The Witness

“The third word used in the New Testament for the Christian preacher is the word ‘witness’ . . . Christian preachers are privileged to testify to and for Jesus Christ, defending Him, commending Him, bringing before the court evidence which they must hear and consider before they return their verdict” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, …

Refined Beastiality

“An attachment to high cultural achievement is thus a necessary but not sufficient condition of civilization . . . The first requirement of civilization is that men should be willing to repress their basest instincts and appetites: failure to do which makes them, on account of their intelligence, far worse than mere beasts” (Theodore Dalrymple, …

The Clichéd Rebel

“The authentic man, in the romantic conception, is he who has cut himself free of all convention, who acknowledges no restriction on the free exercise of his will. This applies as much to morals as to aesthetics: and artistic genius becomes synonymous with waywardness. But a being as dependent on his cultural inheritance as man …

Parasitic Creativity

“The problem of upholding virtue and denouncing vice without appearing priggish, killjoy, bigoted, and narrow-minded has become so acute that intellectuals are now inclined either to deny that there is a distinction between the two or to invert their value. There is no higher word of praise in an art critic’s vocabulary, for example, than …

#NAME?

“Yes, but the Church at large long ago gave up talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, His efficacious death, His conquering cross, and His glorious triumph over death, grave, and sin, as well as over our miserable and filthy little rag-tag band of self-justifying isms — alcoholism, sexaholism, rageaholism, and can’t-be-nice-to-my-wife-a-holism” (Mother Kirk, p. 219).