From Leonard Sweet, Thunder in the Mountains, Silence in the Soul (June 21, 1992):
Moses’ experience of God was the genuine eternal truth about the Lord. Elijah’s experience of God was the genuine truth about the Lord. God is both inside and outside. – in the mountains and the thunder and in the dark, quiet interior of our souls.
From Robert F. Sims, And then Jesus Came":
Dr. Robert Sims has written that with just four words, “and then Jesus came,” God draws a line in the sand of every soul: The lepers huddled on the side of the road – cast out by their families and friends…and then Jesus came. The blind man staggered down the road groping in his world of darkness…and then Jesus came. The demoniac struggled with a mental illness overwhelming his tortured mind…and then Jesus came. The woman caught in adultry cringed on the ground hiding her face and waiting for the stone that would crush her skull…and then Jesus came. The disciples gathered in the upper room hiding from their persecutors behind locked doors…and then Jesus came.
From Harold Masback, You're Invited!" (August 1, 1999):
Spinoza observed that in all ages men most cherish riches, fame and pleasure – goals that are inherently scarce, impermanent or both.
From The Encylcopedia Brittanica, Johannes Gutenberg":
Gutenberg’s dream was to create a way of mechanically reproducing medieval liturgical manuscripts without losing any of their colour or beauty of design. (v.5, 581) His dream was destroyed, however, when Fust won a suit against him, the record of which is destroyed, however, when Fust won a suit against him, the record of which is preserved in part in what is called the Helmaspergersches Notariatsininstrument ( the Helmasperger Notarial Instrument), dated November 6, 1455, now in the library of the University of Gottingen. Gutenberg was ordered to pay Fust the total sum of 2,026 guilders, which included the two loans and compound interest. Instead of the chance to perfect his invention, he faced complete financial ruin. (581) Printing the Bible. There is no reason to doubt that the printing of certain books (werck der Bucher, specifically mentioned in the record of the trial, refers to the Forty-two-Line Bible that was Gutenberg’s masterpiece) was completed, according to Gutenberg’s major biographers, in 1455 at the latest. It was estimated that the sale of the Forty-two-Line Bible alone would have produced many times over the sum owed Fust by Gutenberg, and there exists no explanation as to why these tangible assets were not counted among Gutenberg’s property at the trial. After winning his suit, Fust gained control of the type for the Bible, and for Gutenberg’s second masterpiece, a Psalter, and all of Gutenberg’s other printing equipment. (581) He continued to print,using Gutenberg’s materials, with the assistance of Peter Schoffer, his son-in-law, who had been Gutenberg’s most skilled employee and a witness against him in the 1455 trial. The first printed book in Europe to bear the name of its printer is a magnificent Psalter completed in Mainz on August 14, 1457, which lists Johann Fust and Peter Schoffer. . . . .The Psalter is decorated with hundreds of polychrome initial letters and delicate scroll borders that were printed in a most ingenious technique based on multiple inking on a single metal block. Most experts are agreed that it would have been impossible for Fust and Schoffer alone to have invented and executed the intricate technical equipment necessary to execute this process between November 6, 1455, when Gutenberg lost control of his printing establishment and August 14, 1457. (582)
From John Bright, A History of Israel:
Though they had fought with their neighbors continually, and on occasion been humiliated, they had never lost political self-determination…. The truth is that the entire history of Israel through five hundred years of her existence as a people had been spun out in a great power vacuum.” Bright, 269. …. “Though Judah managed to survive for yet a century and a half, outliving Assyria herself, she was never, save for one brief interval, to know political independence again.” Bright, 269. ….”At a stroke [Israel’s} national existence was ended and, with it, all the institutions in which her corporate life had expressed itself….The state destroyed and the state cult perforce suspended, the old national-cultic community was broken, and Israel was left for the moment an agglomeration of uprooted and beaten individuals, by no external mark any longer a people.” Bright, 343
From Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart; Individualism and Commitment in American Life,[312 n.28]:
Xavier Zubiri, commenting on the concept of the heart in Pascal, sheds light on Tocqueville’s usage, since Tocqueville was a lifelong student of Pascal: In Pascal we are witness in part to one of the few fully realized attempts to apprehend philosophical concepts which are capable of encompassing some of the important dimensions of man. For example, his concept of heart, so vague, is true but on account of its vagueness badly understood and poorly used. It does not mean blind sentiment as opposed to pure Cartesian reason, but the knowledge constitutive of the day-to-day and radical being of man” (Zubiri, Nature, History, God, trans. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr. [Lanham, Dd,: University Press of America, 1981], p.
123). Heart in this sense is ultimately biblical. Both the Old and the New Testaments speak of the heart as involving intellect, will, and intention as well as feeling. The notion of habits of the heart perhaps goes back ultimately to the law written in the heart (Rom.
2:15; cf. Jer.
31:33 and Deut.
6:6) It is interesting that both Confucianism and Buddhism have a notion of the heart that is somewhat comparable.
From Richard Baxter, Love Breathing Thanks and Praise (1615-91):
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.” RefMgr field[22]: 1″
From Karl Barth, Romans:
If we rightly understand ourselves, our problems are the problems of Paul; and if we be enlightened by the brightness of his answers, those answers must be ours: ‘Long, long ago the Truth was found, a company of men it bound. Grasp firmly then – that ancient Truth'”