The Light Now Shineth

History is not speeding up — it is actually slowing down.
— John Lukacs in 2003

The question I thought about often looking at Hungary today is that the rising of 1956 had to fail. Perhaps it had to fail in the same way as the heroic attempt of those German aristocrats who tried to overthrow Hitler in 1944 had to fail. Had they not failed in Germany, there would have been civil war in Germany, and the German people would have had a reason to think that Germany was stabbed in the back again, as it was in 1918. No, these tragedies had to happen. Perhaps God wanted it that way.
—Lukacs, Ibid.

We write to be read. When we light a candle, we don't put it under a bushel, but in a blog, to give light unto all that are in the world. But men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.

What, then, should we stop writing? Not while we have the light. Yet a little while is the light with you. Write while ye have the light.

Do we have the light? We see through a glass, darkly. We may be mistaken, we may be mad. But even a madman has his morals, and should be true to his madness.

Let us not be imposed on. The world that crucified Christ cannot be sane.

Great men are often the negation and opposite of their age. They give it the lie.
— John Jay Chapman, “Emerson” . See Castle Freeman Jr., John Jay Chapman: Brief Life of a Neglected Critic, 1862–1933

It is what the world does not hear that is most worth saying.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. “In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I will use my powers for good.” Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought. His ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.
— Chapman, Speech to the graduating class of Hobart College, 1900

We are children of the kingdom, in which the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. Let us love and learn to bear the beams of love. Be of good cheer: Christ has overcome the world.