Just now, as we sat together in the sermon factory that is ICM library, The Mac pointed me to a very funny passage in the book he's currently reading: T. C. Hammond: His Life and Legacy in Ireland and Australia. Of course, those of you who know of T. C Hammond will be familiar with that oft-repeated motto: "Get a sense of humour or get out of mission work". Anyway, true to the spirit of this wise dictum, there is a good deal of comic material in Warren Nelson's biography of the great man (incidentally, T. C was formerly the Superintendant of Irish Church Missions, where I now work). The Mac directed my attention to this gem on pp. 70:
"Sometimes for visitors a show of answering was arranged [for the children under Hammond's care to quote one or some of The Hundred Texts, verses they learned verbatim from Scripture]. On one occassion, some of the children were taken to England and at a meeting gave a display of their knowledge. One clergyman in the meeting thought it was too good to be true, and suspecting that the children knew which verses were to be asked he requested an opportunity to examine them:
Clergyman: What does Timothy say about the inspiration of Scripture? [Silence] Aha! you don't know that one.
Small Dublin Boy: Please Sir, Timothy doesn't say anything about inspiration, but Paul in Second Timothy Chapter three verse sixteen says 'All Scripture is inspired of God..."
Further on, Nelson writes that when T. C Hammond and his team went out into the streets of Dublin to share the gospel, they had a certain necessary survival tactic:
"[Evangelism] was thankless work carried on against prevailing ignorance, suspicion and hostility. That is well-illustrated by a survival tactic the visitors [Hammond & Co.] had to adopt when visiting the tenements which housed many families. The rule was to start on the top floor in order to keep a line of retreat open. One visitor was met on the doorstep with a sword. Even when they offered the Douay New Testament it was slandered as 'a communist book'!"
Ahh, the good old days.
The Mac promises to alert me to more stirringly funny passages as he reads on, so there may be more to come.
Over and Out -
The Scribbling Apprentice
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