, Bertie, what are you doing down here? I didn’t know you knew these people.”

“Me? Why, I’ve known them since I was a kid.”

Young Bingo put his feet down with a thud.

“Do you mean to say you’ve known Lady Cynthia all that time?”

“Rather! She can’t have been seven when I met her first.”

“Good Lord!”[40] said young Bingo. He looked at me for the first time as though I amounted to something, and swallowed a mouthful of smoke the wrong way. “I love that girl, Bertie,” he went on, when he’d finished coughing.

“Yes? Nice girl, of course.”

He eyed me with pretty deep loathing.

“Don’t speak of her in that horrible casual way. She’s an angel. An angel! Was she talking about me at all at dinner, Bertie?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What did she say?”

“I remember one thing. She said she thought you good-looking.”

Young Bingo closed his eyes in a sort of ecstasy. Then he picked up the notebook.

“Pop off now, old man, there’s a good chap,” he said, in a hushed, far-away voice. “I’ve got a bit of writing to do.”

“Writing?”

“Poetry, if you must know. I wish the dickens,” said young Bingo, not without some bitterness, “she had been christened something except Cynthia. There isn’t a dam’ word in the language it rhymes with. Ye gods, how I could have spread myself if she had only been called Jane!”

 Bright and early next morning, as I lay in bed blinking at the sunlight on the dressing-table and wondering when Jeeves was going to show up with the cup of tea,[41] a heavy weight descended on my toes, and the voice of young Bingo polluted the air. The blighter had apparently risen with the lark.

“Leave me,” I said, “I would be alone. I can’t see anybody till I’ve had my tea.”

“When Cynthia smiles,” said young Bingo, “the skies are blue; the world takes on a roseate hue: birds in the garden trill and sing, and Joy is king of everything, when Cynthia smiles.” He coughed, changing gears. “When Cynthia frowns——”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“I’m reading you my poem. The one I wrote to Cynthia last night. I’ll go on, shall I?”

“No!”

“No?”

“No. I haven’t had my tea.” At this moment Jeeves came in with the good old beverage, and I sprang on it with a glad cry. After a couple of sips things looked a bit brighter. Even young Bingo didn’t offend the eye to quite such an extent. By the time I’d finished the first cup I was a new man, so much so that I not only permitted but encouraged the poor fish to read the rest of the bally thing, and even went so far as to criticize the scansion[42] of the fourth line of the fifth verse. We were still arguing the point when the door burst open and in blew Claude and Eustace. One of the things which discourage me about rural life is the frightful earliness with which events begin to break loose. I’ve stayed at places in the country where they’ve jerked me out of the dreamless at about six-thirty to go for a jolly swim in the lake. At Twing, thank heaven, they know me, and let me breakfast in bed.[43]

The twins seemed pleased to see me.

“Good old Bertie!” said Claude.

“Stout fellow!” said Eustace. “The Rev. told us you had arrived. I thought that letter of mine would fetch you.”

“You can always bank on Bertie,” said Claude. “A sportsman to the finger-tips. Well, has Bingo told you about it?”

“Not a word. He’s been——”

“We’ve been talking,” said Bingo, hastily, “of other matters.”

Claude pinched the last slice of thin bread-and-butter, and Eustace poured himself out a cup of tea.

“It’s like this, Bertie,” said Eustace, settling down cosily. “As I told you in my letter, there are nine of us marooned in this desert spot, reading with old Heppenstall. Well, of course, nothing is jollier than sweating up the Classics[44] when it’s a hundred in the shade, but there does come a time when you begin to feel the need of a little relaxation; and, by Jove, there are absolutely no facilities for relaxation in this place whatever. And then Steggles got this idea. Steggles is one of our reading-party, and, between ourselves, rather a worm as a general thing. Still, you have to give him credit for getting this idea.”

“What idea?”

“Well, you know how many parsons there are round about here. There are about a dozen hamlets within a radius of six miles,[45] and each hamlet has a church and each church has a parson and each parson preaches a sermon every Sunday. To-morrow week—Sunday the twenty-third[46]—we’re running off the great Sermon Handicap. Steggles is making the book. Each parson is to be clocked by a reliable steward of the course, and the one that preaches the longest sermon wins. Did you study the race-card I sent you?”

“I couldn’t understand what it was all about.”

“Why, you chump, it gives the handicaps and the current odds on each starter. I’ve got another one here, in case you’ve lost yours. Take a careful look at it. It gives you the thing in a nutshell. Jeeves, old son, do you want a sporting flutter?”[47]

“Sir?” said Jeeves, who had just meandered in with my breakfast.

Claude explained the scheme. Amazing the way Jeeves grasped it right off.[48] But he merely smiled in a paternal sort of way.

“Thank you, sir, I think not.”

“Well, you’re with us, Bertie, aren’t you?” said Claude, sneaking a roll and a slice of bacon. “Have you studied that card? Well, tell me, does anything strike you about it?”

Of course it did. It had struck me the moment I looked at it.

“Why, it’s a sitter[49] for old Heppenstall,” I said. “He’s got the event sewed up in a parcel. There isn’t a parson in the land who could give him eight minutes. Your pal Steggles must be an ass, giving him a handicap like that. Why, in the days when I was with him, old Heppenstall never used to preach under half an hour, and there was one sermon of his on Brotherly Love which lasted forty-five minutes if it lasted a second. Has he lost his vim lately, or what is it?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Eustace. “Tell him what happened, Claude.”

“Why,” said Claude, “the first Sunday we were here, we all went to Twing church, and old Heppenstall preached a sermon that was well under twenty minutes. This is what happened. Steggles didn’t notice it, and the Rev. didn’t notice it himself, but Eustace and I both spotted that he had dropped a chunk of at least half-a-dozen pages out of his sermon-case as he was walking up to the pulpit. He sort of flickered when he got to the gap in the manuscript, but carried on all right, and Steggles went away with the impression that twenty minutes or a bit under was his usual form. The next Sunday we heard Tucker and Starkie, and they both went well over the thirty-five minutes, so Steggles arranged the handicapping as you see on the card. You must come into this, Bertie. You see, the trouble is that I haven’t a bean, and Eustace hasn’t a bean, and Bingo Little hasn’t a bean, so you’ll have to finance the syndicate. Don’t weaken! It’s just putting money in all our pockets. Well, we’ll have to be getting back now. Think the thing over, and ’phone me later in the day. And, if you let us down, Bertie, may a cousin’s curse[50]—— Come on, Claude, old thing.”

