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Lemuel Haynes Would Like Your Attention

“I am not afraid to appeal to the conscience of any rational and honest man as to the truth of what I have just hinted at. And if any will not confide in what I have humbly offered, I am persuaded it must be such shortsighted persons whose contracted eyes never penetrate through the narrow confines of self and are mere vassals to filthy lucre.”

Lemuel Haynes was not one to mince words. That was written in 1776 and he still had over a half century of rhetorical fusillades ahead of him. By the time he died in 1833, he had preached around 5500 sermons, and presumably a healthy number of non-sermons as well. Middlebury College gave him an honorary degree in 1804. Not bad for a guy who started out as an indentured servant.

Selected Sermons, a collection of four of Haynes’ sermons, includes a remarkably telling anecdote in the editor Jared Wilson’s foreword:

An oft-told anecdote about Haynes concerns a scene of family devotions at the Rose household where he was indentured. Given his adeptness at reading and his deep concern for spiritual matters, the Rose family would often ask Haynes to read a portion of Scripture or a published sermon. One night, Haynes read a homily of his own without credit (apparently the sermon on John 3:3 included in this volume). At the end, members of the family remarked at its quality and wondered, “Was that a Whitefield?” “No,” Haynes is said to have replied, “it was a Haynes.”

Later, Haynes joined the war against Britain right after the battles of Lexington and Concord and was eventually ordained in Connecticut in 1785 when he was 32 years old.

Ordained ministers were not exactly uncommon in New England at the time. How does Haynes compare? Wilson, in a marvelous formulation: “The few sermons we have of Lemuel Haynes prove him to be an exceptional expositor in the Puritan tradition, similar to Edwards or Whitefield though simpler than the former and more substantive than the latter.”

Haynes’ place in the pantheon of American preachers was solidified when the Library of America included one of his works (“Universal Salvation,” also included in this volume) in their volume American Sermons. He does indeed have a style that anyone who appreciates the genre will certainly enjoy reading.

All of this makes Haynes someone worthy of getting to know better, but there is one more tidbit which cements his place not just in a catalogue of early American sermonizers, but in early American history more broadly. Lemuel Haynes was the first ordained minister in America who was black.

The quotation at the outset of this review is from “Liberty Further Extended” which in true 18^th century style has a lengthy subtitle (and the Superfluous Capitalization beloved by This Reviewer): “Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave Keeping, Wherein Those Arguments that Are Used in its Vindication Are Plainly Confuted, Together with a Humble Address to Such As Are Concerned in the Practice.” The word “Humble” in that subtitle should probably have been omitted; it’s hard to read this sort of thing as something humbly spoken:

Can you wash your hands and say “I am clean from this sin”? Perhaps you will dare to say it before men; but dare you say it before whom we must all, in a few precarious moments, appear?

“Liberty Further Extended” begins with a now famous epigraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” At the time Haynes wrote this sermon, though, it was not nearly as famous as it is now; in fact, this sermon was the first time in history that passage from the Declaration was quoted. Two hundred years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. would use exactly that same passage from the Declaration to make exactly the same argument that Haynes was making. Haynes was a pioneer in making the Christian argument against slavery; William Wilberforce had not even converted to Christianity when Haynes was making this argument. It is a gripping sermon made even more enthralling by its originality.

But, Haynes should not be reduced to an early abolitionist. The first sermon in this collection is a polemical marvel, wonderful to read. “Universal Salvation” was a response given immediately after hearing Hosea Ballou preach a sermon advocating the idea of Universal Salvation, the doctrine that all people are saved. Haynes, a Puritan’s Puritan, eviscerates Ballou.

He begins by talking about the wonders of living in Eden.

Happy were the human pair amidst this delightful paradise until a certain preacher, in his journey, came that way and disturbed their peace and tranquility be endeavoring to reverse the prohibition of the Almighty—as in our text, “Ye shall not surely die.”

That is simply brilliant. To label the serpent in the garden a preacher, a preacher who is travelling about no less—rhetorical genius. I don’t know of any record which indicates whether Ballou was in the audience when Haynes began his talk, but you can just imagine the steam coming out of his ears at this remarkably sly way of being called the Devil Himself. The talk just keeps going with allusive remarks like that, all to show that “Universal Salvation is no newfangled scheme but can boast of great antiquity.”

