Sunday 10 July 2016

"Come and reason" with Godfrey Blount by Edwin Herrin, Part 2

The July 1937 newspaper appreciation (Part 1 is here) continues:

Godfrey Blount, 3rd from left, a family snapshot
from Haslemere Educational Museum's press cuttings,
July 1937

"Nothing paved the way to his respect and sympathy so infallibly as the honesty and sincerity of the truth-seeker and an enquiring mind was the one qualification for admission to his heart.

"There is more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds"

"was with him no mere aphorism, to be framed in gilt, and forgotten.  He knew no distinctions of class or status.


from Arbor Vitae, Blount, Godfrey, A.C. Fifield, 1910


"Spiritual difficulties were as real in the humbler walks of life as in the ranks of the more sophisticated, and, accordingly, postman, gardener and railway servant as often resorted to his aid in the solution of difficulties, and were as sure of sympathy and understanding and "the warm touch of the mediator's hand to interpret for them the mysteries of existence," as visitors of greater distinction who had also discovered the road to Saint Cross.

"On the day of his last fight with mortality (a fight of which I was quite ignorant) I was reading from "Science and Symbols" (perhaps the most irresistibly simple and convincing of his many literary efforts in that direction) the chapter on "Life, Light and Love."  I venture to claim that in this chapter he succeeds in achieving the very acme and apex of elevation of thought and clarity of statement.


"May I quote one paragraph with is an expansion of the saying of Jesus.  "I am the Light of the World," and in which the Founder of the Christian Faith is represented as saying: "This glistening pearl: the leaven in those loaves set to rise; this tree ready to shoot out new leaves; the wine in that cup you will drink; this mustard seed, smallest of things, are divine in their natural use: does not God shine in them as well as through them?  These clouds, do they not close this day as well as foretell the last of all?  This corn, does it not prove the truth of sacrifice, as well as prophesy my own, because, like me, it must be bruised for your food, since I am it and it is I?  This bread, sown, grown, reaped, thrashed, ground, mixed, baked: this is I, my body; eating it, you eat me.  This wine, crushed from the grape with the sun in it, fermented, inspiring, refreshing, is my blood: drink it and you drink Me.  I am the way, the road you walk along: walk it then with a purpose.  I am the field you work in; work while it is day.  I am the door, the gate you pass, the home you enter, the fire you stir.  I am, your Father, your Mother, your Friend.  I am the Shepherd that cares for his sheep; the Ploughman, the Carpenter, the Mason.  I am the Cripple, the Prisoner, the Beggar, the Leper, the Child: see Me in these, the Man of infinite sorrow and infinite joy; of infinite power and hope."

from Arbor Vitae, Blount, Godfrey, A.C. Fifield, 1910

"Paganism?  Possibly, but surely paganism touched with divinity.  And I venture to think that this paragraph serves best to illustrate the scope and purity of his thought and the brightness of his vision.

Branksome Dene Hotel,
Bournemouth,
July, 1937."

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