Admiration

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Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  We move our eyes by our will; but one without training cannot so easily execute the intention of making them converge. At any moment, however, he can execute that of looking at a near object, in which act convergence is involved. Now just as little can we carry out our purpose to keep our attention steadily fixed upon a certain object, when our interest in the object is exhausted, and the purpose is inwardly formulated in this abstract way. But we can set ourselves new questions about the object, so that a new interest in it arises, and then the attention will remain riveted . The relation of attention to will is, then, less one of immediate than of mediate control." These words of Helmholtz are of fundamental importance. And if true of sensorial attention, how much more true are they of the intellectual variety! The conditio sine quâ non of sustained attention to a given topic of thought is that we should roll it over and over incessantly and consider different aspects and relations of it in turn. Only in pathological states will a fixed and ever monotonously recurring idea possess the mind. And now we can see why it is that what is called sustained attention is the easier, the richer in acquisitions and the fresher and more original the mind. In such minds, subjects bud and sprout and grow At every moment, they please by a new consequence and rivet the attention afresh. But an intellect unfurnished with materials, stagnant, unoriginal, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. A glance exhausts its possibilities of interest. Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention.[343] In most of them, it is to be feared, the so-called 'power' is of the passive sort. Their ideas coruscate, every subject branches infinitely before their fertile minds, and so for hours they may be rapt. But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them . And, when we come down to the root of the matter, we see that they differ from ordinary men less in the character of their attention than in the nature of the objects upon which it is successively bestowed. In the genius, these form a concatenated series, suggesting each other mutually by some rational law. Therefore we call the attention 'sustained' and the topic of meditation for hours 'the same.' In the common man the series is for the most part incoherent, the objects have no rational bond, and we call the attention wandering and unfixed.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  45, 113.) It is surely in some such way as this that Weber's law is to be interpreted, if it ever is. The Fechnerian Maasformel and the conception of it as an ultimate 'psychophysic law' will remain an 'idol of the den,' if ever there was one. Fechner himself indeed was a German Gelehrter of the ideal type, at once simple and shrewd, a mystic and an experimentalist, homely and daring, and as loyal to facts as to his theories. But it would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this could saddle our Science forever with his patient whimsies, and, in a world so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all future students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own works, but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. Those who desire this dreadful literature can find it; it has a 'disciplinary value;' but I will not even enumerate it in a footnote. The only amusing part of it is that Fechner's critics should always feel bound, after smiting his theories hip and thigh and leaving not a stick of them standing, to wind up by saying that nevertheless to him belongs the imperishable glory of the first formulating them and thereby turning psychology into an exact science (!). "'And everybody praised the duke Who this great fight did win.' 'But what good came of it at last?' Quoth little Peterkin. Why, that I cannot tell, said he, 'But 'twas a famous victory! '" CHAPTER XIV. [461] ASSOCIATION. After discrimination, association! Already in the last chapter I have had to invoke, in order to explain the improvement of certain discriminations by practice, the 'association' of the objects to be distinguished, with other more widely differing ones. It is obvious that the advance of our knowledge must consist of both operations; for objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by their abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety—all this magical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited the admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And now what shall be said of Helmholtz? Can I find fault with a book which, on the whole, I imagine to be one of the four or five greatest monuments of human genius in the scientific line? If truth impels I must fain try, and take the risks. It seems to me that Helmholtz's genius moves most securely when it keeps close to particular facts. At any rate, it shows least strong in purely speculative passages, which in the Optics, in spite of many beauties, seem to me fundamentally vacillating and obscure. The 'empiristic' view which Helmholtz defends is that the space-determinations we perceive are in every case products of a process of unconscious inference.[278] The inference is similar to one from induction or analogy.[279] We always see that form before us which habitually would have caused the sensation we now have.[280] But the latter sensation can never be intrinsically spatial, or its intrinsic space-determinations would never be overcome as they are so often by the 'illusory' space-determinations it so often suggests.[281] Since the illusory determination can be traced to a suggestion of Experience, the 'real' one must also be such a suggestion: so that all space intuitions are due solely to Experience.[282] The only psychic activity required for this is the association of ideas.[283] But how, it may be asked, can association produce a. space-quality not in the things associated? How can we by induction or analogy infer what we do not already generically know? Can 'suggestions of experience' reproduce elements which no particular experience originally contained? This is the point by which Helmholtz's 'empiristic' theory, as a theory, must he judged. No theory is worthy of the name which leaves such a point obscure. Well, Helmholtz does so leave it. At one time he seems to fall back on inscrutable powers of the soul, and to range himself with the 'psychical stimulists.' He speaks of gent as having made the essential step in the matter in distinguishing the content of experience from that form—space, course—which is given it by the peculiar faculties of the mind.