The Cayman Islands are within the ancient
Episcopal Jurisdiction
of
The Bishop of London granted him by the Crown in 1634
St Alban’s (Grand Cayman) & St
Mary’s (Cayman Brac)
Church & Office - 461 Shedden Road
P O Box 719, Grand Cayman KY1-1103, CAYMAN ISLANDS
Tel (345) 949 2757 : Fax (345)
949 0619
www.churchofenglandcayman.com
rector@churchofenglandcayman.com
4 Dec 2011
Welcome
to St Alban’s Anglican Church
Today's Scripture: Isaiah 40: 1-11 2
Peter 3: 8-15a
S. Mark 1: 1–8
Today: 8.35 a.m. Matins; 9.00 a.m. Church School; 9.30
a.m. Holy Eucharist; 6 p.m. EP
Wed – Fri: 12.30
p.m. Midday Prayers
Next Sunday: 8.35 a.m. Matins; 9.00a.m. Ch
School; 9.30 a.m. Holy Eucharist; 6.00 p.m. EP; 7.30 p.m. Carol Service Cayman Brac.
2nd
Sunday in Advent
Blessed
Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant
that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest
them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever
hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our
Saviour Jesus Christ.
C.S.
Lewis, The Literary Impact of The Authorised Version. © 1950 - Extract
Unless the religious
claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think,
be given only ‘mouth honour’ and that decreasingly.
For it is, through and through, a sacred book. Most of its component parts were
written, and all of them were brought together, for a purely religious purpose.
It contains good literature and bad literature. But even the good literature is
so written that we can seldom disregard its sacred character. It is easy enough
to read Homer while suspending our disbelief in the Greek pantheon; but then
the Iliad was not composed chiefly, if at all, to enforce obedience to
Zeus and Athene and Poseidon. The Greek tragedians
are more religious than Homer, but even there we have only religious
speculation or at least the poet’s personal religious ideas; not dogma. That is
why we can join in. Neither Aeschylus nor even Virgil tacitly prefaces his
poetry with the formula ‘Thus say the gods’. But in most parts of the Bible
everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with ‘Thus saith the Lord’. It is, if you like to put it that way, not
merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that
it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach. You
can read it as literature only by a tour de force. You are cutting the wood
against the grain, using the tool for a purpose it was not intended to serve.
It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to
give literary delight very long except to those who go to it for something
quite different. I predict that it will in the future be read, as it always has
been read, almost exclusively by Christians. …
For the Bible, whether
in the Authorised or in any other version, I foresee
only two possibilities; either to return as a sacred book or to follow the
classics, if not quite into oblivion yet into the ghost-life of the museum and
the specialist’s study. Except, of course, among the believing minority who
read it to be instructed and get literary enjoyment as a by-product.