"All that Mankind has done, thought,
gained or been: it is lying as in magic
preservation in the pages of Books."
—Thomas Carlyle
One of the most ignorant statements ever written. Any person who believes these words has experienced only a small fraction of authentic human experience-the tiny frament recorded in books. If you take your own personal life and all your thoughts, all your doings, all your gains and all the things you have become, only a very tiny fraction has been "magically preserved in the pages of a book."
The ultimate example is enshrined in the life of Jesus. Only a small fraction of His words, His deeds, and His thoughts have been preserved in historical eyewitness accounts in the Gospels but through this small fraction of his human and eternal life man can find truth, peace, joy, reality and eternal life. Recorded human history also gives us a glimpse of the total human experience and from these small fragments we form our individual understanding of man's journey on earth. The reason we have such a diversity of understanding is because many men refuse to look at all the fragments. |