[284] But elsewhere, again,[285] speaking of sensationalistic theories which would connect spatially determinate feelings directly with certain neural events, he says it is better to assume only such simple psychic activities as we know to exist, and gives the association of ideas as an instance of what he means. Later,[286] he reinforces this remark by confessing that he does not see how any neural process can give rise without antecedent experience to a ready-made (fertige) perception of space. And, finally, in a single momentous sentence, he speaks of sensations of touch as if they might be the original material of our space-percepts—which thus, from the optical point of view, 'may be assumed as given.'[287]

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  They melt into each other like dissolving views, and no two of them feel the object just alike, but each feels the total object in a unitary undivided way. This is what I mean by denying that in the thought any parts can be found corresponding to the object's parts. Time-parts are not such parts Now let the vertical dimensions of the figure stand for the objects or contents of the thoughts. A line vertical to any point of the horizontal, as 1-1', will then symbolize the object in the mind at the instant 1; a space above the horizontal, as 1-1'-2'-2, will symbolize all that passes through the mind during the time 1-2 whose line it covers. The entire diagram from 0 to 0' represents a finite length of thought's stream. Can we now define the psychic constitution of each vertical section of this segment? We can, though in a very rough way. Immediately after 0, even before we have opened our mouths to speak, the entire thought is present to our mind in the form of an intention to utter that sentence. This intention, though it has no simple name, and though it is a transitive state immediately displaced by the first word, is yet a perfectly determinate phase of thought, unlike anything else (see p. 168). Again, immediately before 0', after the last word of the sentence is spoken, all will admit that we again think its entire content as we inwardly realize its completed deliverance. All vertical sections made through any other parts of the diagram will be respectively filled with other ways of feeling the sentence's meaning. Through 2, for example, the cards will be the part of the object most emphatically present to the mind; through 4, the table. The stream is made higher in the drawing at its end than at its beginning, because the final way of feeling the content is fuller and richer than the initial way. As Joubert says, "we only know just what we meant to say, after we have said it." And as M. V. Egger remarks, "before speaking, one barely knows what one intends to say, but afterwards one is filled with admiration and surprise at having said and thought it so well." This latter author seems to me to have kept at much closer quarters with the facts than any other analyst of consciousness.[251] But even he does not quite hit the mark, for, as I understand him, he thinks that each word as it occupies the mind displaces the rest of the thought's content. He distinguishes the 'idea' (what I have called the total object or meaning) from the consciousness of the words, calling the former a very feeble state, and contrasting it with the liveliness of the words, even when these are only silently rehearsed.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "In the sense, then, that there exist in the nervous system certain pre-established relations answering to relations in the environment, there is truth in the doctrine of 'forms of intuition'—not the truth which its defenders suppose, but a parallel truth. Corresponding to absolute external relations, there are established in the structure of the nervous system absolute internal relations—relations that are potentially present before birth in the shape of definite nervous connections; that are antecedent to, and independent of, individual experiences; and that are automatically disclosed along with the first cognitions. And, as here understood, it is not only these fundamental relations which are thus predetermined, but also hosts of other relations of a more or less constant kind, which are congenitally represented by more or less complete nervous connections. But these predetermined internal relations, though independent of the experiences of the individual, are not independent of experiences in general: they have been determined by the experiences of preceding organisms. The corollary here drawn from the general argument is that the human brain is an organized register of infinitely-numerous experiences received during the evolution of life, or rather during the evolution of that series of organisms through which the human organism has been reached. The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these experiences have been successively bequeathed, principal and interest; and have slowly amounted to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant—which the infant in after-life exercises and perhaps strengthens or further complicates—and which, with minute additions, it bequeaths to future generations. And thus it happens that the European inherits from twenty to thirty cubic inches more brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in some inferior human races, become congenital in superior ones. Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakspeares." This is a brilliant and seductive statement, and it doubtless includes a good deal of truth. Unfortunately it fails to go into details; and when the details are scrutinized, as they soon must be by us, many of them will be seen to be inexplicable in this simple way, and the choice will then remain to us either of denying the experiential origin of certain of our judgments, or of enlarging the meaning of the word experience so as to include these cases among its effects. TWO MODES OF ORIGIN OF BRAIN STRUCTURE.