30 sayings from Catalyst 2023

My father-in-law gathered these thirty sayings at Catalyst this week

1. “It is not enough for anyone to claim that this thing is right and that that is wrong. That is only one person’s personal opinion. If you want everyone to believe it then you must seek a peg to hang that opinion on that is higher than your head. So, what happens is that we make our idols gods and we bow before them and worship them. We define ourselves by these idols that we ourselves have made.”
2. “There are three difficult people in every congregation, and whenever one dies there are still three.”
3. “There was an Ulster soldier who was converted by a personal Christian worker the first time he heard the gospel. When he retired from the army he applied for the post of the guardian of the Tomb of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. Once when our speaker was there he heard guardian speak and afterward an earnest Roman Catholic woman from Ulster approached him. She asked why there was no mention of Mary at the tomb of the resurrection. He answered her, ‘She did not die for our sins.’”
4. “Dignity is an essential quality of a minister.”
5. “A woman enters an elevator and all the others in the lift can smell her perfume - except herself. A man enters the elevator and he has obviously been outside to smoke a cigarette and everyone in the lift can smell tobacco. What our fragrance is is bound to be sensed by the people around us. That unique odour is what they are going to smell, but we will be the last to savour it.”
6. “One of the most dangerous consequences of a ministerial vocation is that people identify what you are with what God is.”
7. “All the best books that describe the work of the minister begin with a chapter describing ‘the man himself.’ These years books and talks have emerged giving some new methodology of the work of the minister every decade, usually chosen because it works! The contemporary emphasis is on the man, what he is in himself.”
8. “If a stranger comes into a congregation and finally he should ask, ‘Tell me what is a Christian?’ then someone should be able to point out to him one of the elders and say ‘living like that man.’”
9. “The secret of the Christian ministry is humility, humility and humility.”
10. “The description of the church as ‘the family of God’ is not a metaphor. It is what a church is!”
11. “The bottom line of what a minister is is this, that he is a man who devotes himself to eminent piety!”
12. “On the desk of the pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne a letter was found after his premature decease. When it was opened the letter contained a note of thanks from someone who had heard his preaching the previous week, thanking him not just for what he had said but how he said it.”
13. “You can read in certain shops the notice, ‘If we don’t have it then you are better off without it.’ So it is that if God rejects our request for something then we can be sure that we are on our way to getting something better.”
14. “People wonder why they are not enjoying green pastures and still waters. It is because they have left the paths of righteousness.”
15. “Luther said, ‘The devil is God’s devil.’ So also the valley through which we are walking is God’s valley.”
16. “Being with a dying Christian in the last days of his life and seeing him utterly unafraid to die – that is the greatest of all places to be.”
17. “Some weeds will grow anywhere, and a pulpit is a shockingly bad place for the weed of pride.”
18. “If you have never experienced being maximized as you preach God’s Word then it would seem that you have never had a divine call to the ministry.”
19. “There are occasions when I get to the door at the end of a worship service and I discover I cannot remember the names of the men and women who pass me saying good-bye because the preaching has taken so much out of me.”
20. “A variety of terms are used to describe what sermonizing is all about, not just one thing. There is proclamation, telling people good news, teaching, encouraging and exhortation.”
21. “Preaching involves (1) a reasoned proclamation of (2) the truth of Scripture, so that (3) the message of the Bible is made clear, (4) as is appropriate to the hearers, (5) its multi-relevant character being displayed, and (6) applied to their lives, all of which is (7) ultimately done by Christ the true preacher. This latter part is the final mark of true preaching, that Christ himself is speaking.”
22. “Jonathan Edwards sought ‘to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I can, those affections being moved by the truth,’ and that was exactly John Owen’s motive in preaching too. The Lord Jesus is saying to them, ‘Give me your heart.’”
23. “When you start in a new pulpit it does not come easily or quickly learning how much the people can bear.”
24. “Richard Baxter fell out with practically everyone in his pursuit of church unity.”
25. “Never in the history of evangelicalism has so much energy been devoted as in our day in instructing men in how to preach.”
26. “One great danger in certain seminaries involves the cloning of preachers to a certain model, and the result is that all the graduates sound the same. Their sermons are predictable, each one equally dull. They are like David when he tried on Saul’s armour. The student had been wired to do what the people teaching him have told them. The independent student has forfeited his own personality to fit into the seminary mold. Or men can even clone themselves by aping someone whose preaching they admire.”
27. “Jesus’ enemies hated him because he ate and drank with people who had done bad things.”
28. “The ‘goodness’ and ‘mercy’ that follow us sheep in Psalm 23 are often compared to sheepdogs. But the metaphor is better understood as pointing to God constantly pursuing us, keeping us from wandering and bringing us back to the flock in the green pastures.”
29. “‘All God’s giants have been weak men,’ said Hudson Taylor. In their weakness God was their evident strength.”
30. “If you have no place for theology in your life then you are denying the fact that you are created by God and living in his creation. You cannot do biblical theology without doing systematic theology. John Calvin became a theologian to become a better pastor. All true theology is Trinitarian and not Christocentric.”

