I've long been an admirer of the Cambridge scholar Terrot Reaveley Glover, Baptist, classicist, essayist and author of a compact, illuminating and at times amusing small book on Paul, on some pages a preacher's godsend. It was called Paul of Tarsus.
T R Glover, a dyed in the wool Baptist, was invited to address the annual gathering of Quakers in the 1912 Swarthmore Lecture. These lectures are intended to expound, disseminate and showcase Quaker Principles. Glover's Preface is an explanation of why he chose to accept the invitation, and set out "The Nature and Purpose of a Christian Society."
He is not referring to society in general and its Christian cultural expressions. Rather his lecture is about the nature and purpose of each local meeting of Friends, and indeed each gathering of Christian believers for worship.
Glover was a lucid, warm and attractive writer when he wrote of Christian experience. I'll do a second post later with a few extracts once I've finished reading it – like Victoria plums on the cusp of ripeness, good writing like this should be taken in slowly enough to savour. Speed reading words written from the heart is spiritual rudeness
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