“I am married now, but have no idea whether or not it is God’s will for me to be married tomorrow. How would a mist know something like that? This is why James tells people not to boast, saying that they will go here and there, making big bucks as they go. he says that …
A Dazzling Figure
“Even at this distance Sidney is dazzling. He is that rare thing, the aristocrat in whom the aristocratic ideal is really embodied . . . poet and patron of poets, statesman, knight, captain — fate has dealt such hands before, but they have very seldom been so well played” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the …
Sign of Spiritual Election
“Until then I had assumed, along with most of my generation unacquainted with real hardship, that a scruffy appearance was a sign of spiritual election, representing a rejection of the superficiality and materialism of bourgeois life. Ever since then, however, I have not been able to witness the voluntary adoption of torn, worn-out, and tattered …
Books Other Than the Bible
“The writing and reading of God-honoring books is not a substitute for Bible reading; it is the result of Bible-reading . . . The teaching of Scripture on this point [Eph. 4:11-12; Neh. 8:7-8] is very clear. God requires uninspired teachers to exposit His Word and apply it to the lives of God’s people . …
The Puritan Defense of Poesy
“The defence of poetry will not be rightly understood unless we keep two facts carefully in mind. In the first place, it is a defence not of poetry as against prose but of fiction as against fact. The word poetry often covered all imaginative writing whether in prose or verse, and even those critics who …
Unappreciated Heroism
“It was in Africa that I first discovered that bourgeois virtues are not only desirable but often heroic” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 25).
Oysters Whistle Out of Tune
“Oysters always whistle out of tune, and we should not be surprised when men cannot accomplish their own salvation. We should not marvel that men cannot restore and reform the Church . . . With our indistinct mutterings, we have ‘preached’ our way into a culture that we deserve. Because we are the problem, we …
The Wrong Units of Measurement
“It is only the sentimentalist who imagines that the profundity of a person’s response to tragedy is proportional to the length, volume, or shrillness of his lamentation” (Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It, p. 20).
He Gives More Stones
“Who has given us all these pseudo-men, who caper so prettily on the stage for the televangelistic cameras? The Lord is clearly angry with us. Who was it that deceided that churches should start having Super Bowl parties instead of the Word and sacraments? This is nothing less than the hand of God upon us. …
Puritan Greatness With Words
“But on almost any view, Tyndale who inaugurated, and the Genevan translators who first seriously advance, our tradition, tower head and shoulders above all others whom I have yet mentioned” (C.S. Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, p. 211).