The more I studied the scheme, the better it looked.

“How about it, Jeeves?” I said.

Jeeves smiled gently, and drifted out.

“Jeeves has no sporting blood,” said Bingo.

“Well, I have. I’m coming into this. Claude’s quite right. It’s like finding money by the wayside.”

“Good man!” said Bingo. “Now I can see daylight. Say I have a tenner on Heppenstall, and cop;[51] that’ll give me a bit in hand to back Pink Pill with in the two o’clock at Gatwick[52] the week after next: cop on that, put the pile on Musk-Rat for the one-thirty at Lewes,[53] and there I am with a nice little sum to take to Alexandra Park[54] on September the tenth, when I’ve got a tip straight from the stable.”

It sounded like a bit out of “Smiles’s Self-Help.”[55]

“And then,” said young Bingo, “I’ll be in a position to go to my uncle and beard him in his lair somewhat. He’s quite a bit of a snob, you know, and when he hears that I’m going to marry the daughter of an earl——”

“I say, old man,” I couldn’t help saying, “aren’t you looking ahead rather far?”

“Oh, that’s all right. It’s true nothing’s actually settled yet, but she practically told me the other day she was fond of me.”

“What!”

“Well, she said that the sort of man she liked was the self-reliant, manly man with strength, good looks, character, ambition, and initiative.”

“Leave me, laddie,” I said. “Leave me to my fried egg.”

 Directly I’d got up I went to the ’phone, snatched Eustace away from his morning’s work, and instructed him to put a tenner on the Twing flier[56] at current odds for each of the syndicate; and after lunch Eustace rang me up to say that he had done business at a snappy seven-to-one, the odds having lengthened owing to a rumour in knowledgeable circles that the Rev. was subject to hay-fever, and was taking big chances strolling in the paddock behind the Vicarage in the early mornings. And it was dashed lucky, I thought next day, that we had managed to get the money on in time, for on the Sunday morning old Heppenstall fairly took the bit between his teeth, and gave us thirty-six solid minutes on Certain Popular Superstitions. I was sitting next to Steggles in the pew, and I saw him blench visibly. He was a little, rat-faced fellow, with shifty eyes and a suspicious nature. The first thing he did when we emerged into the open air was to announce, formally, that anyone who fancied the Rev. could now be accommodated at fifteen-to-eight on, and he added, in a rather nasty manner, that if he had his way, this sort of in-and-out running would be brought to the attention of the Jockey Club,[57] but that he supposed that there was nothing to be done about it. This ruinous price checked the punters[58] at once, and there was little money in sight. And so matters stood till just after lunch on Tuesday afternoon, when, as I was strolling up and down in front of the house with a cigarette, Claude and Eustace came bursting up the drive on bicycles, dripping with momentous news.

“Bertie,” said Claude, deeply agitated, “unless we take immediate action and do a bit of quick thinking, we’re in the cart.”

“What’s the matter?”

“G. Hayward’s the matter,” said Eustace, morosely. “The Lower Bingley starter.”

“We never even considered him,” said Claude. “Somehow or other, he got overlooked. It’s always the way. Steggles overlooked him. We all overlooked him. But Eustace and I happened by the merest fluke to be riding through Lower Bingley this morning, and there was a wedding on at the church, and it suddenly struck us that it wouldn’t be a bad move to get a line on G. Hayward’s form, in case he might be a dark horse.”

“And it was jolly lucky we did,” said Eustace. “He delivered an address of twenty-six minutes by Claude’s stop-watch. At a village wedding, mark you! What’ll he do when he really extends himself!”

“There’s only one thing to be done, Bertie,” said Claude. “You must spring some more funds, so that we can hedge on Hayward and save ourselves.”

“But——”

“Well, it’s the only way out.”

“But I say, you know, I hate the idea of all that money we put on Heppenstall being chucked away.”

“What else can you suggest? You don’t suppose the Rev. can give this absolute marvel a handicap and win, do you?”

“I’ve got it!” I said.

“What?”

“I see a way by which we can make it safe for our nominee. I’ll pop over this afternoon, and ask him as a personal favour, to preach that sermon of his on Brotherly Love on Sunday.”

Claude and Eustace looked at each other, like those chappies[59] in the poem, with a wild surmise.[60]

“It’s a scheme,” said Claude.

“A jolly brainy scheme,” said Eustace. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Bertie.”

“But even so,” said Claude, “fizzer as that sermon no doubt is, will it be good enough in the face of a four-minute handicap?”

“Rather!” I said. “When I told you it lasted forty-five minutes, I was probably understating it. I should call it—from my recollection of the thing—nearer fifty.”

“Then carry on,” said Claude.

I toddled over in the evening and fixed the thing up. Old Heppenstall was most decent about the whole affair. He seemed pleased and touched that I should have remembered the sermon all these years, and said he had once or twice had an idea of preaching it again, only it had seemed to him, on reflection, that it was perhaps a trifle long for a rustic congregation.

“And in these restless times, my dear Wooster,” he said, “I fear that brevity in the pulpit is becoming more and more desiderated by even the bucolic churchgoer, who one might have supposed would be less afflicted with the spirit of hurry and impatience than his metropolitan brother. I have had many arguments on the subject with my nephew, young Bates, who is taking my old friend Spettigue’s cure[61] over at Gandle-by-the-Hill. His view is that a sermon nowadays should be a bright, brisk, straight-from-the-shoulder address, never lasting more than ten or twelve minutes.”

“Long?” I said. “Why, my goodness! You don’t call that Brotherly Love sermon of yours long, do you?”

“It takes fully fifty minutes to deliver.”

“Surely not?”