“Go ahead,” you can hear Haynes saying in sentence after sentence, “listen to the words of Mr. Ballou and his assertions that you need not fear damnation. You won’t be the first to listen to Mr. Ballou. Adam and Eve listened to Mr. Ballou when he told them that they need have no fear of death. Go ahead and join them if you want. Of course Mr. Ballou sounds good; he is not called a silver tongued devil without reason.”

The volume also contains the aforementioned sermon on John 3:3, explaining the necessity of being born again and a sermon on what is expected of preachers (“The Character and Work of a Spiritual Watchman described”). It’s hard to know how representative the limited number of sermons which survive are of the thousands of sermons Haynes preached, but if these are any example, he would indeed have been the type of preacher you would love to hear. Crisp and focused with some rather nice turns of phrase throughout.

But, as Haynes would be quick to note, we should not give him too much credit:

We infer that ministers should not be proud of their preaching. If they preach the true gospel, they only, in substance, repeat Christ’s sermons; if they preach “Ye shall not surely die,” he only make use of the devil’s old notes that he delivered almost six thousand years ago.

(While on the subject of the devil, he is, as Christ noted, “the father of lies,” and so rest assured, Dear Reader, that I am not attempting to emulate the Great Deceiver in this here blog post. Everything I wrote above is (shockingly) what I actually think! I need to note this because the US Federal Government is rather concerned that I might be deceiving you because Crossway, the publisher of this volume, sent me a free copy of the book so I could read it and write about it. The government requires me to tell you that. Aren’t you glad the government is protecting you in this manner? Now if you click the picture of the book cover above and buy this volume, you can’t say I deceived you!)

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The Celebrity-Industrial Complex

The celebrity,” opined Daniel Boorstein, “is a person who is known for his well-knownness.”

Sixty years later, Katelyn Beaty provides an incisive update in Celebrities for Jesus. If you want to know how far society has drifted away from cherishing what Russell Kirk called “the permanent things,” Beaty stands ready to fill in for Virgil.

Before entering the celebrity inferno, a taxonomic note is in order. What is the difference between Fame and Celebrity? Fame has always been with us; people did something particularly noteworthy and fame followed. Celebrity is different; to be a celebrity does not require any fame-worthy achievement. It is a peculiarly modern phenomenon, only possible in an age with mass media. “Celebrity is fame’s shinier, slightly obnoxious cousin.” It “feeds on mass media” and “turns icons into idols.” “We don’t always know why we’re supposed to know who someone is, just that we should.” Consider this test: “Much to my chagrin, I know more factoids about my favorite actors, musicians, and comedians, than I do about my flesh-and-blood neighbors. Mass media gives us the illusion of intimacy while drawing our attention away from the true intimacy available within a physical community, be it an apartment building, a book club, or a church.”

Seeing the effect of celebrity on the culture is hard because most of us live in a celebrity-infused society. It would be helpful to find a subculture which is immune to its influence. If any place was going to be the holdout in a celebrity-addled society, surely it would be the Christian church. Right? The implications of Beaty’s book run far beyond the documentation of how celebrity culture is destroying the church. If you want to know what has happened to the broader culture and politics by looking at what should have been the last holdout, Beaty’s book is an excellent post-mortem.

Read the rest at The University Bookman

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Finding Joy Through Humility

“I’m a very umble person….I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,” said Uriah Heep, modestly; “let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a sexton.”

When the most famous humble person in all of literature is Uriah Heep, is it any wonder that Humility has a bad name?

Gavin Ortlund wants to change your impression. Humility: The Joy of Self-Forgetfulness is a humble little book on a big topic. Quiz: when you saw the word “humble” in the last sentence, did you think that was a positive or negative adjective?

Ortlund begins with what should be obvious: We know that humility is a virtue because Jesus was humble. He is explicitly described that way by Paul:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8, ESV)

If Jesus humbled himself, then we can immediately dispense with the three common ways of thinking about humility. Humility is not self-hatred, weakness, or hiding your talents.

Ortlund’s preferred definition of “humility” is “self-forgetfulness leading to joy.” That’s not a crisp definition, but it does get to the two parts of humility Ortlund most wants to emphasize. First is the self-forgetfulness. In example after example, Ortlund argues that the difference between those with humility and those without is the degree to which they concentrate on themselves. If I am talking with you and thinking more about what I am saying and what I am about to say and what I want to get out of this conversation, then I am not humble. The humble person listens and is gratefully learning from whatever others are saying. “Humility actually values the input of the speaker.”

It is the second part of the definition, though, that is the more revealing. Humility brings joy. In one of the very many quotations from C.S. Lewis, this joy is described:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

With that definition, Uriah Heep, that greasy, smarmy person, is not humble at all.