(One extra - “The greatest trial outside of hell is to live without temptations.”)

John Willison Catechism Questions and Answers

I like these questions and answers from An Example of Plain Catechising Upon the Assembly's Shorter Catechism by John Willison (1680-1750)

Q. Is there not a great difference between the death of a believer, and an unbeliever?

A. Yes; for to the one it is the effect of God's love, to the other it is the punishment of sin; to the one it is his Father's servant sent to bring him home to his Father's house, to the other it is an officer of justice sent to arrest him for his fearful debts and crimes.

G. What is the difference between the graves of believers, and unbelievers?

A. The graves of believers are beds of rest, where^ they sleep in Jesus; and it is by virtue of the union subsists^ between him and them, that they shall be awaked from their sleep in the morning of the resurrection: but the grave is a prison to unbelievers, wherein their bodies are kept in custody until the judgement of the great day, and/from which they shall be raised by the power of God their terrible Judge.

Thoughts on Religious Experience

On Monday it was up to the Pastors Academy again (with Alffi the dog) for the Pastors Academy reading group. We like to read old books as well as new and I had suggested the 1841 work by Archibald Alexander Thoughts on religious experience. (The above image shows the original Banner cover. My copy was bought in 1980). Around six of us were present and we had a decent time. The book covers such a vast range of topics that it was difficult to cover everything and it was not easy to formulate questions for discussion but we had a stab at conversion, death and depression. So not the best time we've had but okay. In June we hope to tackle Mark Meynell's When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend partly prompted by the previous volume. (Best source ICM Books). Do join us if you can. Details will appear shortly on the Pastors Academy website.

Some quotations

Conviction, then, is no part of a sinner’s salvation - but the clear practical knowledge of the fact that he cannot save himself, and is entirely dependent on the saving grace of God.

In judging of religious experience, it is all important to keep steadily in view the system of divine truth contained in the Holy Scriptures; otherwise our experience, as is too often the case, will degenerate into enthusiasm. Many ardent professors seem too readily to take it for granted that all religious feelings must be good. They therefore take no care to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious, the pure gold and the tinsel. Their only concern is about the ardour of their feelings; not considering that if they are spurious, the more intense they are the further will they lead them astray.

There is no necessity for any other proof of native depravity than the aversion which children early manifest to religious instruction and to spiritual exercises.

Of two persons under conviction of sin, one of whom has had sound religious instruction, and the other none, the former will have an unspeakable advantage over the latter in many respects.

