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Preached at Holy Trinity, Dunfermline and Saint Margaret's Rosyth on Sunday 9 August
I’m going to start this morning by reading you a poem by Matthew Arnold, called Dover Beach.
The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the Straits, - on the French coast, the light
Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air! Only, form the long line of spray
Where the ebb meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in,
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah love, let us be true
To one another! for othe world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as
on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
In a book simply called Night, Ellie Weisel reflects on his experiences at Auschwitz and, in particular of being forced to watch a young boy being hanged.
The child, Weisel remembers, had the face of a sad-eyed angel, and was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows.
Behind Weisel, one of the other prisoners asked: ‘Where is God? Where is he?’
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