Why are humble people so full of joy? Have you ever noticed how many truly amazing things there are in the world and realized how fortunate you are to live amongst all those amazing things? You look at the majesty of a sunset and you realize that it is wonderful to be a small part of such an incredible world; on the other hand, the sunset does not look at you in awe. Imagine if when you encountered other people, you had that same sense of awe; you are in the presence of yet another image of God and you think about that rather than how that other person should be admiring you. That is humility.

It is hard to escape the feeling of humility when you think about the grace God has shown you, and yet we do manage to escape that feeling all the time. Quoting Edwards:” A sense of the loveliness of God is peculiarly that discovery of God which makes humility. A sense or discovery of God’s greatness without his loveliness will not do it. But it is a discovery of his loveliness that is the very discovery that affects the thing and makes the soul humble.

Ortlund is enamored with that idea of loveliness. Once you realize that God is lovely, far more lovely than you are, how could you not be humble?

Yet, when you look at the church, do you see humility? In the second half of Ortlund’s book, he moves from the theory to the practice of humility. What is striking about the second half is that there is nothing in it that is surprising in the least, but it is painfully obvious that people in the church need to hear this message again and again. Humility is in rare supply among people who profess to be captured by the loveliness of God.

Ortlund splits the discussion in to three parts: humility in leadership, between peers, and toward leadership, but his discussions in each chapter constantly cross the lines between those three things. The chapters are more accurately delineated by the types of practices being advocated to develop humility.

The first chapter is on leadership. There are far too many pastors out there who are filled with pride. Granted, many of them are convinced that they are, like Uriah Heep, “the umblest person going,” but they give away the game by showing their pride at how humble they are. What does Ortlund advocate? He doesn’t say it, but stripped to its essence, he recommends that everyone in a church should immediately buy a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Consider these two passages:

1. “Too often, we conceive of leadership as primarily corrective, with occasional encouragement. It should be the exact opposite. Encouragement should be the norm. Corrections should be sparing.”
2. “Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you will have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique—be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it—and he will practice until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.”

Or this pair:

1. “Be willing to apologize….If you are a leader, freely acknowledge your mistakes to those under your care.”
2. “There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one’s errors.…[W]hen we are wrong—and that will be surprisingly often, if we are honest with ourselves—let’s admit our mistakes quickly and with enthusiasm.”

The first one of each pair is Ortlund; the second is Carnegie. Ortlund could have included Carnegie’s whole book as an appendix. If you want to be a leader in the church, you need to adopt the social skills that Dale Carnegie advocates. Smile. Be encouraging. Never criticize or complain. Make others feel valuable.

When Ortlund turns to thinking about humility among peers in the church, he writes an essay on the destructive vice of envy. There is again nothing theologically new in this chapter and I have no doubt Ortlund would agree with that assessment, and yet sadly it is a chapter that could profitably be handed out in every church in the land. Paul talks about how everyone in the church is a distinct part of the body of Christ, and yet too many of those body parts are, just like Paul described, constantly complaining that the other parts are getting too much attention and silently rejoicing when they fail.

The chapter on humility toward leadership is the most heart-breaking in the book. The main point is that churches need leadership and in a functioning church people respect that leadership. But the emotional bulk of the chapter is Ortlund’s repeated assurances that he is not saying that one needs to submit to abusive church leaders. In a book about the positive virtue of humility, why this dramatic emphasis on the negative effects of abusive church leaders? It’s rather obvious, isn’t it? Churches across the land are filled with refugees from abusive church situations. If you want a simple explanation for why humility is in short supply in church congregations, it is that far too many church leaders have abused their positions of authority. Trust has fallen. If you don’t trust the leaders of the church, how can you set aside your defense mechanisms and be humble?

What to make of a book like this? There is nothing strikingly novel about the argument; it hews closely to orthodox Christian theology. In a church full of people who are models of Christian behavior, there is nothing here that would not be lived out on a daily basis. But, that church of perfect saints does not exist. Your church, filled with real people, could almost certainly benefit from a reflection on this theme.

(The ever-amusing mandatory legal disclaimer: Crossway sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Why does the law doubt my honesty? Does anyone in Washington really think I would sell my integrity for a $12 book on humility?)

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Is Your Church a Company or a Family?

What is the difference between a church and a retail store?

That sounds like the start of a bad joke, but instead it is the start of a reflection on (one of) the problems in the modern American (and maybe not only the American) church.