There is a common practical error in the minds of many Christians in regard to this matter. They seem to think that nothing has any relation to the conversion of the sinner but that which immediately preceded this event; and the Christian is ready to say, I was awakened under such a sermon, and never had rest until I found it in Christ; making nothing of all previous instructions and impressions. So, when a revival occurs under the awakening discourses of some evangelist, people are ready to think that he only is the successful preacher whose labours God owns and blesses; whereas he does but bring forward to maturity feelings and convictions which have been long secretly forming and growing within the soul, but so imperceptibly that the person himself was little sensible of any 

change.

We know very little, however, of what is passing in the minds of thousands around us. The zealous preacher often concludes and laments that there is no impression on the minds of his hearers, when, if the covering of the human heart could be withdrawn, he would be astonished and confounded at the variety and depth of the feelings experienced. Those impressions which manifest themselves by a flow of tears are not the deepest, but often very superficial; while the most awful distresses of the soul are entirely concealed by a kind of hypocrisy, which men early learn to practice to hide their feelings of a religious kind from their fellow-creatures.

If there be a truth established beyond all reasonable question by uniform experience, it is that lovers of pleasure are the enemies of God.

10 C S Lewis Misquotes

This list was partly prompted by seeing a quotation attributed to Calvin in the excellent Banner book The Puritans day by day that turned out to be from Stephen Charnock. (If there were no God, conscience were useless)

The full article by William O'Flaherty which trails a book of his that came out at the end of 2017 can be found here.

These are O’Flaherty’s ten most common Lewis misquotes:

1. “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun. Not because I can see it, but by it, I can see everything else.”

The most misquoted line from Lewis. These are certainly great words, but they aren’t quite what Lewis actually wrote. They are close though. Not including punctuation, there are eight differences. The correct version comes from an essay entitled “Is Theology Poetry?” found in The Weight of Glory. The actual statement “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”

2. “You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”

Lewis never wrote those words, but he did admire the person who originally wrote them - or at least something very similar. George MacDonald penned a close variation of this saying in Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867). In Chapter 28 we find a comment about “the great mistake of teaching children that they have souls.” It goes on to say that “they ought to be taught that they have bodies, and that their bodies die; while they themselves live on.” Years later, in 1892, an article appeared in The British Friend where MacDonald is quoted as saying, “Never tell a child … you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.”

3.“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.”

People usually attribute this expression to Mere Christianity. Lewis did address the topic of humility within that title, but he did not write anything quite so pithy. These exact words are found in Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, in the material from Day 19 on “Cultivating Community” (2002 edition). In that chapter, Warren does not mention Lewis, even though he does in other places. So, while this does summarise Lewis, Warren never even suggests they are adapted from it.

4.“You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.”

Associating Lewis with this quote might be from the mistaken belief that Lewis only became famous later in life, after The Chronicles of Narnia were published. However, you will not locate these words in any of his writings. Lewis was already famous because of the bestselling The Screwtape Letters from about 10 years prior to the first children’s story. In fact, he landed on the cover of Time five years after Screwtape was published. This expression is from Les Brown, a motivational speaker whose website claims he is the author of the saying.

5. “Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves …”

The Screwtape Letters is a perennial favourite that has spawned many imitators. This quotation (and there is more to it) begins with the words, “My Dear Wormwood.” However, you will not find this material in The Screwtape Letters. It seems some well-meaning person was a fan of the book and tried to write something in honour of Lewis and did not want to take credit.

6.“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”

Early in Lewis’s life, before he wrote Narnia, he admitted that he did not like children (in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves). While there don’t seem to be any later comments that say he changed his mind, he did reply back to kids who wrote to him about his Narnia stories. Whatever his thoughts on children, Lewis is not the author of the above statement. You can occasionally find the real author, John Trainer, credited in a few places. In late December 2012, he confirmed via Facebook that he first came up with this expression.