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  So far the worthy Schneider, to whose words may be added this remark, that the passionate devotion of a mother—ill herself, perhaps—to a sick or dying child is perhaps the most simply beautiful moral spectacle that human life affords. Contemning every danger, triumphing over every difficulty, outlasting all fatigue, woman's love is here invincibly superior to anything that man can show. These are the most prominent of the tendencies which are worthy of being called instinctive in the human species.[411] It will be observed that no other mammal, not even the monkey, shows so large an array. In a perfectly-rounded development, every one of these instincts would start a habit toward certain objects and inhibit a habit toward certain others. Usually this is the case; but, in the one-sided development of civilized life, it happens that the timely age goes by in a sort of starvation of objects, and the individual then grows up with gaps in his psychic constitution which future experiences can never fill. Compare the accomplished gentleman with the poor artisan or tradesman of a city: during the adolescence of the former, objects appropriate to his growing interests, bodily and mental, were offered as fast as the interests awoke, and, as a consequence, he is armed and equipped at every angle to meet the world. Sport came to the rescue and completed his education where real things were lacking. He has tasted of the essence of every side of human life, being sailor, hunter, athlete, scholar, fighter, talker, dandy, man of affairs, etc., all in one. Over the city poor boy's youth no such golden opportunities were hung, and in his man-hood no desires for most of them exist. Fortunate it is for him if gaps are the only anomalies his instinctive life presents; perversions are too often the fruit of his unnatural bringing up. CHAPTER XXV.[412] THE EMOTIONS. In speaking of the instincts it has been impossible to keep them separate from the emotional excitements which go with them. Objects of rage, love, fear, etc., not only prompt a man to outward deeds, but provoke characteristic alterations in his attitude and visage, and affect his breathing, circulation, and other organic functions in specific ways. When the outward deeds are inhibited, these latter emotional expressions still remain, and we read the anger in the face, though the blow may not be struck, and the fear betrays itself in voice and color, though one may suppress all other sign. Instinctive reactions and emotional expressions thus shade imperceptibly into each other. Every object that excites an instinct excites an emotion as well. Emotions, however, fall short of instincts, in that the emotional reaction usually terminates in the subject's own body, whilst the instinctive reaction is apt to go farther and enter into practical relations with the exciting object.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  103.) He placed their writings far below the Scriptures; and the more he progressed in the study of both, the more he was impressed with the difference (Erl. ed., LXII. 107). To reform the church by the fathers is impossible; it can only be done by the Word of God (XXV. 231). They were poor interpreters, in part on account of their ignorance of Hebrew and Greek (XXII. 185). All the fathers have erred in the faith. Nevertheless, they are to be held in veneration for their testimony to the Christian faith (propter testimonium fidei omnes sunt venerandi. Erl. ed. LXII. 98). Of all the fathers he learned most from Augustin. For him he had the profoundest respect, and him he quotes more frequently than all others combined. He regards him as one of the four pillars of the church (the claims of Ambrose, Jerome, and Gregory, he disputed), as the best commentator, and the patron of theologians. "Latina nostra ecclesia nullum habuit praestantiorem doctorem quam Augustinum" (Bindseil, I. 456). "He pleased and pleases me better than all other doctors; he was a great teacher, and worthy of all praise" (III. 147). The Pelagians stirred him up to his best books, in which he treats of free-will, faith, and original sin. He first distinguished it from actual transgression. He is the only one among the fathers who had a worthy view of matrimony. The papists pervert his famous word: "I would not believe the gospel if the Catholic Church did not move me thereto," which was said against the Manichaeans in this sense: Ye are heretics, I do not believe you; I go with the church, the bride of Christ, which cannot err (Erl. ed., XXX. 394 sq.). Augustin did more than all the bishops and popes who cannot hold a candle to him (XXXI. 358 sq.), and more than all the Councils (XXV. 341). If he lived now, he would side with us, but Jerome would condemn us (Bindseil, III. 149). Yet with all his sympathy, Luther could not find his "sola fide." Augustin, he says, has sometimes erred, and is not to be trusted. "Although good and holy, he was yet lacking in the true faith, as well as the other fathers." "When the door was opened to me for the understanding of Paul, I was done, with Augustin" (da war es aus mit ihm. Erl. ed., LXII. 119). Next to Augustin he seems to have esteemed Hilary on account of his work on the Trinity. "Hilarius," he says, "inter omnes patres luctator fuit strenuissimus adversus haereticos, cui neque Augustinus conferri potest" (Bindseil, III. 138). Ambrose he calls "a pious, God-fearing, and brave man," and refers to his bold stand against the Emperor Theodosius. But his six books on Genesis are very thin, and his hymns have not much matter, though his (?) "Rex Christe, factor omnium," is "optimus hymnus." He praises Prudentius for his poetry.