Infinite...

This morning I take a break from Mr. Hicks's worthy tome, and share instead something I read in my quiet time this morning.  It brought me up short and found me wanting.  It is a from a book entitled Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions.  The portion of the prayer that really caught my attention this morning said:

Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God, its worth infinite, its value beyond all thought.  Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price.
Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions p.41

I am only a little part of that "infinite evil", but how often I go through my days without ever a thought to my corruption being the cause of Christ's suffering, or the costliness of my redemption.  But this prayer ends with the hope that gives me a place to stand:

Yet thy compassions yearn over me, thy heart hastens to my rescue, thy love endures my curse, thy mercy bore my deserved stripes.  Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation.
~Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions p.41 

May we indeed, Gentle Reader, walk in this way.

Modern education in a nutshell...

Whatever his reasons for rejecting the classical curriculum, [the modern educator's]  classrooms suffer from its absence in three notable ways. in them, human experience tends to be dealt with narrowly and reductively, broken down into isolated, unconnected units; students ignorant of what questions to ask are presented with uninvited and consequently meaningless informtion; and there is no basis for making moral and aesthetic judgments or for attaching learning to behavior.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.19

Competent to judge...

Classical inquiry possesses three essential attributes. The first of these is general curiosity...Second, one responds to these questions by forming imaginative hypotheses...Third, one completes the inquiry by devising methods for testing the hypothesis...This bent of mind allows the educated man to go on educating himself or extending the realms of knowledge for his fellows...This is the person competent to judge what the experts say without being an expert himself.
~David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, p.18