7.“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

Some might disagree that this quotation should be on the list since it is actually very, very close to what Lewis did write. Removing the words, “far, far,” from the above quotation matches what he originally wrote in a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne on June 17, 1963. However, what Lewis meant when he wrote these words is not apparent when taken out of context. Those not familiar with the letter might think he is telling us to not worry about present difficulties and look to the future. However, if you read the entire letter you find Lewis is challenging Miss Shelburne about her fear of dying, “Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer?” At the close of the same paragraph, he states, “Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret?” followed immediately by the quoted (or misquoted) expression.

8.“Experience that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.”

Maybe you can close your eyes and picture Lewis saying these words? Unfortunately, it is not Lewis, but Anthony Hopkins, reading his line from the script of the 1993 movie Shadowlands. But even that is not quite right. The version usually found online (as given in this list) actually does not quote the movie correctly. The “real” fake quotation is “Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn. My God, you learn.” The misquotations don’t end there. In early 2017 this line was misquoted yet again. The fictional character Mike Baxter (Tim Allen) in Last Man Standing says, “C S Lewis said, ‘Experience is a brutal teacher. But you'll learn, by God, you'll learn.’” Not Lewis and not even the right wording.

9. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”

Part of “doing the right thing” should be checking quotation sources. For this particular expression, there are several similar sayings, but nothing in Lewis. “Do the right thing when no one is looking.” is part of the title of a blog post from 2015 from Vickie Milazzo, president of an organisation that does legal nurse consulting. Another possible origin for it is a 2003 book from Charles Marshall entitled Shattering the Glass Slipper, where you find two statements: “Integrity is doing the right thing when you don’t have to - when no one else is looking or will ever know - when there will be no congratulations or recognition for having done so.” Then a little later Marshall succinctly writes, “Integrity is doing the right thing no matter what it costs you.” Marshall does not state that he is referring to another author for either statement, indicating the words are his not Lewis’s. A third possible origin for the misquote is a speech given by J C Watts at the 1996 Republican National Convention. A transcript reports he said, “I’ve got a pretty simple definition of character. It’s simply doing what’s right when nobody’s looking. For too long, for too long, for too long we’ve gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by, and the only thing wrong is to get caught.”

10. "Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars - let go to move forward.”

This is one of those motivational quotations that encourages a person to keep going despite circumstances. Presently it is not known who created it. A variation is referenced in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible. That version reads, “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” In the book, it is credited to “Author Unknown.” Having Lewis’s name associated with this expression likely makes it more noticeable. After all, if someone as great as Lewis said it, you might be more likely to read it and/or believe it. Trouble is, you cannot find Lewis ever using the words “monkey bars” in any published writing.

Two more short quotations from the conference

The provision of this mediator of the New Testament, is the greatest effect of the infinite wisdom, love, and grace of God. This is the centre of his eternal counsels. In the womb of this one mercy, all others are contained. Herein will he be glorified to eternity.
John Owen (Hebrews)

There is one peculiarity which distinguishes Paul from the other sacred writers - his habit of giving set dissertations on doctrinal subjects. It is apparent also, from his writings, that he never takes up a doctrinal subject for the mere pleasure of theoretic discussion; but is always compelled to do this, by the exigencies of the church; particularly, by the assaults made on the Christian faith by false teachers.

James Gray (I think this is the correct source)

10 Quotes on art by well known artists

1. The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery

Francis Bacon

2. A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art

Paul Cezanne

3. Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Georges Braque

4. Great art picks up where nature ends.

Marc Chagall

5. Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it./ Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Salvador Dali

6. Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Edgar Degas

7. The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

Lucian Freud

8. If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.

Edward Hopper

9. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Pablo Picasso

10. Painting is the most beautiful of lies

Kees van Dongen

Unusual words 20 Orotund

I think we'll make this the last of the series. It comes up in William Guest's biography of P P Bliss.

"The orotund is not your natural voice" (p 85)

It can be defined as

pompous and bombastic or full in sound; sonorous.

It also appears in J R Watson's Ancient or modern, Ancient and Modern: the Victorian hymn and the nineteenth century.

