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This quote has recently taken on a new layer of meaning to me.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The creeks�Tinker and Carvin’s�are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection. The mountains�Tinker and Brushy, McAfee’s Knob and Dead Man�are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.

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Practical Notes Quotations

The Stupidity of Egolatry

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

The interior life is often stupid. Its egoism blinds it and deafens it; its imagination spins out ignorant tales, fascinated. It fancies that the western wind blows on the Self, and leaves fall at the feet of the Self for a reason, and people are watching. A mind risks real ignorance for the sometimes paltry prize of an imagination enriched. The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world�if only from time to time.

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Literary Criticism Practical Notes Quotations

Laurence Sterne’s Morality

Laurence Sterne (the author of Tristram Shandy) certainly had a sense of humor. I have quoted from him before on this blog, and when I was reading volume 5 of Tristram Shandy I laughed as I don’t remember ever having done previously at a book. We may be surprised (but if we are, I think it is a symptom of a problem within us) to find that this man also had a fine moral earnestness. There is the sermon included in volume 2 of Tristram Shandy, which is really rather good and which certainly sparks interest in a republication of the volume(s) of Sterne’s sermons that were published during his lifetime. And there is also this:

Tristram Shandy, v.5 Ch. XVI

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, That the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

Of course, this comes in a comic context within the book. But we shall be guilty of great shallowness if we thereupon presuppose that there can be no genuineness to it. Earnestness and humor are not opposed: I think they go together. Consider this fine sarcasm by one of the most wholehearted of men:

[On the Papist interpreters of the passages relating to the power of the keys] So well known are the keys to those who have thought proper to fit them with locks and doors, that you would say their whole life had been spent in the mechanic art.

John Calvin, Institutes, IV.11.2

At that line also, I laughed out loud.

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Practical Notes Quotations

Extravagance.

I think we humans are instinctively conservative �or perhaps timid would be a more appropriate term. While reprobating certain of this person’s ideas, and noting that her understanding of Pascal does not seem to me to be accurate, this is nonetheless an impressive piece against timidity.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time we are also created. In the Koran, Allah asks, �The heaven and the earth and all in between, thinkest though I made them in jest?� It’s a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? If the giant water bug was not made in jest, was it then made in earnest? Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator’s, once having called forth the universe, turning his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened? Was the sense of it there, and God absconded with it, ate it, like a wolf who disappears round the edge of the house with the Thanksgiving turkey? �God is subtle.� Einstein said, �but not malicious.� Again, Einstein said that �nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.� It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly at its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God �set bars and doors� and said, �Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.� But we have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?

Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.

The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught me eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Another time I saw another wonder: sharks off the Atlantic coast of Florida. There is a way a wave rises above the ocean horizon, a triangular wedge against the sky. If you stand where the ocean breaks on a shallow beach, you see the raised water in a wave is translucent, shot with lights. One late afternoon at low tide a hundred big sharks passed the beach near the mouth of a tidal river in a feeding frenzy. As each green wave rose from the churning water, it illuminated within itself the six- or eight-foot-long bodies of twisting sharks. The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a well-known signal that meant, �Come down to the water.� It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down eons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the waters to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

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Piety Practical Notes Quotations

The Gospel is for the Whole Man

One of the marks of a diluted Christianity is that it leaves out some element of human nature: it fails to understand that as Jesus was true and complete and entire man, then all that He assumed is redeemed, if we may reverse the theological argument used in some relatively early doctrinal controversies. I believe this truth is well protected by understanding the whole man to be acting in different ways; but however you want to distinguish the differing faculties or operations or constituent elements of humanity, the fact is that the Gospel applies to all of them. Sometimes this dilution is unconscious: by exalting one aspect we, perhaps unconsciously, depreciate others. This is one reason why it is good to read from a wide range of writings, and to read simple as well as subtle writers. With that in mind, here are some words from the first Bishop of Liverpool that serve me as a reminder that in Paul’s great analogy of the body, no part is concluded to be unnecessary. It would seem that in any area whatsoever, atomistic approaches are at best of limited utility, always a temptation, and at worst virulently destructive.

J.C. Ryle on Matthew 13:51 in his Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of Matthew

The first thing which we ought to notice in these verses is the striking question with which our Lord winds up the seven wonderful parables of this chapter. He said, ‘Have ye understood all these things?’

Personal application has been called the soul of preaching. A sermon without application is like a letter posted without a direction: it may be well written, rightly dated, and duly signed; but it is useless, because it never reaches its destination. Our Lord’s inquiry is an admirable example of real heart-searching application: Have ye understood?