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  There was no chance that a dentist, especially a Negro dentist, would dare hurt me then. Not with Momma there. The trip was uneventful, except that she put her arm around me, which was very unusual for Momma to do. The dentist showed me the medicine and the needle before he deadened my gums, but if he hadn't I wouldn't have worried. Momma stood right behind him. Her arms were folded and she checked on everything he did. The teeth were extracted and she bought me an ice cream cone from the side window of a drug counter. The trip back to Stamps was quiet, except that I had to spit into a very small empty snuff can which she had gotten for me and it was difficult with the bus humping and jerking on our country roads. At home, I was given a warm salt solution, and when I washed out my mouth I showed Bailey the empty holes, where the clotted blood sat like filling in a pie crust. He said I was quite brave, and that was my cue to reveal our confrontation with the peckerwood dentist and Momma's incredible powers. I had to admit that I didn't hear the conversation, but what else could she have said than what I said she said? What else done? He agreed with my analysis in a lukewarm way and I happily (after all, I'd been sick) flounced into the Store. Momma was preparing our evening meal and Uncle Willie leaned on the door sill. She gave her version. “Dentist Lincoln got right uppity. Said he'd rather put his hand in a dog's mouth. And when I reminded him of the favor, he brushed it off like a piece of lint. Well, I sent Sister downstairs and went inside, I hadn't never been in his office before, but I found the door to where he takes out teeth, and him and the nurse was in there thick as thieves. I just stood there till he caught sight of me.” Crash bang the pots on the stove. “He jumped just like he was sitting on a pin. He said, ‘Annie, I done tole you, I ain't gonna mess around in no niggah's mouth.’ I said, ‘Somebody's got to do it then,’ and he said, ‘Take her to Texarkana to the colored dentist’ and that's when I said, ‘If you paid me my money I could afford to take her.’ He said, ‘It's all been paid.’ I tole him everything but the interest had been paid. He said, ‘ 'Twasn't no interest.’ I said, ‘ 'Tis now. I'll take ten dollars as payment in full.’ You know, Willie, it wasn't no right thing to do, 'cause I lent that money without thinking about it. “He tole that little snippity nurse of his'n to give me ten dollars and make me sign a ‘paid in full’ receipt. She gave it to me and I signed the papers.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  One cold autumn evening he was talking with his friends of his dear incense. Night was drawing on, and a breath of air came suddenly into the room carrying a soft and delicious scent. Neither he nor his friends had ever known so tender a perfume. He ordered one of his attendants to search the palace for its origin; but it could not be found in the palace. Then he sent his favourite, Toshikiyo Tambanokami, to find out where that incense burned, and he immediately set out with his two servants. The scent was very faint, but, when they had crossed the meadows to the bank of the river Kamo, it became stronger. It floated from the other bank of the river, so Toshikiyo crossed by a ford. This was the evening of the sixth of November, and dark, for there was no moon. They crossed the river by the pale light of the stars set high in heaven. On the other bank they found a man seated upon a rock, wearing an old cloak made of Straw and a rush hat. In his sleeves he held a censer. He had an air of peace and serenity. Toshikiyo asked him: 'Dear Stranger, why are you alone in such a place so late at night?' And while he was speaking, he smelt the perfume for which he sought, rising from the Stranger's censer. The other replied: 'I am watching the flight of the river Kamo's singing plovers.' Toshikiyo was impressed by this answer. . To be able to listen to the plovers of the river on so cold and dark a night, the man must be finely cultured and could not be of low class. He said to him more politely: 'Excuse my curiosity, but I come at the command of my master, the Shyôgun Yoshimasa, to seek the man who diffuses so sweet a perfume. Who are you, Stranger?' The man answered: '1 am not a priest who has renounced all worldly matters for the love of Buddha. Neither am I an ordinary man. Behold me rather a traveller, with no place to lay my head. I am more than sixty-six years old, but my feet are Still firm and I can walk freely.' And he arose and Started toward the pines by the water side. It was a plain reply, yet full of mystery. Toshikiyo was even more surprised than before; he held the stranger back and asked him: 'I beg you to tell me the name of the incense you burn. My master Yoshimasa would like to know it.' The man answered: 'Are you then so eager to know a trifle? If your master is thus fond of incense, take him this, although there is not much more of it.' And, giving him the incense and the censer, he went quickly away.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  So, a good governor is said to be the archēgos of peace and a bad governor the archēgos of confusion. One basic idea clings to the word in all its uses. An archēgos is someone who begins something in order that others may enter into it. The word is used to describe the person who begins a family so that some day others may be born into it, who founds a city in order that others may some day live in it, who founds a philosophic school so that others may follow into the truth and the peace that that person has already discovered; someone who is the author of blessings into which others may also enter. An archēgos is the one who blazes a trail for others to follow. Let us take an analogy. Suppose a ship is on the rocks, and the only way to safety is for someone to swim ashore with a line so that, once the line is secured, others might follow. The one who is first to swim ashore will be the archēgos of the safety of the others. This is what the writer to the Hebrews means when he says that Jesus is the archēgos of our salvation. Jesus has blazed the trail to God for us to follow. How was Jesus enabled to take on this role? The Authorized and Revised Standard Versions say that God made him perfect through suffering. The verb translated as make perfect is teleioun, which comes from the adjective teleios, which is usually translated as perfect. But, in the New Testament, teleios has a very special meaning. It has nothing to do with abstract, metaphysical and philosophic perfection. It is used, for instance, of an animal which is unblemished and fit to be offered as a sacrifice; of a scholar who is no longer at the elementary stage but is mature; of a human being or an animal who is fully grown; of a Christian who is no longer on the fringe of the Church but who is baptized. The basic meaning of teleios in the New Testament is always that the thing or person described in this way fully carries out the purpose for which he or she is designed. Therefore, the verb teleioun will mean not so much to make perfect as to make fully adequate for the task for which designed. So, what the writer to the Hebrews is saying is that, through suffering, Jesus was made fully able to complete the task of being the pioneer of our salvation. Why should that be?