"Williams and Chandler were entering this field in different ways. Williams by stealth, printing translations that no one could sing; Chandler more boldly. In his orotund preface to Hymns of the Primitive Church he addressed himself to the Church of England with a kind of heavy playfulness ..."

Unusual words 19 Rodomontade

In The Wilder Shores of Marx by Theodore Dalrymple on page 85 he says

At first I was amused by the palace, by its preposterous architectural rodomontade; then I was fascinated by it, for it seemed to me to raise in tangible ... Sometimes (I was told) the Securitate wish to intimidate you.

The word refers to pretentious boasting or bragging; bluster.

Other examples
James Fenimore Cooper, Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief

She admired Tom for his exterior, but the admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade so exceedingly desperate.
Anne Bronte in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
She knows what she's about; but he, poor fool, deludes himself with the notion that she'll make him a good wife, and because she has amused him with some rodomontade about despising rank and wealth in matters of love and marriage, he flatters himself that she's devotedly attached to him; that she will not refuse him for his poverty, and does not court him for his rank, but loves him for himself alone.

Unusual Words 18 Matutinal

In his Road to Wigan Pier George Orwell uses the word matutinal, as in

"The matutinal tub divides the classes more effectually than birth, wealth, or education."

The word relates to or rfers to soemthing occurring in the morning or early in the day. Other examples

He was an imposing and sombre personage, before whom the choir boys in alb and in jacket trembled, as well as the machicots, and the brothers of Saint-Augustine and the matutinal clerks of Notre-Dame, when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the choir, majestic, thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so bent upon his breast that all one saw of his face was his large, bald brow. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

"Ata," explained So-ta, when I questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal rite; but that was later.

The Land That Time Forgot by  Edgar Rice Burroughs

Unusual words Special Ethan Frome

In the edition of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome I have just read a number of words are footnoted for comment. I mention two

Carcel lamps are oil lamps that made a bubbling noise, named for a French inventor

(In the "best parlour," with its black horse-hair and mahogany weakly illuminated by a gurgling Carcel lamp, I listened every evening ...) 

Huckabuck is an inexpensive absorbent cotton fabric

(I know there's a huckabuck towel missing; and I can't take out what you done with that match-safe 't used to stand behind the stuffed owl in the parlour.)

The Christian Warrior

The Christian Warrior is a short work by the Puritan Isaac Ambrose that was first published in 1660. In 1997 an 1837 edition (abridged, methodised and improved by Thomas Jones of Northampton) was reprinted in hardback by SDG and is still available. It is an excellent little book in the usual Puritan style and is reminiscent of The Christian in complete armour, Precious Remedies against Satan's devices and other books from that period. It begins by reminding us that the Christian life is a battle and goes on to deal with various situations where Satan attacks, giving remedies all the way from infancy to the end of life. It could probably do with some slight editing for repetition but on the whole it is useful book full of helpful pastoral advice and biblical instruction.

Some quotations

Any feeble David may wrestle with Goliath, so long as the battle is the Lord's; and the warrior comes to the field in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. p 10

Sin, like a black river of poison, flows from Adam, through one generation after another, to the end of the world. p 21

Holy thoughts are precious things; they are God's messengers; they come from God, and lead to God again. Wherever they are entertained, they bestow exceeding great rewards. Therefore cherish these motions of the Spirit, and know that they come from heaven to benefit thy soul. p 31

The flesh is a worse enemy than the devil himself. p 35

Unusual words 17 Pullulating

In Theodore Dalrymple's The wilder shores of Marx on page 39 we find this reference:

 

"Indian or African airports ... with their pullulating chaos of officaldom, passengers, relatives, touts, ..."

 

Pullulating, from a Latin word that also gives us pullet means

1. Putting forth sprouts or buds; germinating. 2. Breeding rapidly or abundantly. 3. Teeming or swarming

 

In his novel Metroland Julian Barnes refers to

 

"the pullulating mass of the working class, who any moment might swarm like termites up the viaduct"

 

It's also in London Fields by Martin Amis

 

"This meant sitting about in a bijou flatlet in Cheapside, trying to keep tabs on the proliferating, the pullulating hydra of Clinch money".

