In “Eternal Life: Heaven and Hell” he said:
That kind of preaching has gone. It has gone because it is not the purpose of our Faith to offer men salvation as a fire-escape. It has gone because its conception of God and of our Lord was vindictive, cruel and unworthy. But, and here lies the mistake, we have rejected the Christian doctrine of judgment because the imagery in which it was clothed was liable to be crudely used.
As an ecumenist, he alternatively followed the Christian calendar without necessarily adhering to the lectionary, or took up the Creed and atypically for modern Puritans, did not pursue the expository of one of the books of the Bible. He adhered faithfully to Christological themes, in exegesis and applications of Scripture related to contemporary situations. As in other sermons, we find that he is not heavy on Patristic learning or on citations from the Greek, Latin and Hebrew, or even on wit, since he was speaking to a regular congregation, mostly during a period of duress, the Second World War, the time of Apartheid in Africa, the time of racial unrest in America. The tone in general was honest and earnest; he used empathy and imagination and the application was understandable for all.
The Use of History
History appears in many sermons under various forms.
For church history Davies has sympathy for doubting Thomas. He refers to Martin Luther, William Temple and William Carey, Barth and Gibson Winter, but also to St. Francis of Assisi and St. François Xavier. In a conversion story, he expresses admiration for Count Zizendorf, the founder of the Moravians. His modern saints are mainly Albert Schweitzer, Father Damien and an unnamed priest who spent the whole of Holy Week in jail, preaching to the inmates. He makes interesting rapprochements as between Aeschylus and Niebuhr in “A victorious faith conquering racial tension,” as they both believe that it is in suffering that we learn.
Quotes
Davies also likes to quote from the learned. Many of the sermons start with a quote from Scripture, and sometimes the sermon itself is strewn with repetition of the initial scriptural text, as in “Essentials of Happiness.” More often, he cites some of the expositors of Scripture. He often refers to Victor Murray and quotes him in “The Holy Spirit” and to Canon Cockin in “The harvest of the Holy Spirit” and John Wesley in “The Atonement” and “Authentic non-conformity.” Expositors do not mean for him only church historians. He practices the belief in the priesthood of all believers by quoting writers and poets: in the “Atonement” he cites William James and G. K. Chesterton (also in “Terminus becomes tunnel”), in the “Incarnation” the poet Charles Lamb. In the same breath, in “God’s covenant with men,” Davies cites John Calvin and Hugh Lyon on the importance of belonging to a church to be a Christian. At the time of war, in “Christianity as the Servant Church” he expresses his admiration for the German Bonhoeffer’s views on the true spirit of the church and both for him and Niemoller for their resistance to the Nazis. Sensitive to those of his church who come to church with honest doubt in “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief,” he hopes that The Rev. Leslie Tizard’s meditations on the subject will be useful. And yet he does not condone those who might use doubting as an excuse. He lashes them with the irony of Dr. J. S. Whale who satirizes those Christians who tend to take pictures of Christ instead of kneeling in front of him and serving. Using Dr. James Stewart in “Wanted a permanent Pentecost,” and Katherine Mansfield in “Victorious faith conquering Skepticism,” he scoffs at the perpetual seeker.
For hymns, his favorite authors are Charles Wesley: “For all the saints . . . ” (“Saints Alive”) (“The Hidden God”) (“The Verdict”), Isaac Watts (“Why I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church”) and Baxter’s “Christ leads me through no darker rooms” (“Lord I Believe, Help My Unbelief”).
Hymns appealed to the sensitivity he had developed as English major in Edinburgh, before taking his theological degree. So it is not surprising to find many references to literary figures from different backgrounds and convictions, in the craftsmanship of the sermons. Ahead comes Shakespeare, which Davies knew by rote since he had in his young days learnt the whole of the bard by heart and won the Shakespeare prize. He quotes Shylock’s speech in The Merchant of Venice to awaken the conscience of those who might have some Nazi sympathy, Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene to show the need of a good conscience (“Essentials of happiness”), Henry Vth rallying his troops as an example of the need for courage (“The Living Union of Christ and his disciples”), Prospero’s last will and testament at the end of The Tempest (“The Meaning of the Resurrection”) and the Sonnets to show that there is only a matter of degree between human and divine love (“The Harvest of the Holy Spirit”).
G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers and Katherine Mansfield have already been mentioned. He also uses modern novelists and dramatists. For instance in “Victorious faith conquering Skepticism” he summarizes the plot of Harold Frederic’s The damnation of Theron Ware, or Illumination as an example of shallow skepticism and contrasts it with Mrs. Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere as an example of earnest skepticism. In “The Severity of God” he summarizes Sutton Vane’s play, Outward bound, made into a film called Between two worlds as an example of the divine Assize and the concept of judgment and retribution. In “The Verdict on the Cross” comes this quote from John Masefield The trial of Jesus: to the question of where is Christ now is answered: “Let loose in the world, lady, where neither Jew nor Roman can stop his truth.” He also refers to the poets Hamilton King, Charles Lamb and David Thoreau, the American lover of Nature.
Historical References
Historical references are used in various contexts. For explanation of the Covenant, for instance, he refers to an exhibition of medieval charters between the King of England and his subjects, on sight at the Bodleian Library. As an indirect encouragement to resistance under tyranny in a mixed congregation which might have contained Nazi-sympathizers, he refers to the Spartans or to the early Christians in the catacombs of Rome. There are many examples.
Davies is therefore aware of the particular strain imposed by the modern world on the faith of his congregation. There are three main historical situations he addresses.
The first is World War II. The allusions are frequent: to the Battle of Britain in “Terminus becomes tunnel,” to Ann Franck in “Victorious faith conquering Skepticism.” He does not launder the atrocities of the day. In “All things work together for those who love God,” he says:
Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh and Tyre, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And, as I speak, starvation’s specter haunts Berlin and Calcutta. The death of the soul, creeping spiritual paralysis, has its fatal grip on the black-marketers and profiteers, who by their greed condemn others to death.
He advocates la Résistance indirectly by alluding to the Spartans’ defiance in front of Philip of Macedonia’s threat to crush them and Torquemada who led the Inquisition. In “The meaning of the Cross,” he shows the power of forgiveness in staging a young nurse healing an officer who had been her torturer and that of her family during the Armenian atrocities. In “Essentials of happiness,” he gives as an example of trust in God two nuns walking around, under the Bombing of the Blitz of London, carrying food to children.
He speaks against the Holocaust and against German romanticism in a reference to Bismarck putting some flowers into a little girl’s hand and yet wanting to turn France into pulp (“The Harvest of the Holy Spirit”). He advocates and praises the churches for opposing the death-camps in Germany and the caste system in India (“Why I Believe in the Catholic Church”).
The second is racism. Having lived in Africa for 7 years, he naturally took a stand against slavery. In the texture of the sermons there are references to both life and literature. He names William Wilberforce who dared oppose and defeat the slave trade and Michael Scott who fought for the Zulus and the Indians oppressed in Durban, South Africa. He summarizes Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved