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Born in the far north of Scotland, he was brought up in Motherwell, a steel-producing town south of Glasgow where his family settled when he was only five, and this was the kind of place where he felt most at home. Though his association with the University of Glasgow provided a focus for his life over almost fifty years, from his first day as a student in 1925 to his retirement from the faculty in 1974, he never became an ivory-tower academic, divorced from the realities of life in the real world. On the contrary, it was his commitment to the working-class culture of industrial Clydeside that enabled him to make such a lasting contribution not only to the world of the university but also to the life of the Church. He was ordained to the ministry of the Church of Scotland at the age of twenty-six, but was often misunderstood even by other Christians. I doubt that William Barclay would ever have chosen words such as ‘missionary’ or ‘evangelist’ to describe his own ministry, but he accomplished what few others have done, as he took the traditional Presbyterian emphasis on spirituality-through-learning and transformed it into a most effective vehicle for evangelism. His own primary interest was in the history and language of the New Testament, but William Barclay was never only a historian or literary critic. His constant concern was to explore how these ancient books, and the faith of which they spoke, could continue to be relevant to people of his own time. If the Scottish churches had known how to capitalize on his enormous popularity in the media during the 1960s and 1970s, they might easily have avoided much of the decline of subsequent years. Connecting the Bible to life has never been the way to win friends in the world of academic theology, and Barclay could undoubtedly have made things easier for himself had he been prepared to be a more conventional academic. But he was too deeply rooted in his own culture – and too seriously committed to the gospel – for that. He could see little purpose in a belief system that was so wrapped up in arcane and complicated terminology that it was accessible only to experts. Not only did he demystify Christian theology, but he also did it for working people, addressing the kind of things that mattered to ordinary folks in their everyday lives.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  He was ordained to the ministry of the Church of Scotland at the age of twenty-six, but was often misunderstood even by other Christians. I doubt that William Barclay would ever have chosen words such as ‘missionary’ or ‘evangelist’ to describe his own ministry, but he accomplished what few others have done, as he took the traditional Presbyterian emphasis on spirituality-through-learning and transformed it into a most effective vehicle for evangelism. His own primary interest was in the history and language of the New Testament, but William Barclay was never only a historian or literary critic. His constant concern was to explore how these ancient books, and the faith of which they spoke, could continue to be relevant to people of his own time. If the Scottish churches had known how to capitalize on his enormous popularity in the media during the 1960s and 1970s, they might easily have avoided much of the decline of subsequent years. Connecting the Bible to life has never been the way to win friends in the world of academic theology, and Barclay could undoubtedly have made things easier for himself had he been prepared to be a more conventional academic. But he was too deeply rooted in his own culture – and too seriously committed to the gospel – for that. He could see little purpose in a belief system that was so wrapped up in arcane and complicated terminology that it was accessible only to experts. Not only did he demystify Christian theology, but he also did it for working people, addressing the kind of things that mattered to ordinary folks in their everyday lives. In doing so, he also challenged the elitism that has often been deeply ingrained in the twin worlds of academic theology and the Church, with their shared assumption that popular culture is an inappropriate vehicle for serious thinking. Professor Barclay can hardly have been surprised when his predilection for writing books for the masses – not to mention talking to them on television – was questioned by his peers and even occasionally dismissed as being ‘unscholarly’ or insufficiently ‘academic’. That was all untrue, of course, for his work was soundly based in reliable scholarship and his own extensive knowledge of the original languages of the Bible. But like One many centuries before him (and unlike most of his peers, in both Church and academy), ‘the common people heard him gladly’ (Mark 12:37, which no doubt explains why his writings are still inspirational – and why it is a particular pleasure for me personally to commend them to a new readership in a new century. John Drane University of Aberdeeny 2001

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  There were actually cases where Christians sold themselves as slaves to find money to pay the ransom for their friends. They were even prepared to bribe their way into prison. The Christians became so notorious for their help to those in prison that, at the beginning of the fourth century, the Emperor Licinius passed new legislation that ‘no one was to show kindness to sufferers in prison by supplying them with food and that no one was to show mercy to those starving in prison’. It was added that those who were discovered to be doing this kind of thing would be compelled to suffer the same fate as those they tried to help. These instances are taken from Adolf von Harnack’s book The Expansion of Christianity , and many others could be added. In the early days, no Christians who found themselves in trouble for the faith were ever neglected or forgotten by their fellow Christians. (4) There is purity . First, the marriage bond is to be universally