Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown round the splendours and glories of the universes by a senior and experienced angel. To tell the truth, the little angel was beginning to be tired and a little bored. He had been shown whirling galaxies and blazing suns, infinite distances in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space, and to his mind there seemed to be an awful lot of it all. Finally he was shown the galaxy of which our planetary system is but a small part. As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.

“I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

“Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel. “What’s special about that one?”

“That,” replied his senior solemnly, “is the Visited Planet.”

“Visited?” said the little one. “you don’t mean visited by ——–?

“Indeed I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and not perhaps overclean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory.” And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

“But how?” queried the younger one. “Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendours of His Creation, and millions more that I’m sure I haven’t seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?”

“It isn’t for us,” said his senior a little stiffly, “to question His ‘why’s’, except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers, as you seem to be. But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that. As to why He became one of them—how else do you suppose could He visit them?”

The little angels face wrinkled in disgust.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”

“I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping, crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him.”

The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

“Close your eyes for a moment,” said the senior angel, “and we will go back in what they call Time.”

While the little angel’s eyes were closed and the two of them moved nearer to the spinning ball, it stopped its spinning, spun backwards quite fast for a while, and then slowly resumed its usual rotation.

“Now look!” And as the little angel did as he was told, there appeared here and there on the dull surface of the globe little flashes of light, some merely momentary and some persisting for quite a time.

“Well, what am I seeing now?” queried the little angel.

“You are watching this little world as it was some thousands of years ago,” returned his companion. “Every flash and glow of light that you see is something of the Father’s knowledge and wisdom breaking into the minds and hearts of people who live upon the earth. Not many people, you see, can hear His Voice or understand what He says, even though He is speaking gently and quietly to them all the time.”

“Why are they so blind and deaf and stupid?” asked the junior angel rather crossly.

“It is not for us to judge them. We who live in the Splendour have no idea what it is like to live in the dark. We hear the music and the Voice like the sound of many waters every day of over lives, but to them—well, there is much darkness and much noise and much distraction upon the earth. Only a few who are quiet and humble and wise hear His Voice. But watch, for in a moment you will see something truly wonderful.”

The Earth went on turning and circling round the sun, and then quite suddenly, in the upper half of the globe, there appeared a light, tiny but so bright in its intensity that both the angels hid their eyes.

“I think I can guess,” said the little angel in a low voice. “That was the Visit, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, that was the Visit. The Light Himself went down there and lived among them; but in a moment, and you will be able to tell that even with your eyes closed, the light will go out.”

“But why? Could He not bear their darkness and stupidity? Did He have to return here?”

“No, it wasn’t that” returned the senior angel. His voice was stern and sad. “They failed to recognise Him for Who He was – or at least only a handful knew Him. For the most part they preferred their darkness to His Light, and in the end they killed Him.”

“The fools, the crazy fools! They don’t deserve —”

“Neither you nor I, nor any other angel, knows why they were so foolish and so wicked. Nor can we say what they deserve or don’t deserve. But the fact remains, they killed our Prince of Glory while He was Man amongst them.”

“And that I suppose was the end? I see the whole Earth has gone black and dark. All right, I won’t judge them, but surely that is all they could expect?”

“Wait, we are still far from the end of the story of the Visited Planet. Watch now, but be ready to cover your eyes again.”

In utter blackness the earth turned round three times, and then there blazed with unbearable radiance a point of light.

“What now?” asked the little angel, shielding his eyes.

“They killed Him all right, but He conquered death. The thing most of them dread and fear all their lives He broke and conquered. He rose again, and a few of them saw Him and from then on became His utterly devoted slaves.”

“Thank God for that,” said the little angel.

“Amen. Open your eyes now, the dazzling light has gone. The Prince has returned to His Home of Light. But watch the Earth now.”

As they looked, in place of the dazzling light there was a bright glow which throbbed and pulsated. And then as the Earth turned many times little points of light spread out. A few flickered and died; but for the most part the lights burned steadily, and as they continued to watch, in many Parts of the globe there was a glow over many areas.

“You see what is happening?” asked the senior angel. “The bright glow is the company of loyal men and women He left behind, and with His help they spread the glow and now lights begin to shine all over the Earth.”

“Yes, yes,” said the little angel impatiently, “but how does it end? Will the little lights join up with each other? Will it all be light, as it is in Heaven?”

His senior shook his head. “We simply do not know,” he replied. “It is in the Father’s hands. Sometimes it is agony to watch and sometimes it is joy unspeakable. The end is not yet. But now I am sure you can see why this little ball is so important. He has visited it; He is working out His Plan upon it.”

“Yes, I see, though I don’t understand. I shall never forget that this is the Visited Planet.”

