From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 14 1995 - 05:22:45 EST
At 10:23 AM 12/13/95, Carlton Winbery wrote:
>I'm giving this a limited circulation, because this could get out of hand.
>I once knew of a pastor in Mississippi who required each department in his
>Sunday School to adopt a verse of Scripture and print it over the door,
>sort of like a fetish. The nursery workers were on top of it. They
>selected half 1 Cor. 15:51, "We shall not all sleep but we shall all be
>changed."
It is a great honor to be included in the "Limited Circulation" distribution. The only thing worthy of it that comes readily to mind is a tale that I think I may already have posted once in times gone by to the Genderal, I mean General Distribution. Thusly:
It was one of those persons that make use of the Bible as a sort of *sortes Vergilianae* to seek daily wisdom therefrom by cracking it open randomly and reading the verse whereupon one's finger lights. Upon following his normal procedure in this fashion one morning, this diligent fellow lighted upon the edifying dictum, "And Judas went out and hanged himself." Only slightly deterred, being sophisticated enough to know that gambling upon random selection, even with vast reserves of faith, is somewhat perilous, he closed his Bible, then cracked it a second time and dropped his finger down upon the illuminating text--and read it: "Go and do thou likewise!" By this his faith was beginning to suffer from the first nips of the doubt that gnaws at the soul; he could, in his anxiety, think of nothing better than to give the Bible a third chance, either to correct its not-so-inerrant steps or to prove its power in all instances of prayerful consultation to cast a guiding light upon one's daily path. He closed the boo
k carefully, waited a moment, then opened it up again, slowly and deliberately, and with eyes blinking as his finger came to rest upon sacred writ, read "la carte impitoyable": "What thou doest, do QUICKLY!"
The narrator of this indubitably true story disclosed no more than this, but I have forever pondered the question: did this man lose his faith or his life?
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