Begin with the answer: “There is no substantive difference between a church and a retail store.” A church is a business entity designed to sell a product (Christianity). It does so by advertising its product to non-customers to convince them to come into the store (the sanctuary) a first time in order to sample the wares. This outside advertising needs to emphasis the positives of the church, promising to meet some need of the prospective customer. Once the prospective customer is inside, the church needs to encourage return visits by making sure the product is appealing and enjoyable. The CEO (pastor or priest) of the church needs to be charismatic, making sure that people are eager to come back and hear more next week. Once a customer enters the building, the experience needs to be catered to ensure that this is indeed a great shopping experience, that the product is of uniformly entertaining quality. It is also helpful if the structure of the church is a pyramid sales model; the customers can move up in the organization and become part of the sales team, and those who are most successful at sales can ultimately be promoted to the senior management team and have regular meetings with that charismatic CEO, hearing the CEO’s latest vision for advancing the organization.

If that vision of church sounds enticing, then congratulations, there are many many opportunities out there for your entertainment pleasure.

Skye Jethani hopes you reacted to that description with disgust. What if Jesus Was Serious About the Church? is an exploration of a better model for the church. The church is a family.

Jethani has been around the church in a wide array of capacities for some time. Currently, he is the straight man on The Holy Post podcast with his funny man sidekick cohost Phil Vischer (of Veggie Tales fame). You don’t have to listen to that podcast for very long to realize that Jethani is clever and highly (very highly) opinionated. (The Long Suffering Wife of Your Humble Narrator loves said podcast, by the way, so many of my car journeys have been filled with Jethani’s thoughts.)

One of Jethani’s recent projects has been the What If Jesus Was Serious? books. This is the third installment in that series. Organized as short, pointed reflections on an array of topics, the series reaps the benefits and pays the costs of a long set of short three page long reflections. On the plus side, this allows Jethani to make his arguments with very little build up and no need to force a connection from one part to the next. “If Jesus was Serious…Then We Gather to See Through One Another’s Eyes” is followed by “If Jesus was Serious…Then the Church Gathers for Community, not a Concert” and preceded by “If Jesus was Serious…Then We Must Not Give Up on Meeting Together.” Chapter by chapter, Jethani zeroes in, makes his point, and ends the chapter. Since author has strong opinions, most of the individual chapters are thought-provoking. But that leads to the weakness of the form. There is simply no time to build some arguments in three pages. When you agree with Jethani, you think it is a powerful short statement of Truth. When you disagree…well, you wish The Holy Post podcast had a call-in portion so you could at a minimum ask him to explain or sometimes explain to him why he is a bit off.

So, what is the overall argument of this book? As I noted above, Jethani argues that the church is better thought of as a family than as a corporation. The reflections are loosely grouped into five larger sections. He begins noting that the church is like a family reunion. When you are crafting a business, you can imagine your ideal customers and seek them out. When you have a social club, you can offer membership to the people with whom you want to socialize. When you go to a family reunion, however, you have that Uncle whose opinions you can’t stand, and that Cousin with zero social skills, and that Great Aunt who is infirm and might die any day, and that Niece who is flirting with alcoholism. Of no small importance in the modern age, the family is where you have people with radically different political opinions, and because this family is the church, you have to find a way to remember that what unites Christians is of far more importance than what divides us.

Jethani goes on to note that when the family gathers, it is the meal which brings us all together. That meal at the church family is Communion. We remember Christ’s death by jointly partaking of his body and blood. “If Jesus was Serious…Then His Table Should be More Revered than the Pastor.” Who would argue with that? Yet, in the life of many churches, the table is relegated to something of second or third or fourth level importance. But, the Eucharist should remind us that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, the church is the body of Christ, united with all the other churches in the world both now and in the past.

All of which leads to the question of what we are doing at the family gathering on Sunday mornings. If you are showing up for a floor show, then you have missed the point of a church service. If entertainment is the goal of the service, then once again, something is strongly amiss. Churches spend far too much time dreaming up ways to ape the modern forms of entertainment, forgetting that if this is a family gathering, if this is the body of Christ, then the point of the gathering is not to separately entertain everyone who is there. You go to church to meet others and worship God together, sharing in one another’s sorrows and joys. You go to church not just to have people minister to you, but also and of equal importance to minister to others.

This, Jethani notes, is the family business. This is the role of the family servants. The family does not need a new vision statement. It does not need a celebrity CEO delivering charismatic messages to reach a preselected group of people. If Jesus was serious about the church, then “worship is about seeing God’s intrinsic value, not his usefulness,” “true worship is about relationships, not rituals,” “the church’s mission requires the church’s unity,” and “the church shouldn’t just be strong, it should be anti-fragile.”

