Mary Slessor 's The Lord

' Mary's heart was already with god and conventional values were not going to keep her a way from the life he had chosen for her.' (Mary MacKillop A tribute, 1995)

The excerpt from the novel Under the feet of Jesus, by Helena Maria Viramontes, shows the development of Estrella from being angry to understanding what she needed to accomplish to succeed. Viramontes uses figurative language, selection of detail, and tone to show the changes Estrella’s character goes through to figure out how beneficial it is to know what the letters in the alphabet looked like in order to be able to read and to be interested in wanting to read.

In this paper, I will review Charles Ryrie’s book The Holy Spirit. I will detail what I feel the book is about. I will emphasize various points given by the author that stood out to me. Finally, I will give my personal evaluation of the book.

As Mary’s story unravels, she continues to suffer long hours of work, starvation, and separation from her family. She reads her holy bible and is constantly reminding herself that God is with her and will see her through these trials. Her spirits are lifted her master agrees to sell Mary to her husband, and her mistress begins the journey with her, but before long the mistress decides not to go any further and they turn back. Not long after, she starts to loose hope that she will ever be reunited with her family. She becomes discouraged, and her spirit

Often times we are at a loss for words when it comes to talking about the person of the Holy Spirit. Beth Felker Jones in her work entitled “God the Spirit” serves as an introduction to the study of the Holy Spirit in a distinctly Wesleyan and Ecumenical Perspective. Jones is working against the notion that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is often the most neglected of all Christian teachings (1). She recognizes her experience within the Wesleyan tradition as one that shapes her pneumatology and this book. She asserts that one of Wesleyan Christianity’s special gifts is it’s “leaning against any tendency to neglect the Spirit” (4). Even with this framework she aims to place the Wesleyan perspective in a larger ecumenical milieu that shows the continuity of a Wesleyan pneumatology with the Tradition of the Church. Overall, her approach is very accessible, as she assumes very little and writes in such a way that allows her to cover large dogmatic topics clearly and concisely. By merit of simply being an introduction only style book, there is the risk of glossing over topics and not providing enough in depth discussion to fully understand and comprehend the doctrine discussed. A reader should feel confident that Jones has indeed provided us with a solid introduction to Wesleyan pneumatology that has the ability to bear fruit and initiate growth in the life of the believer.

Knowledge is a powerful thing. Knowledge can give a person an advantage in many aspects of life. Knowledge can help an individual get a job, it can help someone get ahead in a class and it can help an individual understand what happens around them and why. In the excerpt from the novel Under the Feet of Jesus, Helena Maria Viramontes describes how and why Estrella began to read. Viramontes uses selection of detail, figurative language and tone to describe Estrella’s development from being puzzled and vitriolic to being educated and astute.

During their “removes,” Mary becomes too weak to walk any longer, and the Indians, “like inhuman creatures, laugh and rejoice to see it.”They do nothing to provide for her comfort during their long journeys through the rough landscape. Her only refuge is to take comfort in her prayer and hope that God will help her through these hard times. After the first several days, Mary develops a dependency upon the Indians, and begins to get used to their means of living.

When Mary Rowlandson, was capture she was injured by the Indian. Although she survive that wound but her daughter die. The Indians were so brutal “Barbarous creature, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies” (259). In this case Rowlandson was in pain for the loss at the same was badly treated by the Indians. Another heroic incident is when the Indians attack a small village during

Mary Rowlandson, the hero Mary Rowlandson really suffered a difficult time from the attack and during the captivity, but she did get rid of these awful experiences. Through the book, the Bible she gained due to the marriage encourages her a lot. In her opinion, all the things she experienced was led by god, because the god wanted her to experience those things to let her learn a class that she had to protect herself. During the time been captured and did not been released, she even thought that she was not released because she had not learn the class sufficiently and need to experience difficulties more. Although the plots and the events she recorded do have value for history event, but some opinions, like the part that god led her, are too personal. In the book she also expressed that she did not understand Indians behavior, but she acted like Indians in some aspects after she lived with Indians for several weeks. In her opinion, Indians were always savage and away from civilization. However, some Indians did wear colonists’ clothes and even did pray and claimed that they became Christianity. The changes on her and some differences on Indians that did not match with her idea do change her mind and the line she made to distinguish civilization and

Since God was not tolerant of sinners and evil acts, Mary recounted many different acts that were considered evil or barbaric that the Native Americans did. For example, when the Native Americans attacked Mary’s town, she described the aftermath as, “a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves,” (Derounian 12-51). Mary separates the

The first night she is captured she spends the night wounded and holding her young child who is sick sitting on the cold snowy ground. What she grieved mostly was that she was alone without a Christian friend close to her to comfort and encourage her. She literally thought she would die during the night, but when she sees the light of the next morning she is so grateful that she is alive and immediately gives God the glory. “Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning” (Rowlandson 131).

Hudson Taylor and Mary Slessor, missionaries who impacted their societies, have many similarities and differences that divide and bring them together. Also even though they had the same job, they both went completely different directions on some of their choices. This is why they were both unique while following the same path. Choosing what God had laid ahead for them without any complaints.

Many live have been affected by the enthusiasm of these two courageous missionaries: Hudson Taylor and Mary Slessor. These two missionaries changed how things were in the countries they had stayed in. People looked up to these two missionaries. Thy had a strong impact on a lot of people.

Slessor was a missionary, and believed that Africans benefited from missionaries, that “God has had to employ the British Government to do what we could not do... [but] had it not been for the work of the Church, they could not have done what they have” (Proctor 46). However, it important to note that she focused more on her relationship with the indigenous people, especially regarding her work as a vice-consul and judge and changing some of their customs, such as killing of twins and human sacrifice, than on conversion to Christianity. Additionally, Kingsley, goes onto to state admiration for the work Slessor does, stated that she had “…unbound courage and energy,” (Kingsley 131), when telling a story of how Slessor came to rescue of a pair of twins and their mother. Both women did imply that they believed that they were of the superior race, with Slessor stated that in response, when there were numerous improvements to the area, such as roads, courts, and administrative offices opened, it was good “so that the rights of the poor erstwhile scum of society may be safeguarded, and that they might have guidance of the right kind.”

The memoir of Old Elizabeth presents a rare and important slave narrative in which the stories of African American women intersect with the experiences of African American people in roles of religious leadership. Elizabeth broke many of societies conventions at the time by preaching and holding religious meeting despite being woman. Her religious work was met with backlash from the church and from many other people who did not accept the idea of a woman leading religious services, yet she continued to practice until her health would no longer allow for it. This is unusual as it spends most of the narrative on the time after she was free rather than focusing on the time that she was enslaved the way that many slave narratives do.