respected. This may mean either of two almost opposite things. (a) There were some people who despised marriage. Some even went to the lengths of castrating themselves to secure what they thought was purity. Origen, for instance, took that course. Even someone like Galen, the Greek physician, noted of the Christians that ‘they include men and women who refrain from cohabiting all their lives’. The writer to the Hebrews insists against those who argued for abstinence that the marriage bond is to be honoured and not despised. (b) There were those who were always in danger of lapsing into immorality. The writer to the Hebrews uses two words. The one denotes adulterous living; the other denotes all kinds of impurity and vice. The Christians brought into the world a new ideal of purity. Even the Greeks admitted that. Galen, in the passage we have already quoted, goes on: ‘And they also number individuals who, in ruling and controlling themselves and in their keen pursuit of virtue, have attained a pitch not inferior to that of real philosophers.’ When Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, examined the Christians and reported back to the Emperor Trajan, he had to admit, even though he was looking for a charge on which to condemn them, that at their Lord’s Day meeting: ‘They bound themselves by an oath not for any criminal end but to avoid theft or robbery or adultery, never to break their word nor repudiate a deposit when called upon to refund it.’ In the early days, the Christians presented such a purity to the world that not even their critics and their enemies could find a fault in it. (5) There is contentment . Christians must be free from the love of money.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  If we are encircled by the greatness of the past, we are also encircled by the handicap of our own sin. No one would attempt to climb Mount Everest weighed down with a whole load of unnecessary baggage. If we want to travel far, we must travel light. There is in life an essential duty to discard things. There may be habits, pleasures, self-indulgences or associations which hold us back. We must shed them as athletes take off their tracksuits when they go to the starting blocks; and often we will need the help of Christ to enable us to do so. (4) In the Christian life, we have a means . That means is steadfast endurance . The word is hupomonē , which means not the patience which sits down and accepts things but the patience which takes charge of them. It is not some romantic notion which lends us wings to fly over the difficulties and the hard places. It is a determination, unhurrying and yet un-delaying, which goes steadily on and refuses to be deflected. Obstacles do not daunt it and discouragements do not take its hope away. It is the steadfast endurance which carries on until, in the end, it gets there. (5) In the Christian life, we have an example . That example is Jesus himself. For the goal that was set before him, he endured all things; to win it meant the way of the cross. The writer to the Hebrews has a flash of insight – despising the shame , he says. Jesus was sensitive; never had any individual so sensitive a heart. A cross was a humiliating thing. It was for criminals, for those whom society regarded as the dregs of humanity – and yet he accepted it. The sixteenth-century saint Philip of Neri encourages us ‘to despise the world, to despise ourselves, and to despise the fact that we are despised’ ( spernere mundum, spernere te ipsum, spernere te sperni ). If Jesus could endure like that, so must we. (6) In the Christian life, we have a presence , the presence of Jesus. He is both the goal of our journey and the companion of our way; at the same time, the one whom we go to meet and the one with whom we travel.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (6) In the Christian life, we have a presence, the presence of Jesus. He is both the goal of our journey and the companion of our way; at the same time, the one whom we go to meet and the one with whom we travel. The wonder of the Christian life is that we press on surrounded by the saints, oblivious to everything but the glory of the goal and always in the company of the one who has already made the journey and reached the goal, and who waits to welcome us when we reach the end. THE STANDARD OF COMPARISONHebrews 12:3–4 Consider him who steadfastly endured such opposition at the hands of sinners, and compare your lives with his, so that you may not faint and grow weary in your souls. You have not yet had to resist to the point of blood in your struggle against sin. THE writer to the Hebrews uses two very vivid words when he speaks of fainting and growing weary. They are the words which Aristotle uses of an athlete who flings himself on the ground in a state of collapse after he has surged past the winning post of the race. So, this passage is in effect saying: ‘Don’t give up too soon; don’t collapse until the winning post is passed.’ To urge his readers to that, the writer uses two arguments. (1) For them, the struggle of Christianity has not yet become a mortal struggle. When he speaks of resisting to the point of blood, he uses the very phrase used by the Maccabaean leaders when they called on their troops to fight to the death. When the writer to the Hebrews says that his people have not yet resisted to the point of blood, as James Moffatt puts it, ‘he is not blaming them, he is shaming them’. When they think of what the heroes of the past went through to make their faith possible, surely they cannot drift into lethargy or flinch from conflict. (2) He pleads with them to compare what they have to suffer with what Jesus suffered. He gave up the glory which was his; he came into all the narrowness of the life of humanity; he faced hostility; in the end, he had to die upon a cross. So, the writer to the Hebrews in effect demands: ‘How can you compare what you have to go through with what he went through? He did all that for you – what are you going to do for him?’