“Your incredulity, my dear Wooster, is extremely flattering—far more flattering, of course, than I deserve. Nevertheless, the facts are as I have stated. You are sure that I would not be well advised to make certain excisions and eliminations? You do not think it would be a good thing to cut, to prune? I might, for example, delete the rather exhaustive excursus into the family life of the early Assyrians?”

“Don’t touch a word of it, or you’ll spoil the whole thing,” I said, earnestly.

“I am delighted to hear you say so, and I shall preach the sermon without fail next Sunday morning.”

 What I have always said, and what I always shall say, is, that this ante-post betting is a mistake, an error, and a mug’s game. You never can tell what’s going to happen. If fellows would only stick to the good old S.P.[62] there would be fewer young men go wrong. I’d hardly finished my breakfast on the Saturday morning, when Jeeves came to my bedside to say that Eustace wanted me on the telephone.

“Good Lord, Jeeves, what’s the matter, do you think?”

I’m bound to say I was beginning to get a bit jumpy by this time.[63]

“Mr. Eustace did not confide in me, sir.”

“Has he got the wind up?”[64]

“Somewhat vertically, sir, to judge by his voice.”

“Do you know what I think, Jeeves? Something’s gone wrong with the favourite.”

“Which is the favourite, sir?”

“Mr. Heppenstall. He’s gone to odds on. He was intending to preach a sermon on Brotherly Love which would have brought him home by lengths. I wonder if anything’s happened to him.”

“You could ascertain, sir, by speaking to Mr. Eustace on the telephone. He is holding the wire.”

“By Jove, yes!”

I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind.[65] The moment I heard Eustace’s voice I knew we were for it. It had a croak of agony in it.

“Bertie?”

“Here I am.”

“Deuce of a time you’ve been.[66] Bertie, we’re sunk. The favourite’s blown up.”

“No!”

“Yes. Coughing in his stable all last night.”

“What!”

“Absolutely! Hay-fever.”

“Oh, my sainted aunt!”

“The doctor is with him now, and it’s only a question of minutes before he’s officially scratched. That means the curate will show up at the post instead, and he’s no good at all. He is being offered at a hundred-to-six, but no takers. What shall we do?”

I had to grapple with the thing for a moment in silence.

“Eustace.”

“Hallo?”[67]

“What can you get on G. Hayward?”

“Only four-to-one now. I think there’s been a leak, and Steggles has heard something. The odds shortened late last night in a significant manner.”

“Well, four-to-one will clear us. Put another fiver all round on G. Hayward for the syndicate. That’ll bring us out on the right side of the ledger.”

“If he wins.”

“What do you mean? I thought you considered him a cert, bar Heppenstall.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Eustace, gloomily, “if there’s such a thing as a cert. in this world. I’m told the Rev. Joseph Tucker did an extraordinarily fine trial gallop at a mothers’ meeting over at Badgwick yesterday. However, it seems our only chance. So-long.”

Not being one of the official stewards, I had my choice of churches next morning, and naturally I didn’t hesitate. The only drawback to going to Lower Bingley was that it was ten miles away, which meant an early start, but I borrowed a bicycle from one of the grooms and tooled off. I had only Eustace’s word for it that G. Hayward was such a stayer,[68] and it might have been that he had showed too flattering form at that wedding where the twins had heard him preach; but any misgivings I may have had disappeared the moment he got into the pulpit. Eustace had been right. The man was a trier. He was a tall, rangy-looking greybeard, and he went off from the start with a nice, easy action, pausing and clearing his throat at the end of each sentence, and it wasn’t five minutes before I realized that here was the winner. His habit of stopping dead and looking round the church at intervals was worth minutes to us, and in the home stretch we gained no little advantage owing to his dropping his pince-nez and having to grope for them. At the twenty-minute mark he had merely settled down. Twenty-five minutes saw him going strong. And when he finally finished with a good burst, the clock showed thirty-five minutes fourteen seconds. With the handicap which he had been given, this seemed to me to make the event easy for him, and it was with much bonhomie and goodwill to all men that I hopped on to the old bike and started back to the Hall for lunch.

Bingo was talking on the ’phone when I arrived.

“Fine! Splendid! Topping!” he was saying. “Eh? Oh, we needn’t worry about him. Right-o, I’ll tell Bertie.” He hung up the receiver and caught sight of me. “Oh, hallo, Bertie; I was just talking to Eustace. It’s all right, old man. The report from Lower Bingley has just got in. G. Hayward romps home.”

“I knew he would. I’ve just come from there.”

“Oh, were you there? I went to Badgwick. Tucker ran a splendid race, but the handicap was too much for him. Starkie had a sore throat and was nowhere. Roberts, of Fale-by-the-Water, ran third. Good old G. Hayward!” said Bingo, affectionately, and we strolled out on to the terrace.

“Are all the returns in, then?” I asked.

“All except Gandle-by-the-Hill. But we needn’t worry about Bates. He never had a chance. By the way, poor old Jeeves loses his tenner. Silly ass!”

“Jeeves? How do you mean?”

“He came to me this morning, just after you had left, and asked me to put a tenner on Bates for him. I told him he was a chump and begged him not to throw his money away, but he would do it.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. This note arrived for you just after you had left the house this morning.”

Jeeves had materialized from nowhere, and was standing at my elbow.

“Eh? What? Note?”

“The Reverend Mr. Heppenstall’s butler brought it over from the Vicarage, sir. It came too late to be delivered to you at the moment.”[69]

Young Bingo was talking to Jeeves like a father on the subject of betting against the form-book. The yell I gave made him bite his tongue in the middle of a sentence.

“What the dickens is the matter?” he asked, not a little peeved.

“We’re dished! Listen to this!”

I read him the note:—

“The Vicarage,         “Twing, Glos.[70]    

“My Dear Wooster,—As you may have heard, circumstances over which I have no control will prevent my preaching the sermon on Brotherly Love for which you made such a flattering request. I am unwilling, however, that you shall be disappointed, so, if you will attend divine service at Gandle-by-the-Hill this morning, you will hear my sermon preached by young Bates, my nephew. I have lent him the manuscript at his urgent desire, for, between ourselves, there are wheels within wheels. My nephew is one of the candidates for the headmastership of a well-known public school, and the choice has narrowed down between him and one rival.

“Late yesterday evening James received private information that the head of the Board of Governors of the school proposed to sit under him this Sunday in order to judge of the merits of his preaching, a most important item in swaying the Board’s choice.[71] I acceded to his plea that I lend him my sermon on Brotherly Love, of which, like you, he apparently retains a vivid recollection. It would have been too late for him to compose a sermon of suitable length in place of the brief address which—mistakenly, in my opinion—he had designed to deliver to his rustic flock, and I wished to help the boy.

“Trusting that his preaching of the sermon will supply you with as pleasant memories as you say you have of mine, I remain,

“Cordially yours,         F. Heppenstall.    

“P.S.—The hay-fever has rendered my eyes unpleasantly weak for the time being, so I am dictating this letter to my butler, Brookfield, who will convey it to you.”

 I don’t know when I’ve experienced a more massive silence than the one that followed my reading of this cheery epistle. Young Bingo gulped once or twice, and practically every known emotion came and went on his face. Jeeves coughed one soft, low, gentle cough like a sheep with a blade of grass stuck in its throat, and then stood gazing serenely at the landscape. Finally young Bingo spoke.

“Great Scot!” he whispered, hoarsely. “An S.P. job!”

“I believe that is the technical term, sir,” said Jeeves.

“So you had inside information, dash it!” said young Bingo.

“Why, yes, sir,” said Jeeves. “Brookfield happened to mention the contents of the note to me when he brought it. We are old friends.”[72]

Bingo registered grief, anguish, rage, despair, and resentment.

“Well, all I can say,” he cried, “is that it’s a bit thick! Preaching another man’s sermon! Do you call that honest? Do you call that playing the game?”

“Well, my dear old thing,” I said, “be fair. It’s quite within the rules. Clergymen do it all the time. They aren’t expected always to make up the sermons they preach.”

Jeeves coughed again, and fixed me with an expressionless eye.

“And in the present case, sir, if I may be permitted to take the liberty of making the observation, I think we should make allowances. We should remember that the securing of this headmastership meant everything to the young couple.”

“Young couple! What young couple?”

“The Reverend James Bates, sir, and Lady Cynthia. I am informed by her ladyship’s maid that they have been engaged to be married for some weeks—provisionally, so to speak; and his lordship made his consent conditional on Mr. Bates securing a really important and remunerative position.”

Young Bingo turned a light green.

“Engaged to be married!”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a silence.

“I think I’ll go for a walk,” said Bingo.

“But, my dear old thing.” I said, “it’s just lunch-time. The gong[73] will be going any minute now.”

“I don’t want any lunch!” said Bingo.

[1] Collected, with some slight alterations to make it flow better with the previous story, into The Inimitable Jeeves (1923).

[2] You can always rely on Jeeves. Just as I was wiping the brow and gasping like a stranded goldfish, in he drifted, merry and bright, with the good old tissue-restorers on a tray: “After Goodwood’s over, I generally find that I get a bit restless. I’m not much of a lad for the birds and the trees and the great open spaces as a rule, but there’s no doubt that London’s not at its best in August, and rather tends to give me the pip and make me think of popping down into the country till things have bucked up a trifle. London, about a couple of weeks after that spectacular finish of young Bingo’s which I’ve just been telling you about, was empty and smelled of burning asphalt. All my pals were away, most of the theatres were shut, and they were taking up Piccadilly in large spadefuls. It was most infernally hot. As I sat in the old flat one night trying to muster up energy enough to go to bed, I felt I couldn’t stand it much longer; and when Jeeves came in with the tissue-restorers on a tray I put the thing to him squarely” (The Inimitable Jeeves, henceforth TIJ).

[3] I said: “I said, wiping the brow and gasping like a stranded goldfish” (TIJ).

[4] B.: I.e. brandy.

[5] “London in August,” I said, quaffing deeply of the flowing b., “rather tends to give me the pip. All my pals are away, most of the theatres are shut, and they’re taking up Piccadilly in large spadefuls. The world is empty and smells of burning asphalt […]”: “I think we’ve had about enough of the metrop. for the time being, and require a change” (TIJ).

[6] Twing Hall: “Twing is fictitious (possibly a variant on Tring, Hertfordshire), but there is a Twigworth in Gloucestershire.” (Madame Eulalie).

[7] Yes, sir: Jeeves’s familiarity with Twing—and by extension, the nearby inhabitants—should be a warning to the reader from the first.

[8] I don’t know if you remember, but immediately: Omitted in TIJ.

[9] Goodwood: The Glorious Goodwood meeting is a horse race held in West Sussex every late July and early August.

[10] Tenner: Approximately £501.10 or $826 today.

[11] Him: “Bingo Little” (TIJ).

[12] A great pal of my guv’nor’s when he was alive: A rare mention of Bertie’s father, of whom little is known.

[13] Well, they’re down there, too, reading for some exam. or other with the vicar. I used to read with him myself at one time. He’s known far and wide as a pretty hot coach for those of fairly feeble intellect: Is reading with the vicar an indication that Claude and Eustace (and at one point, Bertie) are studying for the Church? Or is it simply that the Vicar is generally intellectual in a variety of areas?

[14] Smalls: “Popular name for Responsions, the first of the three university examinations Oxford undergraduates had to pass to qualify for a BA degree. They were abolished in 1960.” (Madame Eulalie).

[15] Hummer: “A very energetic or lively person, a powerful lively thing; someone or something exceptional” (Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang).

[16] Glos.: Abbreviation of Gloucestershire.

[17] The Vicarage, Twing, Glos: Omitted in Cosmo.

[18] Reading-party: “A party of people engaged in reading a book or books; specifically a group of students who meet for the purpose of studying together, often in the vacation and at a location away from their institution” (OED).

[19] Upper Bingley […] Little Clickton-in-the-Wold […] Boustead Parva […] Boustead Magna […] Fale-by-the-Water […] Lower Bingley […] Gandle-by-the-Hill: Fictional locations, indicated especially by their exaggeratedly rural-English names.

[20] Dickey: “A false shirt front” (OED).

