A life in words

  • Christmas Carols in Prose #4: Silent Night

    The night is silent. The night is holy. Everything is calm and bright around that virgin mother and her child. Sleep in heavenly peace, holy infant—so tender and mild. The night is silent. The night is holy. Shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from far off in heaven. Heavenly hosts sing, “Hallelujah!” Christ, the…

  • Christmas Carols in Prose #3: Angels We Have Heard on High

    We’ve heard angels on high singing sweetly over the plains, and we’ve heard the mountains echoing their joyous strains in reply: “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why do you prolong your joyous strains? What are the glad tidings that inspire your heavenly song? “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Come to Bethlehem and see…

  • Christmas Carols in Prose #2: Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful

    All you faithful, come joyfully and triumphantly! Come, come to Bethlehem! Come and behold him who was born: the king of angels. Choirs of angels, sing in exultation. All heaven’s citizens, sing! Glory in the highest to God. Yes, we greet you, Lord born this happy morning—Jesus, son of the Father, now appearing in flesh.…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty