10 Christians Everyone Should Know Jane Austen Part 1 by Reverend Christie Bature: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

10 Christians everyone should know: Jane Austen

We already looked at St. Patrick, Anne Bradstreet, Galileo, John Bunyan, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Today is Jane Austen, born 1775, died 1817, only 42 years old.

Her brother Henry said of her: she had no other hope of mercy, pardon, and peace but through the merits and sufferings of her redeemer. Somebody was watching her and captured that about her life. The people watching you, what are they capturing? What is your life transmitting just by you living it?

A world in upheaval

Jane was born nine months after the American War of Independence began. In her girlhood the French Revolution broke out; as a young adult she heard of the Napoleonic wars from her brothers and watched Britain mobilize for war twice in her lifetime. Two years before she died, the Napoleonic era ended with the Treaty of Vienna.

The vacuum principle

The death of poet and moralist Samuel Johnson in 1784 marked the end of a literary era. A vacuum was created, and Wordsworth and Coleridge launched the Romantic Movement into it.

Where aid has been withdrawn from nations, that is not loss, it is opportunity created. Don't ask how you will be funded, ask what you can build.

Her family

Jane was born in the parish rectory at Steventon. Her closest neighbors were her own family, and "the family was enchanting indeed." Few families were more suited to encouraging her talents than the Austens: exceptionally literate, clever, witty, jovial, affectionate, and accomplished, though not wealthy. It was pursuit and intentionality, not money, that made them so.

Her father: George Austen

Ordained in 1754, one of a new breed of educated Anglican clergy at a time when many clergymen were little more than uneducated peasants; he shifted the culture around him. Beyond his pastoral income from tithes and glebe land, he took up pig breeding, and by 1801 had 3 sows and 22 pigs, enough to feed his family and sell a surplus, all while remaining a faithful pastor. That is multiple streams of income; many "full-time" ministers who suffer financially are simply lazy and depending on others rather than working with their hands.

He built a library of over 500 books before his children were born and read to them, giving them a love of reading and writing. He taught his children that prayer morning and night was an absolute duty which nothing could excuse, and told his son that a short prayer from the heart is as acceptable to God as the most elegant, studied prayer.

For George Austen, the best education he could give his children was faith, directing them first to religion above every other consideration.

Her mother: Cassandra Austen

Considered the poet of the family by age six, and a practical, energetic housekeeper who oversaw the garden, farm work, sewing, and household discipline despite not being wealthy.

Being practical means managing time: preparing a base stock or stew ahead of time so a meal can be ready quickly for unexpected visitors, rather than starting from nothing when guests arrive.

Jane did not get along well with her mother, who was a hypochondriac, always believing and complaining of sicknesses she did not actually have, yet Cassandra still managed the whole household. That shows it was a state of mind, not real illness.

Closing prayer

For anyone not on good terms with their parents: that healing come to the relationship, that honoring your parents matter more than being right, that you obey God by honoring, loving, and serving your parents while still protecting your heart from abuse.