A theology of sweat

It's wonderful when you stumble across something really interesting. Let me tell you how it happened. I was in the Evangelical Library here in London the other day. As I cast my eye over the new books I noticed that for some reason they had just received a copy of a 1962 pamphlet called The meaning of sweat as part of the curse by Arthur Custance. Well, a title like that who could resist? And it is a fascinating read. It begins with science and the different ways we sweat and animals do not heads to theology and what difference the fall has made in this respect and finishes with comments on three verses in the Bible about sweat. There is also a brief guide to the scientific literature including this classic line

Kuno, Yas, Human Perspiration, C. C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 1956, xvii and 416 pp. Probably the best work specifically on sweating.

I noted that this pamphlet was in a series of Doorway papers. Anyway the obvious thing to do is to check on the net and see if it is available to download. Now often with these things I am disappointed but this time the very opposite. I discover that in fact all the writings of the late Arthur Custance are available for download. A very helpful site can be found here and I plan to check it out over the next few days. It looks fascinating. I had heard the name Arthur Custance - by way of warning I seem to remember so no-one come back to me and say I've been recommending heresy. All I'm saying is that the site looks very interesting.