Unusual Words 16 Skerrick

Somewhere in the three hundred and odd pages of the new book on Focus by Australian Peet Johnson, he uses the delightful skerrick (as in not making a skerrick of a difference).

 

It is apparently a word used in USA, Australia and New Zealand to refer to a small fragment or amount (esp in the phrase not a skerrick). It is suggested that it is a northern English word though I saw it mentioned in a book on Essex dialect. The sk beginning suggests Viking influence.

 

Somewhere in Peter Carey's History of the Kelly Gang we find the sentence

Hard days followed the butter money were all taken and not a skerrick of income generated by the alleged 60 bolts of cloth

 

Also in Helen Garner's Cosmo Cosmolino we read the line

Oh, perhaps a skerrick, the merest shred of curled rind, to check that it was cooked: otherwise, no.

Unusual words 15 Glozing

In George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier he writes these words, quoting someone and then commenting

 

'Have another cream cracker, Mr Reilly. You'll like a cream cracker with your cheese' - thus glozing over the fact that there was only cheese for supper.

 

It is, of course, just an archaic form of "glossing" in the sense of underplaying or minimising. It is in Milton's Paradise Lost

"For man will heark'n to his glozing lyes".

Unusual words 12 Meed

I camne across the word meed, which means reward or wage in Arthur Bryant's biography of T B Macaulay (see p 70 of the 1979 Weidenfeld and Nicolson hardback).

The non-juror Ken receives as liberal a meed of praise as any man can earn from another: ...

It also appears in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

He could have endured poverty, and while this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he gloried in it; but the ingratitude of the Turk and the loss of his beloved Safie were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable.

And in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter

The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously.

Athanasius on Psalms

Writing to Marcellus Athansius wrote

 

Let each one, therefore, who recites the Psalms have a sure hope that through them God will speedily give ear to those who are in need. For if a man be in trouble when he says them, great comfort will he find in them; if he be tempted or persecuted, he will find himself abler to stand the test and will experience the protection of the Lord, Who always defends those who say these words. By them too a man will overthrow the devil and put the fiends to flight. If he have sinned, when he uses them he will repent; if he have not sinned, he will find himself rejoicing that he is stretching out towards the things that are before and, so wrestling, in the power of the Psalms he will prevail. Never will such a man be shaken from the truth, but those who try to trick and lead him into error he will refute; and it is no human teacher who promises us this, but the Divine Scripture itself.

Interesting kindle list

There is an interesting kindle list here showing the most highlighted quotations by kindle users.

Quotations on election and purpose

Election
Never confuse election with partiality. Partiality is favoritism that is corrupted by a willingness to pervert justice for the sake of the favored few; election chooses certain people out of God’s free decision and nothing else, and even then justice is not perverted: hence the cross.

Don Carson

Man' s chief end

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives. or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. They are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labour for, or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?

Jonathan Edwards

Tolstoy on death

This is from the novella The death of Ivan Ilyich

And suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect. "Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to himself. "It's not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and ... death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only a question of weeks, days ... it may happen this moment. There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there! Where?" A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the throbbing of his heart.

... Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. ... 

"If I had to die like Caius I would have known it was so. An inner voice would have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and I and all my friends felt that our case was quite different from that of Caius. and now here it is!" he said to himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! But here it is. How is this? How is one to understand it?"

He could not understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect, morbid thought away and to replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that thought, and not the thought only but the reality itself, seemed to come and confront him. ... He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with *It*: face to face with *It*. And nothing could be done with *It* except to look at it and shudder.

Reading the Bible Y

In all its parts, in its very entirety, the Bible, if we are to accept its witness to itself, is utterly infallible.
E J Young, Thy Word is Truth