[21] Paddington: “Paddington Station is the London terminus of the former Great Western Railway, serving the South-West of England, most of Wales, and parts of the West Midlands. It lies in west London, about a mile and a half from Arundell Street. The station was built in 1850–1854 by the GWR’s engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The great train-shed is an important early example of the structural use of iron. Slightly odd here is the use of ‘five-ten at Paddington’ – from would seem more usual, unless Bertie means ‘Go to Paddington and buy the tickets there.’” (Madame Eulalie).

[22] The soup: I.e. the first course of the meal.

[23] Great pals we’ve always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she’s the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I’ve heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we’re just pals: Cynthia combines the ambition of Bertie’s old fiancée Florence Craye with the lightheartedness of his later (temporary) fiancée Pauline Stoker. Bertie has definite types that he’s attracted to, but unfortunately he tends to be interested in girls who temperamentally do not suit him (or that he’s too immature to handle—note that what has kept him from pursuing Cynthia was knowing that he would be expected to be responsible).

[24] Topper: “An exceptionally good person or thing” (OED).

[25] I think she’s a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything’s nice and matey: No wonder Bertie thinks this friendship is successful; it’s reminiscent of how people whom he considers closest to him (like Jeeves) treat him.

[26] Coves: “A man” (OED), with connotations of an elderly man.

[27] Assistant-master: “In a public school, an assistant-master was a teacher who did not have responsibility for a boarding house.” (Madame Eulalie).

[28] Locum tenens: “Someone employed by a professional person, especially a physician or clergyman, to replace them during an absence (Latin: holding the place). Often abbreviated to ‘locum.’” (Madame Eulalie).

[29] Rector: “(in the Church of England) the incumbent of a parish where all tithes formerly passed to the incumbent” (OED).

[30] He was in his fourth year at Oxford when I was a fresher: I.e. Bertie was beginning his time at Oxford while Bates was in an extended period of his university education. Most Oxford degrees take about three years to obtain. A fourth year indicates that Bates was particularly intent on his studies.

[31] Blood: According to Murphy’s Wodehouse Handbook, this was a “Term in use in schools and universities 1880-1950 for those young men who were Head of School, Captain of the Rugger XV, President of the Union or achieved a reputation of some sort.”

[32] Rowing-blue: Bates rowed for Oxford against Cambridge.

[33] Gave me the bird: “Boo or jeer at someone” (OED), in this case, to reject.

[34] The females of the species: Perhaps an echo of Kipling’s “The Female of the Species”: “For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

[35] Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species to leg it, and they duly stampeded: “In Britain it used to be conventional for ladies to withdraw to the drawing room after the dessert, leaving the gentlemen free to smoke and drink port.” (Madame Eulalie).

[36] Later, in the drawing-room: After finishing their conversation in the dining room, the gentlemen would rejoin the ladies in the drawing room for coffee.

[37] Toofah: According to Murphy’s Handbook, “Cheaper American (Virginian tobacco) cigarettes, which arrived about 1880, were known as fags, gaspers, stinkers or ‘toofahs’/’toofers’ (two for a ha’penny, a phrase still in common use in the 1950s). That is why, at country houses, Bingo would pillage Bertie’s cigarette box, since the local village shop would not sell the more expensive brands.” In this instance, the toofah also indicates Bingo’s current state of relative indigence.

[38] Keep the wolf from the door: “Have enough money to avert hunger or starvation (used hyperbolically)” (OED).

[39] Comrade Butt: “One Comrade Butt” (TIJ).

[40] Good Lord!: “My God!” (Cosmo).

[41] The cup of tea: “A cup of tea” (TIJ).

[42] Scansion: “The rhythm of a line of verse” (OED).

[43] One of the things which discourage me about rural life is the frightful earliness with which events begin to break loose. I’ve stayed at places in the country where they’ve jerked me out of the dreamless at about six-thirty to go for a jolly swim in the lake. At Twing, thank heaven, they know me, and let me breakfast in bed: Omitted in Cosmo.

[44] The Classics: Ancient Greek and Latin literature.

[45] There are about a dozen hamlets within a radius of six miles: Nevertheless, Badgewick/Badger and Stapleton are nowhere within a six-mile radius of Gloucestershire.

[46] Sunday the twenty-third: No years close to that of the publication of this story fit a Sunday, August 23 date. The nearest ones are 1914 and 1925. The latter seems the more likely, although factors in other stories lead me to conclude a date earlier than then for this story.

[47] Flutter: “A small bet” (OED).

[48] Amazing the way Jeeves grasped it right off: Jeeves is evidently a far more experienced gambler than Bertie gives him credit for.

[49] Sitter: “(in sport) an easy catch or shot” (OED).

[50] May a cousin’s curse: Probably a parody of a line from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience: “Consent at once, or may a nephew's curse—“

[51] Cop: “To win, e.g. a bet, a fight” (Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang).

[52] Gatwick: “The racecourse at Gatwick, West Sussex, adjacent to the London-Brighton railway line, was opened in 1890. An airfield was built next to the racecourse in 1930, and racing continued until the RAF took over the whole site in 1939. After the war, Gatwick became one of London’s two main civil airports.” (Madame Eulalie).

[53] Lewes: Town in East Sussex that was home to a racing venue.

[54] Alexandra Park: Horse racing venue in London, no longer in use.

[55] “Smiles’s Self-Help”: According to Murphy’s Handbook, “The English social reformer Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) published Self-Help in 1859, a book about boys and men who ‘got on’ by overcoming difficulties and disappointments (the inventors Watt, Arkwright and the like). It became a runaway success, was translated into many languages and the British Institute of Economic Affairs re-published it in 1996.”

[56] Flier: “A racehorse, a fast horse” (Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang).

[57] The Jockey Club: Organization that governed and regulated horse racing in the UK until 2006.

[58] Punters: “A person who gambles, places a bet, or makes a risky investment” (OED).

[59] Chappies: “Bozos” (TIJ).

[60] Like those chappies in the poem, with a wild surmise: From John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken; / Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes / He stared at the Pacific—and all his men / Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— / Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

[61] Cure: “A Christian minister's pastoral charge or area of responsibility for spiritual ministry” (OED).