Why read this book? This is not a book to read because Jethani has the definitive answers to all the questions. (I am pretty certain he would completely agree.) The reason to read the book is that Jethani does a fantastic job asking the questions. This is a book designed to make you think about your congregation and your relationship to your congregation, and ultimately your relationship to the holy, catholic and apostolic church.

If you read this book because it raises the questions in thought-provoking ways and then read Jethani’s ruminations in a generous and thoughtfully critical way, you will learn much. If Jesus was serious about the church, then he really wants you to be thoughtful in thinking about his body, the Church.

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Resting in the Promises of God

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, ESV)

Spurgeon on Resting in the Promises of God, edited by Jason Allen, is a set of 8 sermons on that theme. This is part of a larger series of books put out by Moody Press which aim to publish bite size samples from the overwhelming large number of sermons preached by Charles Spurgeon in the 19^th century.

The first thing to know about this book is that it is not a theological treatise on rest; it is sermons on the topic. The book thus reads more like a daily devotional than something written by Augustine or Calvin.

The form fits the message; as Spurgeon explains:

“Then, when you are willing to learn, please note what is to be learned. In order to get perfect rest of mind, you have to learn of Jesus not only the doctrines He teaches but a great deal more than that. To go to school to be orthodox is a good enough thing, but the orthodoxy that brings rest is an orthodoxy of the spirit.…To catch the spirit of Jesus is the road to rest. To believe what He teaches me is something, to acknowledge him as my religious leader and as my Lord is much, but to strive to be conformed to His character, not merely in its external developments but in its interior spirit, this is the grammar of rest.”

That concluding phrase, “the grammar of rest,” is a perfect summary of the content of the sermons in this volume. We tend to think of rest as something passive, but the rest Spurgeon describes is quite active. Consider the passage from Matthew 11 at the outset of this review. How does one find rest? By taking up the yoke of Christ. Spurgeon:

“It looks rather strange that after having received rest, the next verse should begin: ‘Take my yoke upon you.’ ‘Ah! I had been set free from laboring, am I to be a laborer again?’ Yes, yes, take my yoke and begin. ‘And my burden is light.’ ‘Burden? Why, I was heavy laden just now, am I to carry another burden?’ Yes. A yoke—actively and a burden—passively, I am to bear both of these. ‘But I found rest by getting rid of my yoke in my burden!’ And you are to find a further rest by wearing a new yoke and bearing a new burden. Your yoke galled, but Christ’s yoke is easy; your burden was heavy, but Christ’s burden is light.”

Similarly, in his sermon on 1 Peter 5:7 (“casting all your care upon Him, for he cares for you,” NKJV), Spurgeon doggedly explains that to be relieved of your cares, you must actively work to cast them away from you. “The care mentioned in the text, even though it be exercised upon legitimate objects, has in itself the nature of sin.”

It is in arguments like this that we can see both the strength and the weakness of the sermon format. So much depends on the implied audience. Spurgeon: “It is an ill thing for Christians to be sad.” If you imagine that being said to someone who is perpetually sad because their every whim is not satisfied, then that is a sound statement. It is indeed an ill thing to forget the blessings of God and focus only on life’s disappointments. But that same message delivered to someone grieving about a death? Even Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. Was it an ill thing for Jesus to be sad?

Who then is the audience for a book like this? This is not the book for the scholar wanting to think through a theology of rest. It is the book for someone who cannot seem to cast off the anxieties of life, who is constantly worried about the future. If that person has been in a church for a while, there will be no theological innovations here. But, Spurgeon preaches his message with such earnestness and passion, the book may just crack through those anxieties and remind the reader that if you really believe that God has made promises, then it is probably a good idea to rest in the assurance that God will follow through.

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(Moody Press sent me a copy of the book in exchange for this review.)

Christie and Chesterton

Agatha Christie meet G. K. Chesterton.

Imagine a young Agatha Christie. She wants to write Crime Fiction.

But, who should be her role model?

On the one side, she can pattern her work after Arthur Conan Doyle. Hercule Poirot becomes the modern day Sherlock Holmes, using his little gray cells to solve puzzles. (Or as Christie would actually write, his little grey cells.) The clues are all handed to the reader along with an array of red herrings. The reader tries to be as clever as the detective and notice the real clues and uncover the culprit. The novel ends satisfactorily with all the puzzles being resolved and the reader exclaiming either “I knew it!” or “I should have seen it!”

