"There is a serious duty before us, the duty of listening to our geniuses in a disrespectful manner. Criticism matters as it never did in the past, because of the present pride of great writers. They take all life as their province to-day. Formerly they sat in their studies, and thinking only of the emotional life of mankind—thinking therefore with comparative ease, of the color of life and not of its form—devised a score or so of stories before death came. Now, their pride telling them that if time would but stand still they could explain all life, they start on a breakneck journey across the world. They are tormented by the thought of time; they halt by no event, but look down upon it as they pass, cry out their impressions, and gallop on. Often it happens that because of their haste they receive a blurred impression or transmit it to their readers roughly and without precision. And just as it was the duty of the students of Kelvin the mathematician to correct his errors in arithmetic, so it is the duty of critics to rebuke these hastinesses of these writers, lest the blurred impressions weaken the surrounding mental fabric and their rough transmissions frustrate the mission of genius on earth."Great, intellectual food for thought prepared for us a century ago by a young woman named Rebecca West (pictured above).
If, fellow preachers, you have to reread Rebecca's article in the National Review two or three times to comprehend her sagacious writing, allow me to gently prod you with the information that she was only TWENTY ONE when she wrote it. It makes me want to wince when I read what is being written by Southern Baptist pastors today.
In His Grace,
Wade
