The excerpt below was taken with permission from Michael Haykin’s book 8 Mulheres de Fé, Faithful Editor.
Jane “shows an Anglican reservation about religious affections” and is very interested in Christianity as a form of morality. Therefore, it is not surprising that Jane is not a Protestant. In fact, in 1809 Jane was very clear in referring to a Hannah More novel and told her sister, Cassandra, “I don’t like Protestants. ” In 1814, however, his attitude changed. As she told her niece Fanny Knight (1793? 1882): “I am not entirely convinced that we should not all be Protestants. I am sure that those who in their mind and feelings should feel happier and more secure. We note that her novel Mansfield Park, completed shortly after this comment to Fanny Knight, reveals a clear “sympathy for Protestantism. ” This sympathy centered primarily on the belief that Jane and evangelicals had in common: “Christians must stay and work in the world. ” For example, Mansfield Park addresses a topic much loved by many evangelicals in the late 18th century: the abolition of the slave trade. Jane was thus able to write, in the fall of 1814, in a letter sent to a friend, Martha Lloyd (1765? 1843), that her hope in the later stages of the War of 1812 was: “If we are to be ruined, this will not It will happen. It cannot be helped, but I put my hope for better things in a request for protection from heaven, as a religious nation, a nation that despite so much evil advances in religion, what I cannot believe Of course, Protestants had figured, in quite an important way, in the wave of religious revival that swept across Britain some twenty years earlier, a revival that had seen evangelical victory in the abolition of the slave. Jane’s faith is to analyze one of the three sentences assigned to her and which probably date from her life after the death of her father in 1805, although there are doubts about the authenticity of two of them. As we will see and it really seems that e was written by Jane:
- Give us grace.
- Mighty Father.
- Both to pray and to deserve to be heard; to address you with our hearts and also with our lips.
- You’re present everywhere.
- No secret can hide from you.
- May knowledge of this teach us to fix our thoughts on you.
- With respect and devotion that we do not pray in vain.
Look with mercy on the sins that we have committed in these days and, with mercy, make us feel them, so that our repentance is sincere and our resolutions resolve not to commit them in the future. Teach us to understand the sinful nature of our hearts and to let them know all the defects of temperament and bad habits that we have found ourselves in at the expense of our companions and the danger of our own soul. Let us now, and every night, consider how we spend our day, what our dominant thoughts, words and actions have been, and how innocent of evil we can be. Do we think of you irreverently, disobey your commandments, neglect some known obligation, or deliberately inflict pain on a human being? inclined to pose these questions to our hearts, O God, and save us from being deceived by power or vanity.
Give us a sense of gratitude for the blessings we live in, for the many comforts on your part; that we don’t deserve to lose them out of discontent or indifference.
Have mercy on our needs and keep us, and everything we love, evil tonight. May the sick and afflicted be cared for by you now and always; And, thousands of our hearts, we pray for the safety of all who travel by land or sea, for the comfort and protection of the orphan and widow, and for your mercy to be shown to all captives and prisoners. the other blessings, O God, for us and for our brethren, we implore you to accelerate our sense of mercy in the redemption of the world, of the value of this holy religion in which we were created, and that we, by our carelessness do not reject the salvation he has given us, nor are we Christians only by name; Listen to us, mighty God, in the name of the one who redeemed us, and show us to pray:
Heavenly Father, hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom is coming; Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven; give us our daily bread today; and forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors; And do not let us fall into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
For for you it is the kingdom, power and glory for ever, amen
The language of this prayer is clearly taken from the Common Book of Prayer, which was so familiar to Jane. It is expressed in the first person of the plural and is not literary art; It is a simple prayer without luxuries to God, to be uttered by a group of believers in a family context, probably Jane’s family circle. In this sentence, she is deeply concerned that she does not hurt others, a common theme in her novels. As Irene Collins says, “Jane’s characters who experience true happiness are those who think of others. “Emma Woodhouse comments on Mr. Weston’s character in Emma: “General benevolence, not general friendship, makes a man what he should be. “In the same novel, it is Mr. Knightley with Emma’s father and Miss Bates who is Jane’s model for true Christian behavior.
The note of sincerity of the heart also goes through prayer: “Give us grace, Strong Father, to approach you with our hearts”, and ask “mercy” for us to “feel” your sins. Deeply?? and that his “repentance is sincere. “A comment written by Jane in 1814 on the back of one of her brother James’s recently revealed sermons suggests that Jane greatly appreciated religious sincerity: “Men can acquire the habit of mechanically repeating the words of our prayers, perhaps without fully understanding them?Certainly without fully feeling its strength and meaning? And, linked to this desire for sincerity, there is the desire for self-care, the liberation of self-deception.
However, only at the end of the prayer do we hear a specifically Christian note and tone, while Jane asks God to continue to value salvation and?This is done specifically ‘in the name of the one who redeemed us’. , with a fervor equal to that of any evangelical, Jane asks God to “accelerate our sense of your mercy in the redemption of the world. “As Bruce Stovel points out, these sentiments tell us that “Jane Austen had a deep and sincere [Christian] religious faith. “And these are feelings that have been supported wholeheartedly by all the women we have seen in this work.