[62] S.P.: “Starting Price. With horse-races, one could place a bet either at the odds quoted at the moment of placing the bet (ante-post or A.P.), or at the odds current when the race starts (SP). With an AP bet one might well get better odds, but SP had the advantage that one didn’t lose one’s money if the horse was withdrawn before the race.” (Madame Eulalie).

[63] I’m bound to say I was beginning to get a bit jumpy by this time: Omitted in TIJ.

[64] Got the wind up: “Alarm or frighten (or be alarmed or frightened)” (OED).

[65] Like a mighty, rushing wind: Acts 2:2: “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.”

[66] Deuce of a time you’ve been: Omitted in TIJ.

[67] Hallo?: “Hello?” (Cosmo).

[68] Stayer: “A tenacious person or thing, especially a horse able to hold out to the end of a race” (OED).

[69] It came too late to be delivered to you at the moment: It is entirely probable that Jeeves and perhaps even Brookfield orchestrated this too-convenient timing of the letter’s delivery.

[70] The Vicarage, Twing, Glos.: Omitted in Cosmo.

[71] My nephew is one of the candidates for the headmastership of a well-known public school, and the choice has narrowed down between him and one rival. Late yesterday evening James received private information that the head of the Board of Governors of the school proposed to sit under him this Sunday in order to judge of the merits of his preaching, a most important item in swaying the Board’s choice: The major public schools in England were under Anglican influence and often had clergymen as headmasters.

[72] Brookfield happened to mention the contents of the note to me when he brought it. We are old friends: Have Jeeves and Brookfield formed a syndicate of their own?

[73] The gong: Rung to announce the beginning of meals or time to dress for dinner.

[mrdaddyskool]

I have not journal for an extended period. I have been rushing in the last 6 years, rushing to meet daily tasks and rushing to take care of children.

I was divorced in 1 April 2020. The pain is very real. I miss my children. I cry often. Yet, I numb myself to sleep playing handphone games in the first 3 weeks.

I read in a Facebook group where there were a group of ladies who divorced. I signed up and was granted access.

I had also watched many videos to distract myself. Previously, taking care of 3 kids drives me tired at end of the day. Now, I stare at their photographs and yearns for them.

I had stopped smoking many years back. Last 10 months, I would meet a colleague and we would drink probably once every 2 weeks. Coping? Distraction?

A counselor once shared with me to journal my thoughts. I heard her but did not put to practice. Today, I am giving it a go. I have many thoughts, not sure what to write.

I have heard a song, 10000 reasons. It is a Christian song, kinda from a rocker band. It sounds genuine.

I may not be able to write 10, 000 reasons, but I am grateful.

Reasons for gratefulness

1. I am ambulant, and able to walk.

2. I have eye sight. Although I wear spectacles, but I know of at least 972 persons with visually Handicap, and I am aware of some of their strengths and struggles.

3. I am sound mental health. The Lord allow rest and He carries my worries. Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him. I am learning to meditate, and to hear and meditate on Christian sermons from sound doctrines such as Dr Charles Stanley.

4. I am a young child in my emotional awareness. I have a very bad temper since marriage in 2003 and it is a sore point, a tender spot. I started reading anger management, but it gotten worse. I tried counselling, but my pride and ego resisted big time. It took a crisis before God showed me my feelings, my fears, my shame and my guilt. The breakthrough came in I believe November 2019, when the counsellor in Care Corner Divorce Specialist Centre process with my primary and secondary feelings. I had suppressed my feelings for a pretty long time, and to engage my guilt and anger is a milestone in my emotional journey.

5. My friends and my colleagues

I am surrounded by great and kind hearted people. My colleagues, professional counsellors and social workers, occupational therapists and church mates, have unconditional regard, allowing me to share my thoughts, hurts and values. My ex- supervisor had visited me and processed with me on my expectations, that of on myself, that of others and that of others on myself. My group of male prayer mates, who will pray for each others and their families, and they really yoke with me.

6. Professional Interventions

Unashamedly, I have both being a worker in Family Service Centre, a disability organisation. I am also a recipient of Family Service Centre, a Church of Our Saviour Christian counsellor, and Care Corner Divorce Specialist Centre.

El custodiet ipos custodes? Who will guard the guards?

But in social work, self worth, self efficacy, organisational skills, reframing and being genuine, there is much I have benefitted from interventions and supervisions.

May the Lord grant me strength and wisdom to grow my emotional self and acquire skills in mindfulness and communication.

[workingontruth]

Part 5 of 7: The Gospel (In Full)...Stage 3; Surrender Me

June 21, 2019

[Forgive Me. Fill Me. SURRENDER ME. Command Us. Fuel Us.]

Can the good news of the Good News get any better than the moment in time when a human soul hears the voice of its Creator, and is enlivened by that Creator to accept his invitation into a rebirth as a citizen of heaven? Indisputably not (Stage 1; Forgive Me).

Still, it is our life in Christ that is intended to bring technicolor substantiation to that eternity-shifting moment when the Holy Spirit took up residence within us (Stage 2; Fill Me). And I’m concerned these days that our default handicap as first-world, self-resourcing people is prevailing over our ability to substantiate our new lives as ones belonging to another primary citizenship.

Going right for the bull’s eye on this third stage of the Gospel (something I’ve not done so well in my two previous entries on topic), and in the words of Dr. Tony Evans which I previously touched upon in Part 2,

“Our problem today is we have Christians who want God to get them to heaven, but who do not want Him to own them on earth.” (Adonai – The Owner of All, a sermon message by Tony Evans aired on The Alternative on or around April 15, 2013)

Last minute insert:

I SO dislike that I feel this concept of surrender has to be met with such directness and seeming negativity. But, acceptingly, to make sure I’m not miscommunicating the point by going soft around the edges, I’ve chosen to do so. Nonetheless, the beauty that comes to us on the other side of surrender is not negative at all, but wholly positive, joyous and freeing! It is because we don’t really know the heart of God that we come to this topic with a spirit of trepediation. Oh, how I wish I could communicate this better.

