Song of Bardsey

Bardsey is the Welsh Holy Island of "20,000 saints" full of Manx Shearwaters and grey seals. It is difficult to get to, which may be why the world's greatest opera singer, Bryn Terfel, took a grand piano over in a boat and sang Schubert to those who were determined to be buried "among the saints".  See and hear his song here

The question is : are we determined to be buried among the saints?   This is not an issue of where one is buried, but whether one's trust is wholly resting in the merits of Jesus Christ on the Cross, not partly in our own non-existent "merits".  This is because God only views Christ and His Cross as sufficient to merit salvation. God has very high, if not humanly impossible standards.   This is the heart of the "Gospel".

I read this Gospel of the Reformation, this view of salvation clearly expressed by a very unlikely character today. Sir John Falstaff, in Shakespeare's "Henry IV" whose original name was Sir John Oldcastle (a Lollard) says: 

"O, if men were to be saved by merit (e.g. not by the Cross or "grace"), what hole of hell were hot enough for Gadshill"