Tea at Trianon: Interview with Dr. Janet Smith

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Interview with Dr. Janet Smith

From Homiletic and Pastoral Review:

There are many situations in this world where it is tempting to think that truth and love are incompatible. Christians, however, know that it is never loving to compromise on the truth. We are concerned not only with people’s “happiness” in this world, but with their eternal happiness. Christ made it very clear that we will not attain eternal happiness unless we live in accord with the truth. His life made it clear that confronting those who are living lives incompatible with the truth is not easy: people easily dismiss the truth-teller, and can actually hate the truth teller, because those living lives incompatible with the truth often don’t want to know the truth, for they would then have to change their ways. (Read more.)