Here’s another way to look at the surrender of which I am speaking in this entry: I’m asking us to give up our paint-peeling, wood-framed, backyard sandbox and rusty water hose for the seemingly endless, snow-white sandy beaches and aqua warm waters of the Caribbean! C’mon, man! I can honestly say the most cherished words in my vocabulary have become surrender and brokenness. I don’t believe there is any other way to experience a deep and abiding walk with Jesus but through these dual remedies. We don’t have the space or time to go into it beyond that herein, but I had to try to bring a positive notion of this precious stage of the Gospel to the fore. 

Okay, where were we…oh yes…

“Our problem today is we have Christians who want God to get them to heaven, but who do not want Him to own them on earth.” (Adonai – The Owner of All, a sermon message by Tony Evans aired on The Alternative on or around April 15, 2013)

The evidence of this truth is all around us. Look at the way most who call themselves Christians live. In a phrase, we’re long on freedom in Christ, but short on living in compliant obedience as an act of worship to a Holy God (Ps. 103:11, 112:1, Jn. 14:24). We’re long on grace, but short on purity (Phil. 1:27, Col. 1:10). We’re long on self-indulgence and short on self-denial (Luke 9:23, Heb. 12:1, Mark 8:34). We’re long on having the glory of God ride with us down the highway of life, but we’re short on giving up the wheel of control.

This tells me we don’t know God. This tells me we don’t know who we are as Kingdom citizens in our new birth. This tells me we haven’t known the deep joy of an intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit as we walk alongside Him. And this tells me we certainly don’t know surrender. For if we truly knew surrender, it would be the sweet anthem being sung over more of our lives.

Surrender.

I address the absolute necessity of this “white flag” kind of posture before God throughout Set Free (especially in the Introduction, and in chapters 12-17, 25-29, 34)…though I never mention it as a white flag. Annnnnd...hold on just a moment here .... Haha, I just searched the manuscript; I mention surrender 92 times. I had no idea! Certainly, it’s a repetitive theme throughout…but I believe it holds the key to the Christian life. 

The Gospel calls us to the utter surrender of ourselves. How could we not if our theology of salvation is accurate? Is this not the message of Romans 6? Only as we daily reckon upon and cooperate with what God says is true of us as ones put to death and buried in Christ will we ever be able to live into its truth (Romans 6:4-7). 

If God has put our old man to death, then that slain one is incapable of reigning from the grave unless we refuse to cooperate with truth and, instead, choose to live in a lie. 

This whole matter of surrender was supposed to have been settled when we asked God to make us into a new creation by forgiving our sins, disconnecting us from our sin nature, and by recreating in us his resurrected Life. It is only we who give Satan the power to deceive us with the continual lie that we cannot trust God in ongoing surrender. 

Yes, the ongoing Christian life demands our cooperation. 

And because I cannot help myself, here’s a freebie; I just posted the very center of chapters 25-29 referenced above, Chapter 27,  HERE (scroll down the page to find Chapter 27). In it, I address the core of our inability to surrender control of our lives, and all of the evolving circumstances therein. 

I think of the 5 Stages in The Gospel (In Full), this third benchmark is our greatest challenge. But only in its wake can we find the keys to the final two stages. 

Okay, because this is the undercurrent theme of an entire book, I must limit my focus here and point you to Set Free for the extent of my heart on the matter. 

But for the purposes of this 3rd Stage of The Gospel (In Full), let’s simply say ... 

It is only through an unrestrained surrender of every part of our lives that we find the freedom God intends for us.

But this kind of surrender is not easy. It takes the Holy Spirit to help us detect the depth of the talons of self-confidence, pride and self-resourcing that cling to us if we so much as glance in the direction of our old Adam–for Satan’s lies are always ready to dog us if we allow him to turn us inward upon ourselves.

And then, in our quest to find the life of freedom and joy Jesus intends for us as his children, there are the very practical, cultural realities of our heritage–how we’ve grown up as Americans. The very taste of surrender as it proceeds from our lips is somehow detestable, not to mention culturally unacceptable.  

In our secularist dialect as Americans, surrender is a vulgar word, full of weakness, defeat and loss. As a nation, we would claim to have earned our cherished freedom through victory, not surrender. Tyrannous, controlling, power-hungry, freedom robbing regimes have needed to be kept at bay. Therefore, as freedom-loving American citizens, we equate surrender to a loss of freedom, to enslavement and oppression.

But as heaven’s citizens, everything is turned upside down. This is because the authority to which we have surrendered is the Author of perfect freedom, perfect administration and perfect joy. He is not tyrannous. He is not oppressive.

Think of it; as Christians, surrender was the initial, beautiful act which brought us out of slavery and into freedom. But somehow, too many don’t equally understand the ongoing nature of the Gospel to be reflective of a perpetual and unconditional surrender.

In short, the evidence of our lives reveals that we don’t trust God with our life … “just” our salvation.

How weird is that?! 

Notice the pronoun usage above. It speaks volumes. If we really understood the real-life, theological implications of the cross over our lives (which should be an essential part of early discipleship), we would rebel against the idea that the life we now live even belongs to us. It doesn’t. 

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

But until we electively deliver ourselves to him without controversy (after our having been saved), he cannot have his way with us. I have illustrated this to much greater effect in Chapter 27 (again, scroll down the page to find Chapter 27). 

No, the title deed to our lives belongs to the One who paid the full purchase price for it. It is his life.*

     * (Pardon the short pronoun diversion–couldn’t help myself.)

But we somehow think that although we gave our eternal destiny into the hands of God, we are left to living our lives here and now according to the insights of the old man God put to death when we gave our hearts to Him. Now we wouldn’t come out and say it that way, but the way we live our lives betrays us.

In short, we have an ownership problem.

I believe we all want to experience the after-effects of the Holy Spirit’s having filled us. We want the victory-aiding power of God in our lives. We want the internal, personal affirmation that this God to whom we gave our hearts is real. But, and here again is the point, until we recognize Jesus as Owner, He does not have free reign in our lives to do as He pleases (Did I mention Chapter 27 in Set Free?).

Until we recognize Jesus as Owner, we will never own a true revelation of the Spirit’s indwelling which could revolutionize the life of any Christian.

So, this begs the question,

“How then can we experience a life-changing, perspective-altering recognition of the Spirit’s indwelling?”

