The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

A Calendar: May

[Probably by Julia Firth. For an explanation of how this calendar works, see the first article in the series.]

1st. St. Philip and St. James. Collect, Epistle and Gospel. See printed hymn.

2nd.

3rd.

4th. Livingston died 1873. Read extract from his "Travels."

"I would earnestly recommend all young missionaries to go at once to the real heathen, and never to be content with what has been made ready to their hands by men of greater enterprise. The idea of making model Christians of the young need not be entertained by anyone who is secretly convinced, as most men who know their own hearts are, that he is not a model Christian himself. The Israelitish slaves brought out of Egypt by Moses were not converted and elevated in one generation, though under the direct teaching of God himself. Notwithstanding the number of miracles He wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of unbelief. Our own elevation also has been the work of centuries, and, remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as to the elevation, which those who have inherited the degradation of ages, may attain in our day." Page 116.

5th.--8th.

9th. Schiller died 1805. Read passage from Wallenstein, Coleridge's Translation.

"My son, the nursling of the camp spoke in thee!
A war of fifteen years
Hath been thy education and thy school.
Peace hast thou never witness'd! There exists
A higher than the warrior's excellence.
In war itself war is no ultimate purpose.
The vast and sudden deeds of violence,
Adventures wild and wonder of the moment,
These are not they, my son, that generate
The Calm, the Blissful, and th' enduring Mighty!
Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect!
Builds his light town of canvass, and at once
The whole scene moves and bristles momently
With arms, and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel!
The motley market fills! the roads, the streams
Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries!
But on some morrow morn, all suddenly,
The tents drop down, the horde renews its march.
Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard,
The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie,
And the year's harvest is gone utterly."

10th. Theodore Parker died 1860.

"A theologian from the school
Of Cambridge on the Charles, was there;
Skilful alike with tongue and pen.
He preached to all men everywhere
The Gospel of the Golden Rule,
The new commandment given to men,
Thinking the deed, and not the creed
Would help us in our utmost need.
With reverent feet the earth he trod,
Nor banished nature from his plan,
But studied still with deep research
To build the Universal Church,
Lofty as is the love of God,
And ample as the wants of man."


Longfellow.

"He (Theodore Parker) believed in God and man so completely that his fragmentary denials were but the floating drift upon the deep swift current of his mighty faith." He wrote as follows on the 20th of April, 1847:--

"Father, help me to be true to myself, and faithful unto Thee! I ask not fame nor wealth, I ask wisdom; give me goodness. Inspire me full with truth. Enlighten me with love. Guard me from my greatest dangers. Make me useful to men. Help me to rebuke sin with holy lips--to live the excellence which I would teach. May I be a Christian man,--true, faithful, holy of heart and life! Make me equal to my duty, never above it. May my Hope be an absolute trust in Thee, my faith an abounding love, which blesses my brothers and is satisfied with Thee!"

11th.--19th.

20th. Christopher Columbus died 1506. Read Columbus. By Lowell, by Walt Whitman, and by Tennyson.

"The lesson of the great Idealist for us today is a two-fold lesson. The first portion of the lesson is this: If a great ideal, which seems to come from God, shines in your heart, know that patience, endurance, disappointment, are the conditions of its achievement. You may perish,--neglected, forgotten. But the truth to which you have been faithful, that shall live; for even out of your pain and sorrow God can bring rich harvests for the blessing of the world.

And the second portion of the lesson is this: The so-called practical man is not the man of most far-reaching practicality. It is the Idealist, and the Idealist alone that is practical in the largest and most fruitful way. It is the idealists who have built up the knowledge and progress, the happiness and freedom of the world. Even of your ships and your mills and your commerce, they and they alone are the true creators. Without them the world were long since dead. They carry the torch of life down the generations and the centuries. Despised and rejected of men, they found and make all that there is of worth and good in the life of the human race."
Sermon on "Columbus the Idealist," by Rev. R. A. Armstrong, B.A.

21st.

22nd.

23rd. The burning of Fra Girolamo Savonarola on the great Piazza at Florence, 1498. Read extract from "Romola."

"Her trust in Savonarola's nature as greater than her own, made a large part of the strength she had found. And the trust was not to be lightly shaken. It is not force of intellect which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision which causes the eye to explore the warts on a face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high sensibilities. Romola was so deeply moved by the grand energies of Savonarola's nature, that she found herself listening patiently to all dogmas and prophecies when they came in the vehicle of his ardent faith and believing utterance."

24th. Queen Victoria born 1819. Sing "God save the Queen."

25th.

26th. St. Augustine died 607. Add verse to hymn as above.

"Praise for the good Augustine, by noble Gregory sent,
When Christian Bertha came from Gaul to be the Queen of Kent;
He preached the gospel bravely, with forty monks from Rome,
Restored the Christian worship in this our island home."

27th. The Venerable Bede born 693. Read extract from "Green's History of the English People."

"In his "Ecclesiastical History of the English nation," Baeda was at once the founder of mediaeval history, and the first English historian. All that we really know of the century and a half that follows the landing of Augustine, we know from him. Wherever his own personal observation extended, the story is told with admirable detail and force. He is hardly less full or accurate in the portions which he owed to his Kentish friends, Alcwine and Nothelm. What he owed to no informant was his own exquisite faculty of story telling, and yet no story of his own telling is so touching as the story of his death. Two weeks before the Easter of 755 the old man was seized with an extreme weakness and loss of breath. He still preserved, however, his usual pleasantness and gay good humour; and in spite of prolonged sleeplessness continued his lectures to the pupils about him. Verses of his own English tongue broke from time to time from the master's life--rude rimes that told how before the "need-fare" Death's stern "must-go"; none can enough bethink him what is to be his doom for good or ill. The tears of Baeda's scholars, mingled with his song, "We never read without weeping," writes one of them. So the days rolled on to Ascension-tide, and still master and pupils toiled at their work, for Baeda longed to bring to an end his version of St. John's Gospel into the English tongue, and his extracts from Bishop Isidore. "I don't want my boys to read a lie," he answered those who would have had him rest, "or to work to no purpose after I am gone." A few days before Ascension-tide his sickness grew upon him, but he spent the whole day in teaching, only saying cheerfully to his scholars, "Learn with what speed you may; I know not how long I may last." The dawn broke on another sleepless night, and again the old man called his scholars round him and bade them write. "There is still a chapter wanting," said the scribe, as the morning drew on, "and it is hard for thee to question thyself any longer." "It is easily done," said Baeda; "take thy pen and write quickly," bade the dying man. "It is finished now," said the little scribe at last. "You speak truth," said the master; "all is finished now." Placed upon the pavement, his head supported in his scholar's arms, his face turned to the spot where he was wont to pray, Baeda chanted the solemn "Glory to God." As his voice reached the close of his song he passed quietly away."

28th.--30th.

31st. Joan of Arc burned, 1431.

Typed by happi, Aug 2018; Proofread by LNL, May 2021