![]() Higher Than Real Lifeīefore I discuss the content of Paradise Lost, I need to begin where C.S. Out of the mass of commentary on Milton that I have read, my favorite sentence comes from the testimony of someone joining Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia who began his testimony with the statement, “I was led to the Lord by John Milton.” Paradise Lost was the work that had been instrumental in this person’s conversion. In a prose passage where Milton discusses this, he places the vocation of the Christian poet “beside the office of the pulpit.”Īnd he bore some fruit of the pulpit. As Jameela Lares argues effectively in her book Milton and the Preaching Arts, he simply changed its venue from the pulpit to poetry. Milton scholars have long debated the question of when Milton abandoned his intention to become a minister, and the best conclusion is that he never did abandon his ministerial calling. Milton himself spoke of having been “church outed by the prelates,” meaning rejected for parish ministry by the governing Anglican hierarchy. Milton was a Puritan by conviction, and as such he was not welcome as a pastoral candidate in the state church. But then an obstacle derailed his intended clerical calling. In anticipation of that, Milton stayed on at Cambridge University to earn a master’s degree. From childhood, Milton was theoretically destined to become a minister. Paradise Lost was written by John Milton in the middle of the seventeenth century. ![]() Having written my dissertation on Paradise Lost, having taught Paradise Lost as many as two hundred times, having written articles and books on Milton, and having attended and spoken at Milton conferences, I love Milton’s masterpiece more now than ever. With this advice in mind, I commend Paradise Lost as a candidate for lifelong acquaintance. I would extend this bit of practical advice to include the possibility of choosing a single masterwork for detailed attention over a lifetime (though I do not thereby discourage wide reading). ![]() In his opening chapter, the author offered a piece of advice for ministers (and by implication all church leaders and literary laypeople) that makes total sense: we should claim one author as our own, specializing in that author the way a literary scholar might. I have referenced this book throughout my half-century career as a teacher and writer, even using adaptations of its title, Poetry as a Means of Grace, to good effect. As a small index to how much our society’s attitude to Christianity has changed in the past half-century, in 1941 a Princeton University English professor published a book with Princeton University Press addressed specifically to Christian ministers.
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