The mere form of hearing a sermon can profit no man, unless he comprehends what it means: he might just as well listen to the blowing of a trumpet, or the beating of a drum; he might just as well attend a Roman Catholic service in Latin. His intellect must be set in motion, and his heart impressed: ideas must be received into his mind; he must carry off the seeds of new thoughts. Without this he hears in vain.

It is of great importance to see this point clearly: there is a vast amount of ignorance about it. There are thousands who go regularly to places of worship, and think they have done their religious duty, but never carry away an idea or receive an impression. Ask them, when they return home on a Sunday evening, what they have learned, and they cannot tell you a word. Examine them at the end of a year, as to the religious knowledge they have attained, and you will find them as ignorant as the heathen.

Let us watch our souls in this matter. Let us take with us to church, not only our bodies, but our minds, our reason, our hearts, and our consciences…. �Intellect, no doubt, is not everything in religion; but it does not therefore follow that it is nothing at all.

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Controversy Practical Notes

Grumbling about Historical Ignorance

This grumble is not about other people’s historical ignorance (or my own).� No, it’s about a tendency to grumble about historical ignorance and not do anything about it.� We are silly creatures: and part of our silliness is that we sometimes feel that if we have grumbled about something we have done something about it.� It is as though we equated grumbling with action, complaining with reformation, querulousness with effort.� It is an easy mistake to make, I think; but in plain terms what this silliness results in is hypocrisy.� Because I may lament my ignorance quite movingly; but the proof that I am ashamed of it is that I take steps to remedy it.

Of course, here too there are pitfalls.� One such pitfall is that we read in the categories of our time.� What would Calvin have said to Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til?� That is not to say that Calvin doesn’t have an epistemology: but it is the wrong way to discover it to try to find out where he comes down on that particular divide.

And a still worse fault is people grumbling about other people’s historical ignorance, while being wildly ignorant themselves. It’s handy in a debate: moan about people’s ignorance of history, find a quote or two online, and you’ve triumphed.� (Here I would like to record that I was once hailed as “quite the source for historical theology” because I read through Calvin’s letters from the council of Ratisbon in order to be able to give an opinion in the discussion about it.� And yet those letters and a lecture I once heard about it were my only sources.� This is no reflection on the gentleman who was so kind as to make this statement: it is a comment on what is perceived as good research.)� Blaming other people for ignorance of topics we are ignorant of is a deeper hypocrisy than indulging in some well-meaning but ineffective lamentation.

So here is a suggestion: before again complaining about historical ignorance, take your best shot at answering a research question from the Matthew Poole project.� Here is a sample, but there are plenty more.

�Hence God is said to have set the beams of the chambers (namely, the upper chambers, as the Saxon rightly translates it) in the waters, Psalm 104:3, and (what is the same) above many waters, Psalm 29:3 (Gregorie�s Notes and Observations 23).� To which Saxon rendering is he referring?

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Poetry Practical Notes Quotations

The Unlearned and Unstable

From John Dryden’s Religio Laici

[Of the negative results of Scripture being readily accessible]

‘Tis true, my Friend, (and far be Flattery hence)

This good had full as a bad a Consequence:

The Book thus put in every vulgar hand,

Which each presum’d he best cou’d understand,

the Common Rule was made the common Prey;

And at the mercy of the Rabble lay.

The tender Page with horney Fists was gaul’d;

And he was gifted most that that loudest baul’d:

The Spirit gave the Doctoral Degree:

And every member of a Company

Was of his Trade, and of the Bible free.

Plain Truths enough for needful use they found;

But men wou’d still be itching to expound:

Each was ambitious of th’ obscurest place,

No measure ta’en from Knowledg, all from grace.

Study and Pains were now no more their Care:

Texts were explain’d by Fasting, and by Prayer:

This was the Fruit the private Spirit brought;

Occasion’d by great Zeal, and little Thought.

While Crouds unlearn’d, with rude Devotion warm,

About the Sacred Viands buz and swarm,

The Fly-blown Text creates a crawling Brood;

And turns to Maggots what was meant for Food.

A Thousand daily Sects rise up, and dye;

A Thousand more the perish’d Race supply:

So all we make of Heaven’s discover’d Will

Is, not to have it, or to use it ill.

This is not, I think, a topic that one frequently hears addressed in Protestant circles: and certainly it should not be taken as an argument against the dissemination of Scripture. Yet nonetheless, it is as well to recognize the truth of Peter’s words, that Scripture is wrested to the destruction of the wresters. Abusus non tollit usus: this is not a call to ignorance, to neglect of our Lord’s commandment in John 5:39, or a failure to imitate the noble Bereans. It is a call to make a good use of Heaven’s discover’d Will.