Agatha Christie became world famous following that model. In very many ways she outdoes Doyle in the quality of the stories, even though none of her detectives ever quite become as instantly recognizable as Sherlock Holmes.

But, there is an alternate reality when Christie emulates not Doyle, but G.K. Chesterton. The Father Brown stories also have a detective, in this case an unassuming priest. He roams around and solves mysteries, and the stories are quite nice as mysteries, but there is no doubt at all that Chesterton thinks solving the crime is only a part, and a relatively unimportant part, of the story. Instead, Chesterton constantly draws attention to theological puzzles and mysteries. The stories are merely ways for Chesterton to indulge himself in working out a paradox or an oddity of life and drawing the reader’s attention to larger matters.

What would have happened if Christie had gone that route? You need not wonder. You just need to read The Mysterious Mr. Quin. I started this book having absolutely no idea that it was in a different category than Christie’s usual fare. The first story seems like a conventional Christie style mystery, but it is not really her best. Then the same with the second one. Mr. Quin is indeed mysterious; he just sort of pops into the story, but it seems like it is Mr. Satterthwaite who is doing the actual solving of the mysteries… mysteries that seem less and less like mysteries as they go along.

Eventually it dawned on me. The individual stories weren’t really the mysteries in this book. The real mystery is “Who in the world is this Mr. Quin guy?” (Slaps forehead: Hence the title of the book!) He just sort of pops up, looking oddly like a harlequin (Ah, Mr. Harley Quin!) as the light shining on him seems rather consistently filtered through a stained glass window or some such thing.

How is he always there at just the right moment? Why does he keep crossing Satterthwaite’s path just as there is some crisis in the life of someone Satterthwaite meets? Why does each story seem less and less like a Whodunit?

By two thirds of the way through the book, Mr. Quin stops even seeming like a real character in the stories—he emerges as a sort of deus ex machina, showing up in time to have a brief conversation with Satterthwaite or one of the other characters before he vanishes again.

And then, he really does start showing up magically as if he just climbed an impossible to climb cliff and he departs by heading straight back to the impossible to climb down cliff. Wait, the Reader exclaims. Is Mr. Quin even a human? Is he like some sort of Spirit Being or Guardian Angel? We never find out.

By this point, I had to remind myself this was Christie, not Chesterton. If this was a Chesterton collection, the solution to the mystery is obvious. There are more things in heaven and earth, Dear Reader, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Why shouldn’t Mr. Quin be some sort of non-human spirt wandering the earth doing good? Why do you assume that all mysteries must be solved by tell-tale clues interpreted by clever human agency? Why do you discount the fact that some mysteries are only revealed by knowing the details of the human heart?

This all seems so very unlike an Agatha Christie novel, but her name is right on the cover. She wrote these stories very early in her career, quite literally at the same time when was working out Hercule Poirot. The Mysterious Mr. Quin is the Road Not Taken.

Does this mean that Christie decided to go the more realistic route? Can we say that Hercule Poirot is more realistic than Harley Quin? Only if we deny the existence of ethereal beings.

This Christie-Chesterton mashup has my mind reeling in exactly the same way that Chesterton always jolts one out of lazy patterns of thought.

On the one hand, I have a solid faith in the existence of non-corporeal beings. God exists. Angels and demons exist. Of this I have no doubt.

But, if I am reading a story about angles and demons, I have zero doubt I am reading fiction. I never once paused to wonder if Good Omens was non-fiction. But, that isn’t really all that surprising—everyone thinks Good Omens is fiction.

What about Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy? There I still stick with fiction, but suddenly I am a lot less willing to say there is nothing real there at all. Fictional stories about real things. Sure the stories are fiction, but angels and demons are real.

If Hercule Poirot shows up to solve a mystery, I know the story is fiction, but it seems like a plausibly true story. It is realistic. If, on the other hand, Poirot could suddenly call down lightning bolts to slay the murderer, I would think the story was rather unrealistic. If Mr. Quin is just an angel who shows up to help out at a moment of crisis, why do I think that story is unrealistic? Why? Just because to the best of my knowledge, I have never seen an angel roaming the earth, I cannot deny the possibility that they are out there. So, why do I instantly think Mr. Quin is unrealistic? Why am I constantly looking for explanations of how he could both be human and do the things he does?

In other words the real mystery of The Mysterious Mr. Quin is why I find Mr. Quin to be mysterious at all.

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