February has a bad reputation. It is often the sting in the tail of winter. February was a good month for French novelists. Hugo was born in 1802; Balzac was born three years earlier. In England Dickens was born in February 1812.
Born in February or otherwise (the ‘otherwise’ including Thackeray and Trollope), these novelists performed a lasting useful public service in holding up a mirror to society. Royalists and others sustained Balzac’s interest through novel after novel. Vicars and politicians are similarly obliged to Trollope. And Hugo topped them all with his ‘Les Misérables’.
We need our novelists. Perhaps theologians need them more than most. Imaginative literature allows us to get under the skin of other human beings and plumb the heights and depths to which human nature can go in terms of courage, resolution, envy and despair.
The French had their revolution and toppled not just the monarchy but a civilisation built on it. The English had already had their revolution and reinstated their monarchy as quickly as possible, becoming a great trading nation at the same time. The Church of England was shaped by these events as it had been by other ups and downs in its history.
When we think of Christianity in the British Isles, we have to remember the changes in its manifestation over the centuries. We have to resist the temptation to read back into the story understandings that were to emerge later and even to seem part of the original scheme of things. If it is true to say that the Church of England did not start with Henry the Eighth it is also true to say that it did not start with Charles Simeon.
… THAN THE SWORD
On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne rèsiste pas à l’invasion des idées. (Hugo)
A stand can be made against an invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.
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