Home Thoughts: "None Other than the Glory of God & the Refreshment of the Soul"

09 December, 2025

"None Other than the Glory of God & the Refreshment of the Soul"

Johann Sebastian Bach famously said "The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul". And can there be a more fitting illustration of Bach's words and faith than this glorious cantata from his sublime and deeply reverential Christmas Oratorio.

Christmas time in Leipzig in 1734 was bursting with music. Not only was Bach’s great Christmas Oratorio performed for the first time as a completed cycle, but everywhere in the town you would hear Christmas songs and the ringing of bells. This booming chorus, celebrating the birth of Jesus in the stable, proclaims: “Ruler of heaven, hear our inarticulate speech, let our faint songs please you.” But it's anything but faint or inarticulate, as Bach pulls out all the stops with drum rolls and trumpet blasts; these, and the words, emphasise Bach's profound belief that human music - like mankind himself - can only be a pale shadow of God’s glory. This is cantata 3 from the Oratorio and the words are those of the simple shepherds arriving in Bethlehem and telling of the events and visions they had experienced on the hillsides around the town.

The Oratorio, first performed in Leipzig as a whole at Christmas 1734, comprises of six cantatas - this one being the third. Bach had written each of these cantatas separately at varying times between 1723 and 1728 - this third one being first performed in Leipzig's Thomaskirche exactly three hundred years ago this Christmas - Christmas 1725.

This exquisite performance is by the wonderful Netherlands Bach Society and is played on period instruments - just as the citizens of Leipzig would have heard it three centuries ago. It brings back many memories of one of our several trips to that lovely city some years ago to enjoy the Christmas Market and see this work performed in Bach's place of work and worship, the Thomaskirche - a place that, I freely admit, brings me to tears each time I step inside, such is the glory and the profound reverence of the place and, of course, its wonderful musical historical links with Johann Sebastian Bach.

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Words to ponder.......

Thomas Rainsborough, a Parliamentary soldier and a Leveller, believed in universal suffrage, an end to the monarchy, religious tolerance, universal ownership of common land and equality of justice for all men. One of the greatest speakers of his day, these few words of his when he contested Cromwell in the Putney Debates (set up by Cromwell to discuss a constitution at the end of the Civil War) are, for me, amongst the greatest in the English language and at the very heart of what democracy and the individual's relationship with the state should be:

Oliver Cromwell: “If they that have no goods and chattels make the laws equally with them that hath, then they will make laws to take away the property of them that hath.”

Thomas Rainsborough: “If it be that all Englishmen cannot be free and some Englishmen have property and other have nought, then you have said it, my Lord General, not me...For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he and therefore truly, Sir, I think it clear, that every man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own consent put himself under that Government; but I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound to that Government if he hath not had a voice to put himself under”

Thomas Kyd (Playwright, poet & author)

"Where words prevail not, violence prevails"

"The less I speak, the more I meditate"

From Oliver Goldsmith's 1770 poem "The Deserted Village" - a savage social commentary on the inequalities of his day which anticipate today's world:

".....Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay......."

Tony Judt (Historian and Philosopher):

1. We have responsibilities for others, not just across space but across time. We have responsibilities to people who came before us. They left us a world of institutions, ideas or possibilities for which we, in turn, owe them something. One of the things we owe them is not to squander them.

2. Most taxation goes towards paying off past debts or investing in future expenditures. Accordingly there is an implicit relationship of trust between past taxpayers and present beneficiaries, present taxpayers and past and future recipients - and of course future taxpayers who will cover the cost of our outlays today. We are therefore undeniably required to trust not only people that we don't know today, but people that we could never have known and people we shall never know with all of whom we have a complex relationship and mutual interest.

Hillary Clinton (Politician)

"Talent is everywhere opportunity isn't".

Robert Tressell (Author of The ragged Trousered Philanthropists)

‘… What we call civilisation – the accumulation of knowledge which has come down to us from our forefathers – is the fruit of thousands of years of human thought and toil. It is not the result of the labour of the ancestors of any separate class of people who exist today, and therefore it is by right the common heritage of all. Every little child that is born into the world, no matter whether he is clever or dull, whether he is physically perfect or lame, or blind; no matter how much he may excel or fall short of his fellows in other respects, in one thing at least he is their equal – he is one of the heirs of all the ages that have gone before.

Victor Hugo (Author)

“You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.”

Albert Camus (Writer & Philosopher):

"Every wrong idea results in bloodshed – but always the blood of others....If there were a party for those who aren’t sure they’re right then I would join it"

"To name things incorrectly is to add to the misfortune and miseries of the world."

Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury)

"Most of us speak and listen largely to those who share our world - and as a result assume that it is the natural one to belong to......When I enter into a dialogue with a person from another culture or belief I am not out to secure agreement, but to understand."

Atticus Finch in 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' by Harper Lee

“You never really
understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you
climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Maya Angelou (Author)

"I've learned that people will forget what you did and that people will forget what you said. But people will never forget how you made them feel".

George Bernard Shaw (Author & playwright)

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past but by the responsibility of our future"

Noam Chomsky (Linguist, philosopher and activist)

“The standard technique of privatisation by capitalist governments is the same the world over: de-fund and
so things go wrong. People get angry, so sell it cheaply to private capital and say everything will improve with competition. The public buy it every time”

"Propaganda is simple, repetitive, easy to understand and repeat. It requires no thought and its simplicity is crucial because, complexity encourages critical thought and critical thought is the
enemy of authoritarianism........”