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Practical Notes Preaching Quotations

Some Advice to Ministers

From John Owen, Commentary on Hebrews 6:1
It is the duty of ministers of the gospel to take care, not only that their doctrine they preach be true, but also that it be seasonable with respect unto the state and condition of their hearers.
Herein consists no small part of that wisdom which is required in the dispensation of the word. Truths unseasonable are like showers in harvest. It is �a word spoken in season� that is beautiful and useful, Proverbs 25:11; yea, �every thing is beautiful in its own time,� and not else, Ecclesiastes 3:11. And two things are especially to be considered by him who would order his doctrine aright, that his words may be fit, meet, and seasonable:
1. The condition of his hearers, as to their present knowledge and capacity.
Suppose them to be persons, as the apostle speaks, of �full age,� such as can receive and digest �strong meat,� � that have already attained some good acquaintance with the mysteries of the gospel. In preaching unto such an auditory, if men, through want of ability to do otherwise, or want of wisdom to know when they ought to do otherwise, shall constantly treat of first principles, or things common and obvious, it will not only be unuseful unto their edification, but also at length make them weary of the ordinance itself. And there will be no better effect on the other side, where the hearers being mostly weak, the more abstruse mysteries of truth are insisted on, without a prudent accommodation of matters suited unto their capacity. It is, therefore, the duty of stewards in the house of God to give unto his household their proper portion.
(…)
And as it will be a trouble unto him who esteems it his duty to go forward in the declaration of the mysteries of the gospel, to fear that many stay behind, as being unable to receive and digest the food he hath provided; so it should be a shame to them who can make no provision but of things trite, ordinary, and common, when many, perhaps, among their hearers are capable of feeding on better or more solid provision. Again,
2. The circumstances of the present time are duly to be considered by them who would preach doctrine that should be seasonable unto their hearers; and these are many, not here to be particularly insisted on. But those especially of known public temptations, of prevalent errors and heresies, of especial opposition and hatred unto any important truths, are always to be regarded; for I could easily manifest that the apostle in his epistles hath continually an especial respect unto them all. (…) Some important doctrines of truth may, in the preaching of the gospel, be omitted for a season, but none must ever be forgotten or neglected. � So deals the apostle in this place, and light hath been sufficiently given us hereinto by what hath already been discoursed.
(…)
It is only an intellectual perfection, a perfection of the mind in knowledge, that is intended. And this may be where there is not a moral, gracious, sinless perfection. Yea, men may have great light in their minds, whilst their wills and affections are very much depraved, and their lives unreformed.

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Poetry Practical Notes Quotations

Humility and Commentaries

From John Dryden’s Religio Laici

[Of the role of patristic interpretations of Scripture]

That Antient Fathers thus expound the Page,

Gives Truth the reverend Majesty of Age:

Confirms its force, by biding every Test;

For best Authority’s next Rules are best.

And still the nearer to the Spring we go

More limpid, more unsoyl’d the Waters flow.

(…)

In doubtful questions ’tis the safest way

To learn what unsuspected Antients say:

For ’tis not likely we shou’d higher Soar

In search of Heav’n, than all the Church before:

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Practical Notes Quotations

The Problems with Psychoanalysis

Whatever other criticisms may be justly directed against psychiatry, there is no doubt that this one, variously expressed by C.S. Lewis in these two excerpts from his letters, is very important: namely, that the idea of �goodness� or �health� held, perhaps unconsciously, by the psychiatrist can make his work quite destructive.

Letter to a Former Pupil, 26 March 1940

Psychoanalysis. In talking to me you must beware, because I am conscious of a partly pathological hostility to what is fashionable. I may therefore have been betrayed into statements on this subject which I am not prepared to defend. No doubt, like every young science, it is full of errors, but so long as it remains a science and doesn’t set up as a philosophy, I have no quarrel with it, i.e. as long as people judge what it reveals by the best human logic and scheme of values they’ve got and do not try to derive logic and values from it. In practice no doubt, as you say, the patient is always influenced by the analyst’s own values. And further, in so far as it attempts to heal, i.e. to make better, every treatment involves a value-judgment. This could be avoided if the analyst said, �Tell me what sort of a chap you want to be and I’ll see how near I can make you�: but of course he really has his own idea of what goodness and happiness consist in and works to that. And his idea is derived, not from his science (it couldn’t) but from his age, sex, class, culture, religion and heredity, and is just as much in need of criticism as the patient’s…

Letter to Mrs Frank L. Jones, 23 February 1947

Keep clear of psychiatrists unless you know that they are also Christians. Otherwise they start with the assumption that your religion is an illusion and try to �cure� it: and this assumption they make not as professional psychologists but as amateur philosophers. Often they have never given the question any serious thought.