A Lover's Quarrel With the World

By R. Maurice Boyd

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0920413269
• ISBN13: 9780920413265
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Welch Publishing Company, Inc.
• Length: 151 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Life is a Drama, not a Process.

This is my favorite sort of book. Probably, a book critic would say, for all the wrong reasons. It's about 150 pages long. I like short books. It's full of many, short chapters. I like to read a chapter at a time. The chapters are actually essays. Even better, no thread running through the book to keep track of. It belongs to the vastly popular, and yet discredited, category of non-fiction. No plot to keep track of. And now, the reason no one would ever want to read it at all: it's a collection of sermons. Boring! you say. I heartily agree. Except, these sermons aren't three point Calvinist Clinchers. Or those riveting ones where all the main points rhyme. Or the diverting bits shoved in between staid and stale hymns that start with "Stop me if you've heard this one..." Or even, which I'd far prefer, a revivalist altar call. File this under none of the above. Not a book with all the answers (or an obvious restatement of the obvious questions). Not yet another self-help book (while I help myself to your money). No, instead: ruminating, meditative, essays (or chapters, if you like) a brief and engaging example of what once was, and hopefully may be again, the art of the sermon. "There was a time, not so very long ago, when volumes of sermons were in considerable demand", notes Malcolm Muggeridge in the brief, two page foreword. But two pages of MM tend to outweigh 500 pages of most other authors for readability. I found this book while searching for more Muggeridge to read. "Almost as appealing as his preaching...was Maurice Boyd's humour." That's from the brief, three page introduction by Ian Hunter, himself the author of an entertaining bio. of Muggeridge. The circle is coming around. So far, it sounds like two heavyweights are slugging for some unknown, circuit-rider of whom we know nothing. Wait. Humour? In a sermon? Then Hunter says of this Boyd: "One of his favorite axioms is that at the heart of Christianity is the message, 'Oh, come off it!'"Still don't want to read it? I merely refer the reluctant reader to the chapter (or essay, or sermon) called "When God Lets Us Down" initially taking off from Job 30: 26, "Evil has come though I expected good." If you don't find Boyd speaking for you here, know at least that he's speaking for this reviewer. It escapes me why Westminster Press doesn't keep this book in print, but then I also often wonder why they don't kick down my door with the offer of a publishing deal. Readers may not, but writers who even dip a toe in the book world find themselves echoing the words of Job. That aside, a half century ago, we're told, people for some reason liked to dress up and shove into a pew and listen to a sermon. Apparently the only relief from the whole ghastly business was offered by Maurice Boyd, who subsequently packed the house in both Canada and New York. The rage for the sermon having passed, the taste for books lingered a bit longer, and hence the present volume. Books, we are told, are themselve