The tough news is that we cannot do, find or earn this. Our options are limited. There is no formula but release. There is no prescription but ongoing surrender. God is God. We are not. What we do know is what He tells us–that if we knock, the door will be opened to us. What we do know is that He will not give us a snake when we need bread, that He has purchased us with a great price, and that He desires our fellowship so much that Jesus died to gain it–rather than live forever without it. What we do know is that He desires to live through us and empower us supernaturally, differentiating us from the on-looking world, that His name be praised through our lives.

But until we own more than a surface acquaintance with surrender, we will live our lives in the in-between. Until we lose our appetite for control, until control of our lives becomes to us something nauseatingly repulsive, we will be unable to successfully live into our new citizenship. 

I think now is a good time to remind us that there are two kingdoms up and running (Jn. 18:36, 14:30, 15:19, Eph. 2:1-2, Matt. 6:33, Phil. 3:20).

It is vital new believers understand that they have been supernaturally transferred from the kingdom of darkness (this world) into the kingdom of Light (heaven). It is critical that they understand how they have factually become citizens of another place (Jn. 18:36). This is an important, foundational building block onto which their future faith and identity in Christ can anchor.

When we choose to place our trust in Jesus, our life, and thus our citizenship, is transferred over from the world (John 15:19) to a kingdom of another place (John 18:36).

But Greg, you say, why does my life as a believer still look so much like it did before I came to Christ? Why is there still a discontented ache in my life? Why am I not more satisfied as a Christian? Why can I not find this “increasing obedience” in my daily life instead of repeating the same, selfish behaviors which possessed me as a non-believer?

Dear Christian friend, if you feel your life is the poster child for James 2:17, where the bible says that faith by itself, if not accompanied by outward evidences of that faith, is dead, then you may still be holding onto your life. It may be that you cannot advance in your Christian walk with God because you are unwilling to surrender control of your life (all of it) over to God. And in so doing, you are regularly keeping the Holy Spirit living in you at bay. Study Mark 6:5-6 and Matt. 13:58 if you don’t believe our faith and trust, or the lack thereof, can keep the power of God on the sidelines of our lives.

Any way you slice it, the authentic Christian life is the one that looks like it from the outside in. If you know your life isn’t taking on the appearance of a new life, steadily increasing in surrender and taking on the character of Christ, then it is time to address this incongruence with the benchmark of an accurate theology of who you are in Christ.

James inextricably links our faith to the outward manifestations of that faith when he challenges someone who believes that an inward faith alone is sufficient in itself. 

“Show me your faith apart from your works,” he says, “and I will show you my faith by my works.” – James 2:18

A saving faith is always accompanied by outward evidences of that faith. Coming to Jesus means, in the challenging words of Billy Graham, that 

“...the Lord Jesus Christ will come into your life and reform, conform and transform you into an obedient follower. If that is not your desire, you have every reason to question whether or not you have been saved.”

Part of the Gospel’s Stage One repentance is a change of direction in how we live our lives. If God truly has our heart, then He will also have our behavior. Period. If He doesn’t have our behavior, we have every reason to question whether He has our heart.

The bible asks,

How can we who died to sin still live in it (Romans 6:2)?

But it is super important we realize God is after more than our conduct; He is after our heart.

When God has our heart and not merely our behavior, our conduct in Christ becomes joyously compulsive–and our obedience comes along for the ride by default!

Indeed, when we try to live the Christian life by pleasing God out of the shallow resources of the old man (who has been done away with when we gave our life to Jesus–Romans 6:4, Colossians 3:3), we are quenching the power source who lives within us as children of God!

When we fail to understand that the power to please God lives in us by his Spirit, we can easily revert to the thinking that the best way to abide in Christ is by earning his favor day-by-day, in what we do. And when we live this way, not only are we incapable of pleasing God, but we have lost sight of the freeing core of Christianity; we cannot earn God’s favor or proximity to him by what we do. This is as true after coming to Christ as it is prior to our coming to him for our salvation.

The only thing that gains us proximity to God is the blood of our Saving One, Jesus Christ.

So, until we let go of the self-preserving tendencies of the old man who died in Christ when we gave our heart to Jesus, we’re going to be stuck – never making it over the “hump” of the mid-stage of this Gospel (In Full).

Cutting right to the chase again, and in slightly different words than in the fourth paragraph of this entry, you may never experience deep communion and the intended freedom of the Gospel because you love your sinful self-reliance more than you love your God. I do not make this inquiry of our hearts glibly, but with a sadness of heart. There are likely dozens of scenarious that play out in our daily lives where asking this question would be appropriate: 

Do I love my sinful self-reliance more than I love my God? 

This inquiry of our hearts is a call to surrender. This is a call to help us make choices that glorify God and enliven his Spirit’s ability to mold us into whose we are! 

In closing, I want to point us to the glorious upside of surrender. When we surrender, we are set free. When we surrender, we are no longer Christian imposters before God. When we surrender, we lose fear and gain God’s confidence. When we surrender, John 15 begins to come to life for us.

Once through the marvelous inbreaking awareness of the Holy Spirit’s work in us we emotionally and subjectively understand we are not The Vine, then we are finally gaining in our journey toward an honestly fulfilling life.

Once the Spirit of God within us has been welcomed to break us, the resulting surrender frees us from the pressure of having to lead our own lives. Instead, we begin to understand how to follow–as we abide in Him, the true Vine.

In Jesus’ very words to us, he says this in John 15:1, 4-5, 9:  

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

Then Jesus goes on to tell us that our surrendered obedience to him will enable us to abide in his love. In so doing, we will live our lives without quenching his Spirit in us. Then, in verse 11, he gives us this glorious conclusion to the matter:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

We can find an unmitigated, boundless, full joy that doesn’t hinge on the moment-by-moment circumstances of life when we learn to surrender and abide in the Source of our life.

And my prayer is that in this day of the duplicitous-living, ever-distracted evangelical church attender, there will be an increased emphasis on helping believers understand the theological basis behind the new life in Christ. Scripture contains plenty of Spirit-empowered illumination to help many a believer surrender once and for all to the One who purchased and rightfully owns his bride.