Jesus Teaches

Love (Matthew 5.43-48) You have heard people say, “Love your neighbours and hate your enemies,” but tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you. Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong. If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that? Even tax collectors love their friends. If you greet only your friends, what’s great about that? Don’t even unbelievers do that? But you must always act like your Father in heaven.

Giving (Mattew 6.1-4) When you do good deeds, don’t try to show off. If you do, you won’t get a reward from your Father in heaven. When you give to the poor, don’t blow a loud horn. That’s what showoffs do in the meeting places and on the street corners, because they are always looking for praise. I promise you that they already have their reward. When you give to the poor, don’t let anyone know about it. Then your gift will be given in secret. Your Father knows what is done in secret, and he will reward you.

Text b. The Way of Life of the English

Read and render the text.

The English Home

Many English families live in flats, but most live in their own houses.

On the ground floor they usually have the dining-room, the sitting-room, the kitchen, and the hall. In the hall there is a stand for hats, coats and umbrellas. A staircase leads from the hall to the landing on the first floor. On this floor there are bedrooms, a bathroom and a lavatory.

In front of the house they usually have a small garden, in which they grow flowers. At the back of the house there is a much larger garden with a lawn and some fruit-trees. There is also a vegetable garden where they grow all kinds of vegetables, such as potatoes, cabbages, onions and tomatoes.

Lots of people live in flats: sometimes the flat is one floor of the house, sometimes it is a big block of flats, when a person lives in one room, we call this a “bed-sitter” ( a bed-sitting room): the bed-room, the sitting-room and the kitchen are all in one.

Fireplaces

In English homes, the fireplace has always been, until recent times, the natural centre of interest in a room. People may like to sit at a window on a summer day, but for many months of the year they prefer to sit round the fire and watch the dancing flames.

In the Middle Ages the fireplaces were, in the halls of large castles, very wide. Only wood was burnt, and large logs were carted in from the forests, and supported, as they burnt, on metal bars. Such wide fireplaces may still be seen in old inns, and in some of them there are even seats inside the fireplace.

Elizabethan fireplaces often had carved stone or woodwork over the fireplaces, reaching to the ceiling. There were sometimes columns on each side of the fireplace. In the eighteenth century, space was often provided over the fireplace for a painting or mirror.

When coal fires became common, fireplaces became much smaller. Grates (metal frames like baskets) were used to hold the coal. Above the fireplace there was usually a shelf on which there was often a clock, and perhaps framed photographs.

Now coal fires are forbidden and gasheaters are used instead.

The Englishman’s Garden

The English are obsessed with flowers. If you don’t believe it’s true, look at all the gardening books in the bookshops, find out how many flowers arranging societies there are in England – thousands and thousands. It’s a useful obsession because it doesn’t harm anyone. In winter people tell us, the most romantic thing is to pick up a seed catalogue and gaze at the brightly coloured pictures of summer flowers. Even people with a tiny patch of ground in towns like to grow things, and people who have never seriously tried to speak any foreign language carefully learn the Latin names of the flowers they plant, so that they can tell their friends.

If you want to please an Englishman ( or Englishwoman) be very polite about his (her) garden. It is almost as much his “castle” as his house; he cares for it methodically. March is a busy month for the gardener. He has a great deal of preparing to do. The daffodils, and small, stiff blue, purple, yellow or white and striped flowers called crocuses are already blooming, but all the planting, sowing, and pruning for the summer has to be done. Many English gardens have a section devoted to herbs like mint, thyme, sage and other plants used for seasoning dishes.

The English garden is internationally famous. Some of them are very beautiful, especially the big ones that are open to the public.