‘Humpty, what do you make of the word ‘Areopagus’?’
Humpty shrugged. ‘Sounds like a warlike dinosaur.’
Maybe, Humpty. But readers of the New Testament know better. When Paul was in Athens, he was brought before the council of the Areopagus and invited to explain the new way that he was proposing alongside the beliefs of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The Areopagus was in fact an assembly of the great and the good. We have nothing quite like it. Perhaps it was similar to the House of Lords. Perhaps it was more like the Académie Française, a group of 40 ‘immortals’ whose thankless task it is to keep an eye on the French language and ensure that it is not degraded or corrupted by implants of English slang, for example.
John Milton in the 17th century took up the word as the title of a declaration about free speech or the liberty of unlicensed printing. It is in line with Voltaire’s famous ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ In the course of his defence of free speech Milton says: ‘Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep …’
This is readily dismissed as hokum or post-imperial nostalgia or just plain wishful thinking but we should like to think there is truth in it, that it represents a fresh start after lockdown, a promising new chapter in the English narrative.
Let Milton have another word: ‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.’ Over the top maybe but we can have enough faith to be convinced that the Christian Gospel is still capable of firing up men’s hopes and energies after 2,000 years. And from Milton there is this: ‘God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in his Church…’ We have something similar on even better authority: ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ (Revelation 21.5) There’s something to mull over in these desiccated days.
I shouldn’t have mentioned the word to Humpty. He’s looking up tyrannosaurus and the extinction. He’s thousands of years away. I can see how he managed to fall off that wall. I’d like to think there are dinosaurs today who number free speech among their virtues. A brontosaurus would be a likely candidate.
JOHN WILKES
John Wilkes (1725-1797) saw himself as ‘a friend of liberty’ with some justification. Member of Parliament and newspaper proprietor, he was highly critical of the government, served a term in jail, became lord mayor of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society. His private life was beyond description but he put his constituents’ interests first and he has a prominent place in the history of free speech.
HERBERT INGRAM
Herbert Ingram founded the first illustrated weekly news magazine in 1852. The first copy sold 26,000. By its end-date that figure was up to 300,000. When a new Archbishop of Canterbury was installed, Ingram sent a copy (containing pictures of the event) to every clergyman in the county. He died in a paddle-boat accident in the USA in 1860. There is a statue of him in his birthplace, Boston, Lincolnshire.
If you have a comment on this post please send an email to Revd John King at johnc.king@talktalk.net Edited extracts may be published. To forward this to a friend click on the chain icon below.