3 - The reanimation of Protestantism II

Summary

I know not whether this letter will find you at Berne, probably not, for I have just read the official account of the King of Prussia's death; but … I would not willingly let a day pass without expressing my deep interest in the present crisis. That extract which you wrote out for me is indeed glorious, and fills one with thankfulness that God has raised up such a King in a great Protestant country at this momentous time; when the great enemy in his two forms at once, Satan and Antichrist, the blasphemy of the Epicurean Atheist, and the idolatry of the lying and formal spirit of Priestcraft, is assailing the Church with all his might. May Christ's strength and blessing be with the King and with you, that Prussia may be as the mountain of the Lord, the city of God upon a hill, whose light cannot be hid.

(Rev. Thomas Arnold to C. C. J. Bunsen, 13 June 1840, in A. P. Stanley, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 1844, 1852 edn, p. 527)

In all ages, those who undertake the difficult task of Samuel are still liable to the same kind of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. They are … charged with not going far enough, or going too far; they are charged with saying too much, or with saying too little; they are regarded from … a partial point of view, and not from one which takes in the whole … Whosoever they may be, and howsoever they may be … despised, they … are the silent healers who bind up the wounds of their age in spite of itself; they are the good physicians who knit together the dislocated bones of a disjointed time … […]