Paul Valéry (Poet & Philosopher)
"Our judgements judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows"

John Meynard Keynes (Economist)

“Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the accountant’s profit then we have begun to change society for the better......”

Blaise Pascal (French philosopher & mathematician)

“All mankind’s miseries derive from being unable to sit alone in a quiet room........Can anything be more stupid than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with my ruler – though I have not quarrelled with him!”

Tony Benn (Labour Politician)

“If we can find the money to kill people in war then we can find the money to help people in peace”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (American Supreme Court Judge)
"Language is the blood of the soul into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow"

Anon:

"The story of a poor man's life is written on his body with a pin".

Gary Younge (Journalist):

"We like our history neat - an easy-to-follow,
self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear".

Dr Samuel Johnson (Writer & critic)

"If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, then power must always be the standard of truth".

Hannah Arendt (Philosopher & political scientist)

Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it..... Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another......

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer...... And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.

George Orwell (Author)

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".

From "Queen Mab" by Shelley:

"....Those who have struggled and with resolute will, vanquished earth's pride and man's meanness; Who have burst the chains, the icy chains of custom and have shone; Then they are the day stars of their age"

Stephen Kinnock (MP) on the murder of MP Jo Cox during the Referendum campaign 2016:

"What nobler vision can there be than that of a society where people can be comfortable in their difference. And what more fundamental tenet of decency is there than to put first and to cherish all that makes us human, as opposed to what divides one group from another. These are the ideals that are often maligned when they are described as multiculturalism, but they are precious nonetheless. They are the ideals which led Jo Cox to campaign tirelessly for the brutalised and the displaced and they are the ideals for which she has now died. The idealism of Jo Cox was the antithesis of such brutal cynicism. Honour her memory, because the values and the commitment that she embodied are all that we have to keep barbarism at bay".

George Orwell (Author):

"Political chaos is connected with the decay of the language".

Simone Weil (Philosopher):

"Whenever one tries to suppress doubt there is tyranny".......One must always be ready to change sides with justice, that fugitive from the winning camp".

By Alcuin of York in 790 AD to Charlemagne, king of the Franks:

“Vox populi, vox Dei”. Can be translated as "The voice of the people is the voice of God". However, beware, the devil is in the detail; the whole quote has a rather different meaning and can be translated as “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.” Very apposite in the 21st century world of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Brexit, Donald Trump and the rest of the populist crowd.

Pope Francis (2016):

“.....a world based on the unlimited satisfaction of individual wants is unattainable, and the attempt to reach it destructive of the world around us, and of the peace of our inner worlds. When people become self-centred and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality........The lack of physical (and not virtual) contact is cauterising our hearts and making us lose the capacity for tenderness and wonder, for pity and compassion.......... We should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst.....We
fail to see that some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet. ... We continue to tolerate that some consider themselves more human than others.........We are not interchangeable items of merchandise or information processors. We are children, we are family, we are God’s People.”

Michael Foot (Politician):

“Margaret Thatcher tells us that she has never been much interested in reading fiction, so we might assume that she has little imagination and thus no compassion; for those who cannot imagine the life of another cannot possibly understand and empathise with them....and whilst it is true that men and women of power often have little time to read; yet they who do not read are unfit for power''

Alan Bennett (Author & Playwright):

"I have no fear of the state. I was educated at the expense of the state both at school and university. My father’s life was saved by the state as on one occasion was my own. This would be the nanny state, a sneering appellation that gets short shrift with me. Without the state I would not be standing here today. I have no time for the ideology masquerading as pragmatism that would strip the state of its benevolent functions and make them occasions for profit. And why roll back the state only to be rolled over by the corporate entities that have been allowed, nay encouraged, to take its place? I am uneasy when prisons are run for profit or health services either. The rewards of probation and the alleviation of suffering are human profits and nothing to do with balance sheets.

David Cameron has been preaching the virtues of what he calls ‘the smart state’. This seems to be a state that gets away with doing as little as possible for its citizens and shuffling as many
responsibilities as it can on anyone who thinks they can make a profit out of them. I’m glad there wasn’t a smart state when I was being brought up, a state that was unsmart enough to see me and others like me educated free of charge and sent on at the city’s expense to university, provided with splendid libraries, cheap transport and a terrific art gallery, not of course to mention the city’s hospitals. 'Smart' to Mr Cameron seems to mean doing as little as one can get away with and calling it enterprise. Smart as in 'Smart Alec', smart of the 'smart answer', which I’m sure Mr Cameron has to hand. Dead smart".

Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s propaganda chief):

“If you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it; and the bigger the lie, the better... There is no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals for intellectuals will never be converted. Always speak to ‘the man in the street’ and arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect.....Truth is unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology".

Alexie Sayle (Writer & comedian):

“Tyranny is the removal of nuance.”

John Milton (Poet)

"None can love freedom heartily but good men. The rest love not freedom but licence"

Martin Niemoller (German Protestant Pastor who spent seven years in a Nazi concentration camp when he took a stand against Hitler):

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me".

09 December, 2025

"None Other than the Glory of God & the Refreshment of the Soul"

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