HT: Justin Taylor

βῆ δ’ ἀκέων παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης

He set out, silent, along the shore of the much-thundering sea.

— Iliad, I.34

If one listens to the metre of the Greek, and particularly to where the ictus falls throughout the verse, one can hear the sound of the waves in the background, with a crash, rather appropriately, in the middle of πολυφλοίσβοιο (loud-roaring).

βῆ δ’ ἀκέ  |  ων παρὰ  |  θῖνα πο  |  λυφλοίσ  |  βοιο θα  |  λάσσης

“The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.”

– Jonathan Lethem, “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”

The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events–or philosophy, or logic, or sense.  No; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total and miraculous absence from it of all these qualities–a charm which is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect that they are absent.

 For example?

Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie.  His books no longer were his inseparable companions–his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the field of victory.  He endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: "O!  Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams.  Thou shalt now walk in a new path–perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness."

Although it would be a pleasure to continue the quotation of Twain's A Cure for the Blues, which is well worth reading, let me exhort you to read this gem of a work; as Twain writes:

There is but one Homer, there is but one Shakespeare, there is but one McClintock–and his immortal book is before you.  Homer could not have written this book, Shakespeare could not have written it, I could not have done it myself.  There is nothing just like it in the literature of any country or of any epoch.  It stands alone; it is monumental.  It adds G. Ragsdale McClintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable names.

He concluded with this quote from the Brothers Karamazov:

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.

— Dostoyevsky, Brothers Karamazov.

All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee,
He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see.
He is a man of genius bright,
And in him his congregation does delight,
Because they find him to be honest and plain,
Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain.
He preaches in a plain straightforward way,
The people flock to hear him night and day,
And hundreds from the doors are often turn'd away,
Because he is the greatest preacher of the present day…

— William McGonagall, "An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan"

But unsung poets who persist in singing are not the only ones to give to literature some of its choicest gems. Some of the more lauded poets have embarassments all their own.

Coleridge, for example, wrote a poem he made the mistake of titling "To a Young Ass":

Poor little foal of an oppressèd race!
I love the languid patience of thy face:
And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread,
And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head

…

Innocent foal! thou poor despised forlorn!
I hail thee Brother — spite of the fool's scorn!
And fain would take thee with me, in the Dell
Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell,
Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride,
And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side! …

The misplaced sentimentality of Coleridge amuses, nay, even evokes wry smiles from the best of us. But we are inclined to be tolerant. After all, who is not maudlin at times? But Wordsworth's mundanity is a much worse crime, deserving no quarter:

And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry,
I've measured it from side to side:
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide…

— Wordsworth, "The Thorn"

Wordsworth later revised the poem, but too late to prevent him from causing a good deal of laughter.

Let me close with a few words from poor Tony Weller, who seems to have heard a bit too much bad poetry in his life:

Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ‘cept a beadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’ or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.

— Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

HT: Confessing Evangelical 

The View of Delft rightly deserves admiration, and none apparently recognised that more than Proust, who not only died with Vermeer's name on his lips, but who named the View as the painting beloved by Bergotte, a character from in À la recherche du temps perdu who best seems to hold Proust's own views on art. 

Bergotte is worried after reading a newspaper article admiring the "petit pan de mur jaune", for he cannot remember it, and accordingly goes to see the View of Delft at an exhibition, where he tragically dies.

A friend recently asked where I believe Proust's piece of wall to be. While it may well be possible that the piece of wall does not exist (but is merely part of an impression Proust desired to create), I think it more likely that it is to be seen to the right of the painting, where the drawbridge creates the illusion of a sloping red roof against the yellow wall in the background. In other words, I am convinced the newspaper article was wrong, and Bergotte, who knew the painting by heart, was right originally to fail to remember little piece of yellow wall described by the newspaper as "a beauty that was sufficient in itself". Of course, there are astonishing microcosmos in Vermeer and in the View of Delft in particular that warrant the praise of the newspaper. I do not think we can blame Proust's newspaper writer when his heart was so clearly in the right place.

[For more European paintings, let me unequivocally recommend the Web Gallery of Art, an ambitious venture making reproductions of 12th-18th European painting and sculpture available online.]

“Ay, and faith, so be I.” said Mark Clark.

“I won’t say much for myself; I don’t wish to,” Coggan continued, with that tendency to talk on principles which is characteristic of the barley-corn. “But I’ve never changed a single doctrine: I’ve stuck like a plaster to the old faith I was born in. Yes; there’s this to be said for the Church, a man can belong to the Church and bide in his cheerful old inn, and never trouble or worry his mind about doctrines at all. But to be a meetinger, you must go to chapel in all winds and weathers, and make yerself as frantic as a skit. Not but that chapel members be clever chaps enough in their way. They can lift up beautiful prayers out of their own heads, all about their families and shipwrecks in the newspaper.”

