Someone once said that if he looked at his watch at eight minutes past 11 on any Sunday morning, he could be certain that in ten thousand parish churches throughout the length and breadth of England untold thousands would be intoning the eighth verse of the Venite: 'Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.' We are not told why this perhaps fictitious person was not in church himself. Perhaps he had what the Tudor Act of Uniformity called 'lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent'. (Brewers in the 17th century claimed that they could never get to church, since they had to keep their boilers going seven days a week.)

LRB 4 January 2001 | PDF Download