Vol. 3 · No. 1
Bowing Down to Wood and StoneOne Way to be a Pilgrim
Charles Lock
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Abstract
The title of this essay alludes to the familiar Protestant hymn, whose imperial reach stretches from the Arctic to the Equator, from a Danish colony to a British one. Rhetorically, the hymn's 'inverted apostrophe' is extended by anaphora: these lands are not addressed by us, as 'O Greenland, O India'; rather, they and their barbaric people call us; they solicit our colonial attentions. Written in 1817 by Reginald Heber (1783-1826), a Shropshire vicar who would only later (in 1823) be consecrated Bishop of Calcutta, this hymn encapsulates certain Protestant prejudices, and sets up a number of significant oppositions.