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (2) The prophets used many methods. They used the method of speech . When speech failed, they used the method of dramatic action (cf. 1 Kings 11:29–32; Jeremiah 13:1–9, 27:1–7; Ezekiel 4:1–3, 5:1–4). The prophets had to use human methods to transmit their own part of the truth of God. Again, it was different with Jesus. He revealed God by being himself . It is not so much what he said and did that shows us what God is like; it is what he was. The revelation of the prophets was great and came in many forms, but it was fragmentary and presented by such methods as they could find to make it effective. The revelation of God in Jesus was complete and was presented in Jesus himself. In a word, the prophets were the friends of God; but Jesus was the Son . The prophets grasped part of the mind of God; but Jesus was that mind. It is to be noted that it is no part of the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews to belittle the prophets; it is his aim to establish the supremacy of Jesus Christ. He is not saying that there is a break between the Old Testament revelation and that of the New Testament; he is stressing the fact that there is continuity, but continuity that ends in consummation. The writer to the Hebrews uses two great pictures to describe what Jesus was. He says that he was the apaugasma of God’s glory. Apaugasma can mean one of two things in Greek. It can mean brilliance, the light which shines out, or it can mean reflection, the light which is reflected. Here, it probably means brilliance. Jesus is the shining of God’s glory among us. He says that he was the charactēr of God’s very essence. In Greek, charactēr means two things – first, a seal, and, second, the impression that the seal leaves on the wax. The impression has the exact form of the seal. So, when the writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus was the charactēr of the being of God, he meant that he was the exact image of God. Just as, when you look at the impression, you see exactly what the seal which made it is like, so when you look at Jesus you see exactly what God is like. In his commentary, the nineteenth-century scholar and churchman C. J. Vaughan has pointed out that this passage tells us six great things about Jesus. (1) The original glory of God belongs to him. Here is a wonderful thought. Jesus is God’s glory; therefore, we see with amazing clarity that the glory of God consists not in crushing men and women and reducing them to miserable submission and slavery, but in serving them and loving them and in the end dying for them. It is not the glory of shattering power but the glory of suffering love.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  He does not need, as the high priests do, daily first to offer sacrifices for his own sins and thereafter for the sins of the people. For he did this once and for all when he offered himself. For the law appointed as high priests men subject to weakness; but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appointed one who is a Son who is fully equipped to carry out his office forever. S TILL the writer to the Hebrews is filled with the thought of Jesus as high priest. He begins this passage by using a series of great words and phrases to describe him. (1) He says that Jesus is holy ( hosios ). This word is used of Jesus in Acts 2:27 and 13:35; it is used of the Lord in Revelation 15:4 and 16:5; it is used of the Christian bishop in Titus 1:8; it is used of the hands that must be presented to God in prayer in 1 Timothy 2:8. Behind it, there is always one special idea. It always describes those who faithfully do their duty to God. It describes people not so much as they appear before others but as they appear before God. Hosios has in it the greatest of all goodnesses, the goodness which is pure in the sight of God. (2) He says that Jesus never hurt anyone ( akakos ). Kakia is the Greek word for evil; and akakos describes someone who is so cleansed of evil that only good remains. It describes the effect an individual has upon other people. Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist, claimed for himself as a writer that he never corrupted anyone’s morals or unsettled anyone’s faith. Individuals who are described as akakos are so cleansed that their presence is like an antiseptic, and in their hearts there is nothing but the loving kindness of God. (3) He says that Jesus is stainless ( amiantos ). Amiantos describes someone who is absolutely free from any of the blemishes which might make it impossible to draw near to God. The blemished victim cannot be offered to God; the defiled individual cannot approach him; but the one who is amiantos is fit to enter into God’s presence. (4) He says that Jesus is different from sinners . This phrase does not mean that Jesus was not really fully human. He was different from sinners in that, although he underwent every temptation, he conquered them all and emerged without sin. The difference between him and other men and women lies not in the fact that he was not fully human, but in the fact that he was the highest and best of all humanity. (5) He says that Jesus was made higher than the heavens .

