A little brimstone

by chuckofish

Today is the 217th birthday of the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Like most of our mid-19th century poets, Longfellow is not much appreciated these days. Eric Metaxas writes in his book If You Can Keep It that part of this is due to the fact that since roughly the 1960s “public expressions of the heroic, whether in stories or other artworks have effectively disappeared. America decided that it made more sense to be suspicious of heroes than to venerate them.” So we don’t want to read about Paul Revere or the like anymore. This is a shame.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go on reading Longfellow.

Here’s a poem, “The Ladder of Saint Augustine”, which was adapted into a hymn.

You can read the whole poem here.

And here’s a really good sermon on Revelation 14:6-7 by Kevin DeYoung that offers some more brimstone. “Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.” Read the whole thing: it’s long–like all PCA sermons–but it’s worth it.