“They can — they can.” said Mark Clark, with corroborative feeling; “but we Churchmen, you see, must have it all printed aforehand, or, dang it all, we should no more know what to say to a great gaffer like the Lord than babes unborn.”
“Chapelfolk be more hand-in-glove with them above than we.” said Joseph, thoughtfully.

“Yes.” said Coggan. “We know very well that if anybody do go to heaven, they will. They’ve worked hard for it, and they deserve to have it, such as ’tis. I bain’t such a fool as to pretend that we who stick to the Church have the same chance as they, because we know we have not. But I hate a feller who’ll change his old ancient doctrines for the sake of getting to heaven.”

— Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

Two interesting comments:

1. On metaphor

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.

— Aristotle, The Poetics

The most visible portion of a sermon is the ‘illustration’, which is generally an extended story that helps the listeners understand the point being made. Sometimes, of course, an illustration can become too visible and take the focus away from the point. But metaphor is not open to this criticism.

Take an introductory passage by Charles Spurgeon as an example of metaphor-filled preaching:

Oh, there is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost there is a balm for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know of nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning.

— Spurgeon, “The Immutability of God”

While Spurgeon’s rather florid style is not one to be wholly embraced today, bringing more metaphor into an otherwise straightforward paragraph or address might well be a refreshing change from the occasionally rigid Statement-Illustration-Application sermon model.

(See also The Riches of Spurgeon by William Shishko.)

2. On contradictions in literature

One should best avoid the fault of which Glaucon speaks: ‘They start with some improbable presumption; and having so decreed it themselves, proceed to draw inferences and censure the poet as though he had actually said whatever they happen to believe, if his statement conflicts with their own notion of things.’

— Aristotle, The Poetics

It is a fairly straightforward principle of literary interpretation that one allows the text one is reading to have the benefit of the doubt. The principle is also known as Puddenhead’s Rule: Do not assume that the Reader is more intelligent than the Author. It is pleasant to find Aristotle in agreement.

An example of a violation of Puddenhead’s Rule is in the way some people have interpreted 1 Kings 7.23:

Then [Hiram acting for Solomon] made the sea of cast metal. It was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. (ESV)

As we all know that the circumference of a circle is equal to π × diameter of the circle, we would expect the circumference to be 31.4159… Some, eager to find a problem with the Bible, have contended that 1 Kings 7.23 is inaccurate. In fact, by Puddenhead’s Rule, it is more reasonable to suppose that instead of rounding the circumference at 31.4159, 31.4 or 31, the author rounded the circumference at 30. (There are also further speculations on the accuracy of the verse.)

There are of course many more comments Aristotle makes on Greek poetry that transcend his original subject. (Cicero spoke of Aristotle’s work as a ‘river of gold’.) Even if his style is not as glorious as the poets he writes of nor as visionary as his philosophic predecessors, nonetheless in my opinion a few moments prospecting by the banks of his golden river are repaid in full.

Double Life, however, is in no danger of becoming a favourite book. In fact, I should be afraid to read it again.

The story concerns the eponymous Cockney, a man who rather fancies loud colours and wears “eight and sixpenny trousers … with the
blue stripe and the grease stains”, and sports a “sham diamond stud” and “three inches of pinned on cuff”. After eating an unusual bean from a small tree, he develops a sense of the aesthetic and a compulsion to tell the truth. This transforms his life. Unable to find happiness in his garish home and surroundings, he joins the stratum of society appreciative of fine things. But alas, the effects of the bean begin to wear off. Mr Burton had neglected to eat a leaf of the tree. By the time he finds this out, the tree is lost and he is doomed to revert to his former self. The description of the transformation is terrible.

In the end, Mr Alfred Burton is unable to keep up his high-brow life because he is unable to keep his values. First his values slip away from his grasp. Then his life slips away. Oppenheim makes the point that what we cherish defines us, and when what we love changes profoundly, we might almost be said to be different people.

Although in The Double Life the change is brought about instantaneously and is undone almost as rapidly, we can all point to changes in our own values that have happened almost unconsciously over a period of time.

Perhaps it is not surprising that Paul exhorts all of us to “cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9, NIV) and even lays down a love of what is good as a requisite for elders.

I found The Double Life to be helpful. It portrays the transformation that occurs when one ceases to love what is good. In real life, the change may be slow, but it would be just as horrifying as the transformation that awaits Mr Alfred Burton in the last few pages of Oppenheim’s novel.