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  He is thinking of the time when the angel came to Abraham and Sarah to tell them of the coming of a son (Genesis 18:1ff.) and of the day when the angel came to Manoah to tell him that he would have a son (Judges 13:3ff.). (3) There is sympathy for those in trouble . It is here we see the early Christian Church at its loveliest. It often happened that Christians ended up in prison and worse. It might be for their faith; it might be for debt, for the Christians were poor; it might be that they were captured by pirates or by bandits. It was then that the Church went into action. Tertullian in The Apology writes: ‘If there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.’ Aristides the Athenian orator said of the Christians: ‘If they hear that any one of their number is imprisoned or in distress for the sake of their Christ’s name, they all render aid in his necessity and, if he can be redeemed, they set him free.’ When Origen was young, it was said of him: ‘Not only was he at the side of the holy martyrs in their imprisonment and until their final condemnation but, when they were led to death, he boldly accompanied them into danger.’ Sometimes, Christians were condemned to the mines – which was almost like being sent to Siberia in the former Soviet Union. The Apostolic Constitutions laid it down: ‘If any Christian is condemned for Christ’s sake to the mines by the ungodly, do not overlook him but from the proceeds of your toil and sweat send him something to support himself and to reward the soldier of Christ.’ The Christians sought out their fellow Christians even in the remotest parts. There was actually a little Christian church in the mines at Phaeno. Sometimes, Christians had to be ransomed from robbers and bandits. The Apostolic Constitutions laid it down: ‘All monies accruing from honest labour do ye appoint and apportion to the redeeming of the saints ransoming thereby slaves and captives and prisoners, people who are sore abused or condemned by tyrants.’ When the Numidian robbers carried off their Christian friends, the Church at Carthage raised sufficient money to ransom them and promised more.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.” I memorized the part about the human voice infusing words. It seemed so valid and poetic. She said she was going to give me some books and that I not only must read them, I must read them aloud. She suggested that I try to make a sentence sound in as many different ways as possible. “I'll accept no excuse if you return a book to me that has been badly handled.” My imagination boggled at the punishment I would deserve if in fact I did abuse a book of Mrs. Flowers'. Death would be too kind and brief. The odors in the house surprised me. Somehow I had never connected Mrs. Flowers with food or eating or any other common experience of common people. There must have been an outhouse, too, but my mind never recorded it. The sweet scent of vanilla had met us as she opened the door. “I made tea cookies this morning. You see, I had planned to invite you for cookies and lemonade so we could have this little chat. The lemonade is in the icebox.” It followed that Mrs. Flowers would have ice on an ordinary day, when most families in our town bought ice late on Saturdays only a few times during the summer to be used in the wooden ice-cream freezers. She took the bags from me and disappeared through the kitchen door. I looked around the room that I had never in my wildest fantasies imagined I would see. Browned photographs leered or threatened from the walls and the white, freshly done curtains pushed against themselves and against the wind. I wanted to gobble up the entire room and take it to Bailey, who would help me analyze and enjoy it. “Have a seat, Marguerite. Over there by the table.” She carried a platter covered with a tea towel. Although she warned that she hadn't tried her hand at baking sweets for some time, I was certain that like everything else about her the cookies would be perfect. They were flat round wafers, slightly browned on the edges and butter-yellow in the center. With the cold lemonade they were sufficient for childhood's lifelong diet. Remembering my manners, I took nice little lady-like bites off the edges. She said she had made them expressly for me and that she had a few in the kitchen that I could take home to my brother. So I jammed one whole cake in my mouth and the rough crumbs scratched the insides of my jaws, and if I hadn't had to swallow, it would have been a dream come true. As I ate she began the first of what we later called “my lessons in living.” She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At the English universities the college system received a permanent development. Endowments, established by the liberality of bishops, kings, and other personalities, furnished the nucleus for corporations and halls consisting of masters and students, each with a more or less distinct life of it sown. These college bodies and their buildings continue to impart to Oxford and Cambridge a mediaeval aspect and to recall on every hand the venerable memories of past centuries. Twenty-one of these colleges and five halls remain in Oxford. The oldest are University College founded by a bequest of William of Durham at his death, 1249; Merton, 1264; Balliol founded by the father of the Scotch king, 1266; Exeter, 1314; Oriel, 1324; Queen’s College, 1340; the famous New College, 1379, founded by William of Wykenham, bishop of Winchester; All Souls, 1438; Magdalen, 1448, where Wolsey was fellow. Among the illustrious men who taught at Oxford, in the earlier periods, were Edmund Rich, Roger Bacon, Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, Duns Scotus, Ockam, Bradwardine, Richard of Armagh, Wyclif. As a centre of theological training, Oxford has been closely identified with some of the most important movements in the religious history of England. There Wyclif preached his doctrine and practical reforms. There the Humanists, Grocyn, Colet, and Linacre taught. The school was an important religious centre in the time of the Reformation, in the Commonwealth period, and the period of the Restoration. Within its precincts the Wesleys and Whitefield studied and the Methodist movement had its birth, and there, in the first half of the last century, Pusey, Keble, and Newman exerted the spell of their influence, and the Tractarian movement was started and fostered. Since the year 1854 Oxford and Cambridge have been open to Dissenters. All religious tests were abolished 187l. In 1885 the spiritual descendants of the Puritans, the Independents, established Mansfield College, in Oxford, for the training of ministers. Note.—List of Mediaeval Universities.1311 Before 1100, Salerno. 1100–1200.—Bologna, 1150?; Paris, 1160?; Oxford, 1170?; Reggio and Modena. 1200–1300.—Vicenza, 1204; Cambridge, 1209; Palencia, Spain, 1212, by Alfonzo VIII. of Castile, abandoned; Arezzo, 1215; Padua, 1222; Naples, 1224; Vercelli, 1228; Toulouse, 1229, by Gregory IX.; Salamanca, 1230, by Ferdinand III. of Castile and confirmed by Alexander IV., 1254; Curia Romana, 1244, by Pope Innocent IV.; Piacenza, Italy, 1248; Seville, 1254, by Alfonso X. of Castile; Montpellier, 1289, by Nicolas IV.; Alcala, 1293, by Sancho of Aragon, transferred 1837 to Madrid; Pamiers, France, 1295, by Boniface VIII.