10 Great Landscapes

1. A field of poppies, Monet
2. View of Dedham, Gainsborough
3. Flatford Mill, Constable
4. Wheatfield with cypresses, Van Gogh
5. Rainbow, Turner
6. Monte St Victoire, Cezanne
7. View of Delft, Vermeer
8. Winter landscape, Brueghel the elder
9. Vesuvius, Wright of Derby
10. Wanderer above the sea of fog, Friedrich

The Man Who Built America

Novelists 27 R M Ballantyne

R. M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) was a Scots writer of juvenile fiction. When I was a kid we had at home cheap classic novels designed for children published by Dean and Son. Lists of novels and authors were reproduced on the backs of these so I have long known the name of Ballantyne and the fact he wrote Coral Island, though I've never read it. Edinburgh born he was part of a famous family of printers and publishers. At 16 he went to Canada and was six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, returning in 1847. In 1848 he published his first book, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. In 1856 he gave up the publishing business to write. His books include The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Fighting the Whales (1866), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and over a hundred other titles. He was also an accomplished artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Scots RA.

Nine sermons of Lloyd-Jones from 1969

I have actually been to Pensacola where the sermons in Setting our affections upon glory were preached in 1969. I can't imagine Dr Lloyd-Jones on a Florida beach in August with his overcoat on. I found it too hot in my trunks. Perhaps he avoided the beach and kept the A/C on. Anyway, these never before published nine sermons were preached in 1969 at the Pensacola Theological Institute (the last time DMLl-J was in the USA) and are good examples of the Doctor at his best. He takes nine almost entirely New Testament texts (tellingly, perhaps, the one on revival is from Exodus) and preaches some old sermons and perhaps some newer ones at the height of his powers. A brief foreword by John Schultz and nine footnotes give you all the background you need. This would be ideal as an introduction to Lloyd-Jones preaching, a refresher for people like me who may not have read him for a while or as another volume for the completest who has read everything else. Good move Crossway.

The Black Hole: Money, Myth and Empire by Jan Dalley

Jan Dalley

I remember learning about the black hole of Calcutta in school (good old Mr Purton again) so I'm the right age to appreciate this book (first published in 2007). The book is nicely enough written by a skilled journalist who tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the subject and just about keeping your interest for the whole 213 pages. Frustratingly, details of the story will always be a little hazy but the book at least demonstrates that and gets as near to the truth as anyone is likely to. It also gives you, in addition, a partial history of Empire, which is not what one might have thought and an example of the power and importance of myth or whatever we should call it. Fascinating stuff if you want to get to the bottom of the black hole, as it were.

10 Histories

1. Church history
2. Art history
3. History of science
4. Ancient history
5. Black history
6. Gender history (including women's history)
7. History of education
8. Social or cultural history
9. Maritime history
10. Music history or historical musicology

Lily of the valley

 

A stitch in time saves Nain

Eleri put these five pieces of embroidery up recently. They were kindly done by her mother over the years. They reveal that Rhodri is the oldest, Dylan was born earliest in the calendar year, Dewi earliest in the academic year and Gwion was the heaviest. I would expect that Owain will be the tallest. 

10 Quotes on art by well known artists

1. The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery

Francis Bacon

2. A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art

Paul Cezanne

3. Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Georges Braque

4. Great art picks up where nature ends.

Marc Chagall

5. Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it./ Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Salvador Dali

6. Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Edgar Degas

7. The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

Lucian Freud

8. If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

Edward Hopper

9. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

10. Painting is the most beautiful of lies

Kees van Dongen

Graham Harrison Memories

When I was in LTS one of the things I remember Mr Harrison saying was that there are things in the Bible that you or I would not have put quite like that. I often recall that observation. One of my fellow students pointed out that Mr Harrison had a penchant for military and pugilistic metaphors. He even started writing the down I think. Having been alerted to this I noticed ever after that it was a pretty common trait. What caused it I do not know. Perhaps it was growing up in Grange Town, a rather challenging part of Cardiff in those days. Of course, I can't give you any obvious examples now, though I do remember expressions such as "going a few rounds with Warfield". I tried to look up examples form online sermons but all I could find was "You are knowing the strength of this temptation to try and show that you are of superior intelligence, that the gospel is something that can knock spots off these Greek philosophers, etc."

Tribute to the late Graham Harrison

When I was growing up as a young Christian in South Wales it was a rare time. There were four chief Lloyd-Jones churches in the Newport and Cwmbran area. The Baptist church I attended was pastored by the late Derek Garwood. Also in Cwmbran was Ebenezer Congregational Church where Phil Williams was the minister in my time. Down in Newport there was the late Hugh Morgan and in Emmanuel opposite the Royal Gwent Hospital, Graham Harrison. All four were godly men and faithful preachers.

When I came up to London Graham Harrison was one of four Welsh men who were the main teachers there at the time (Philip Eveson, Hywel Jones and Andrew Davies being the others). Again these were men of God of the highest calibre, full of Christ - awe inspiring to a young man in their holiness and discernment. Mr Harrison was my lecturer in doctrine and he it was who led in my ordination in Cwmbran in 1983. In subsequent years I knew him chiefly through the Westminster Fellowship and the Westminster Conference as well as on the LTS Board. As Guy mentions there was a certain shyness about Mr Harrison (I've never got out of addressing my LTS lectures by their surnames) and that made it difficult to approach him in some ways. He could also sound quite pessimistic and dour at times and was a Welshman to a fault, which I found a little difficult. We should be in no doubt, however, that Prince in Israel has fallen, a stalwart of the faith indeed. See here for Guy's tribute.

Lord's Day May 19 2013

1 Corinthians 4:1-7 in the morning and most of Numbers 33 in  the evening, preceded by communion. There was a South African passing through in the morning, said he'd been baptised the week before in Durban. Fascinating. In the evening I tried to relate the stages of Israel's journey to the Christian life. I wanted to finish with a testimony of a Christian near the end and remembered the testimony I had read in Grace Magazine this month from Esther Childress who died last December at 14. The testimony is here on youtube. It was quite moving simply to read out such a testimony.

John Piper Sermons

I notice that all John Piper's sermons are now available on the ESV site. Go here and click the cloud above (bit Freudian, eh?) for available apps.

10 Famous portraits

1. Mona Lisa/Leonardo
2. Henry VIII/Holbein
3. Charles I/Van Dyck
4. Oliver Cromwell/Lely
5. Laughing Cavalier/Hals
6. Girl with the pearl earring/Vermeer
7. Blue Boy/Gainsborough
8. Berthe Morisot/Manet
9. Arrangement in grey and black/Whistler (Whistler's mother)
10. Marilyn Monroe/Warhol

(I have excluded self-portraits and paintings that feature more than one sitter) 

Lloyd-Jones Thesis online

You may be interested to know that John Brencher's 1997 thesis on Lloyd-Jones is available online here.

Brencher, John Frederick (1998) David Martyn Lloyd-Jones 1899-1981 and twentieth-century evangelicalism. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield