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About the Book
"Names of God" by Nathan Stone explores the various names and attributes of God found throughout the Bible, shedding light on the different facets of His character and nature. The book delves into the significance and meaning behind these names, helping readers to deepen their understanding and relationship with God.
Hannah More
Beyond any doubt, Hannah More was the most influential female member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. She was educated at Bristol, an important slave-trading town, and began to publish her writing in the 1760s, while she was still a teenager. Her first play, The Inflexible Captive, was staged at Bath in 1775. Later in the 1770s, and for much of the 1780s, she spent time in London and made the acquaintance of many important political and society figures, including Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and Elizabeth Montagu. Her play Percy was produced by David Garrick in 1777, and Fatal Falsehood was staged in 1779, but she came to regard the theatre as morally wrong, especially after the death of her mentors; Garrick and Johnson. She turned to religious writing, beginning with her Sacred Dramas in 1782. In 1784-5, she 'discovered' Ann Yearsley, the so-called 'poetical milkmaid of Bristol', whose poems More helped to publish, although the two later fell out.
In the 1780s, More widened her circle to include religious and philanthropic figures, including John Newton, Beilby Porteus and William Wilberforce. In the summer of 1786, she spent time with Sir Charles and Lady Margaret Middleton at the their home in Teston in Kent. Among their guests were the local vicar James Ramsay and a young Thomas Clarkson, both of whom were central to the early abolition campaign. More and Clarkson met again in Bristol in 1787, while he was on his fact-finding mission to the city, but they did not become close. However, in the same year More met Wilberforce, and their friendship was to become a deep and lasting one. More contributed much to the running of the newly-founded Abolition Society including, in February 1788, her publication of Slavery, a Poem which has been recognised as one of the more important slavery poems of the abolition period. Her relationship with members of the society, especially Wilberforce, was close. For example, she spent the summer of 1789 holidaying with Wilberforce in the Peak District - planning for the abolition campaign, at that time at its height, formed a great deal of their conversation.
By the mid-1790s, More had become closely involved with the 'Clapham Sect' of evangelical Christians, many of whom were involved in the abolition campaign. The group centred on Henry Thornton's home in Clapham and included Wilberforce, James Stephen, and Zachary Macaulay, among others. Throughout the 1790s, she wrote a number of religious tracts, known as the Cheap Repository Tracts, that eventually led to the formation of the Religious Tracts Society. Several of the Tracts oppose slavery and the slave trade, in particular, the poem The Sorrows of Yamba; or, The Negro Woman's Lamentation, which appeared in November 1795 and which was co-authored with Eaglesfield Smith. However, the tracts have also been noted for their encouragement of social quietism in an age of revolution. She continued to oppose slavery throughout her life, but at the time of the Abolition Bill of 1807, her health did not permit her to take as active a role in the movement as she had done in the late 1780s, although she maintained a correspondence with Wilberforce and others. In her later life, she dedicated much time to religious writing. Nevertheless, her most popular work was a novel, Coelebs in Search of a Wife, which appeared in two volumes in 1809 (and which ran to nine editions in 1809 alone). In the 1820s she grew gradually less well, and decreased - but did not entirely halt - the amount of writing she produced. On her death in 1833, she left more than £30,000 to charities and religious societies (equivalent to about £2,000,000 or $3,000,000 in 2004).
© Brycchan Carey 2004
why god loves people who hate each other
The church is filled with lots of dangerously different people. There are rich and poor, old and young, male and female. We have families with fifteen children and fifty-year-old unmarrieds. There are Republicans and Democrats, executives and janitors, athletes, artists, and teachers. And the differences get even deeper — American, African, Asian, Latin, and Middle Eastern. Not to mention our personalities — outgoing and shy, bold and meek, patient and ambitious, emotional and unaffected, rational and relational. There’s no mystery why the Bible has so much to say about stress, conflict, and reconciliation between believers. How could there not  be friction in a family like ours? A First-Century Food Fight Remember when Paul called out Peter in front of everyone? When the apostles — a very small group of very like-minded men who alone mediate the very words of Christ — don’t always get along, it could easily discourage the rest of us, right? Paul said, “I opposed him to his face” (Galatians 2:11). So what was he so worked up about? Peter had stopped eating with Gentile believers to preserve his image among the Jews, and many had followed his example (2:12–13). But is that really that big of a deal? It may seem like Paul blew an empty seat in a lunchroom way out of proportion, but he didn’t. Paul saw that Peter’s decision denied the world-changing, death-defeating, unifying work of Christ. Through the gospel, God was doing something uniquely beautiful and glorious by not only  reconciling people to himself, but also bringing them together in love across every imaginable barrier and boundary. Why Did God Make Us So Different? We might be lulled into forgetting all of our differences are due to the God himself, who knit us together, every cell and disposition, before we were even born (Psalm 139). He’s never surprised that we’re different. In fact, he knows every difference completely and intimately because he designed them. Think for a minute about the thousands  of years now of bloody, almost unrelenting, hostile conflict between Jews and Gentiles. God  did that. God  made Israel “distinct from every other people on the face of the earth” (Exodus 33:16). He  set them violently against every neighboring nation (Deuteronomy 7:2). It was the worldwide rehearsal of Joseph and his fancy coat, when his father made him the enemy of all his brothers by setting him apart with his special love (Genesis 37). Why would he design Jews and Gentiles for so much division and destruction? For this reason: “[Christ] himself is our peace, who made us both one and has broken down the wall of hostility . . . and reconciled us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, 16). The God-designed differences — even hostilities — between these two peoples was meant to show the invincible power of the gospel message to produce love. When Two Become One God’s full acceptance of us in Jesus binds up the brokenness in our relationships. That’s a significant, intentional part of the most important plan in history, God’s plan to save his children from every  tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Christ came to repair what our rebellion had wrecked in our relationship with him, but he also  came to reunite us in love with people different than us in every imaginable way. Through the gospel, in light of every conceivable contrast, God has united us in at least three remarkable realities. 1. We are one in death. This is where Paul turns first with Peter. “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. . . . By works of the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16). Self-righteousness has never rescued anyone from God’s wrath, because no one has lived and loved God’s law flawlessly. “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). Therefore, we all — without exception — were dead in our sin and without hope in ourselves (Ephesians 2:1; Romans 6:23). 2. We are one in hope. “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:26–29). Everything that elevates us over one another in everyday society is eliminated before our heavenly Father for eternity. We can’t escape comparison, class, and cliques in this life, but God embraces us each equally from every family, country, and social status. In Christ, we are all — without exception and distinction — complete and full heirs of eternal life, the world, and God himself. 3. Therefore, we are one in life. Jesus promised the world would see him in our love for one another (John 13:35). How much more  powerfully will they see him in our love for one another when we’re really, really different? When we love people like us, we don’t surprise many people in the world. But there’s a strange and beautiful love across boundaries that they simply cannot explain. It’s a love that restores the broken (Galatians 6:1) and bears heavy, inconvenient, painful burdens (Galatians 6:2). It’s a life that loves to do good to everyone, especially to those with whom we’re one in Christ (Galatians 6:10). Miraculously, there’s a oneness in this diverse family that “fulfills the law of Christ.” The happy, servant-hearted, committed, mutually beneficial relationship between flawed and different sinners displays the character and glory of God. Seeing Differences Differently The gospel turns haters into brothers, enemies into sisters. One of the most powerful and winsome things that Jesus purchased with his death was unlikely love. So we have to learn to see our differences differently, to see the contrasts and even inconveniences as unique canvases for Christ and his redeeming love for us.