Some results from the decadal Religion Census of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies for 2010-2020

 As reported here in The Economist:

the ranks of all religious Americans rose by 10.6m (7%) ...

overall population grew by 7.5% ...

the number of Episcopalians and Methodists dropped by 19% each ...

the Lutherans plunged by 25% ...

Presbyterians lost nearly 1m (40%) ...

The Southern Baptist Convention shrank 11% ...

non-denominational Christian churches recruited 9m new members ...

Catholics claim they gained nearly 3m members (a 5% increase) despite closing over 1,100 churches. 

      

Color me skeptical.

Start with the big number.

Average population grew 7.1% or 22 million over the period, according to POPTHM, which is the data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

The data of the U.S. Census, as shown by POP, shows average population grew by even less over the period: 6.97% or 21.6 million, not 7.5% as stated in the story.

Obviously these are estimates, not counts, but the reported overall population growth claim in the story is up to a half-point larger than these big baseline numbers reported by the official organs of the U.S. government.

One half point of 310 million is 1.55 million people. One false move and you've just wiped out the entire denomination of the American Baptist Churches USA. When you study religion in America, you are discussing a bewildering number of splinter groups, many of which are simply microscopic in size.

It's extremely difficult to get data about groups like that right. Fully 40% are left out of even good surveys.

We are then confidently given to believe that hardly half the population growth went on to affiliate with a religion over the period: 10.6 million out of something north of 22 million, but by the end of the story you then have to believe also that 9 million new non-denoms plus 3 million new Catholics still equals 10.6 million.

Hello, is there an economist in the house?

Separately, there is the recent claim, supported by Pew, that Mormonism is the fastest reproducing American religious group, the implications of which go wholly unaddressed by the story.

On the other hand, reported Mormon membership in the U.S. grew by fewer than 700k 2011-2023, according to the latest Mormon data.

As pointed out previously, Christians themselves variously and significantly exaggerate how much money they give to their churches. Relying on their statements of membership in surveys even such as this one is . . . problematic.

They resemble in these respects nothing so much as the wider culture of exaggeration.

I'm doing great. Everything is fine. Awesome, in fact.

57% can't afford a $1,000 emergency. 85% say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The world is going to end in 2031 if we don't address climate change.

When thoughts weigh heavy

 His pensive cheek upon his hand reclin'd,

And anxious thoughts revolving in his mind.

-- John Dryden

Forget stereotyping and paradox, Scripture affirms the immortality of . . . Zeus, whose children we are, and in whom we live and move and have our being

Even one of their own men, a prophet from Crete, has said about them, “The people of Crete are all liars, cruel animals, and lazy gluttons.”

 This is true.

-- Titus 1:12f.

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one, The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies! But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever, For in thee we live and move and have our being.

-- Epimenides, Cretica

 

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.   

 

-- Acts 17:28  

Pick your poison.

LOL, Presbyterian David French is completely unfamiliar with the far-right road show in revolutionary America which repeatedly called the people to arms from Protestant pulpits

He's shocked, I tell you, shocked:

 If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. ... We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. ... what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

 More.

In 1776 the David French of 2022 would almost certainly have been a Loyalist, and the sworn enemy of the Presbyterian Rebellion condemned by George III.

Unlike today's fire-breathing right-wing lunatics, French is a proud proponent of "elite Evangelicalism" and "elite American culture" for whom "Christian nationalism" is an oxymoron. Those crazy Pentecostal patriots supporting Donald Trump come from the other side of the tracks, in case you needed reminding. David French is above all that, and stands for everything good, proper, and reasonable, you see. Like the Pharisees did. He is not like other men.

But his idea that a "new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you" is just as crazy as his idea that January 6th actually was one.

How a now de-Christianized America is suddenly going to embrace a bunch of religious fanatics with their hair on fire is not explained, but the "apocalyptic message" of "national doom" comes for us all, including for David French.

Is there a public Christian today who is more out of touch with the deeply political nature of the history of Protestant experience in America than he?

The endless itch

 

 

 The charms of poetry our souls bewitch;

The curse of writing is an endless itch.

-- John Dryden

Pope Francis corrects the Lord's Prayer for implying that God leads us into temptation

Pope Francis Approves a Key Change to the Lord's Prayer:

Last month, Pope Francis approved a change in the wording of the Lord's Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught His followers to pray (Matthew 6:9-15). Francis rejected the traditional language "lead us not into temptation," replacing it with "do not let us fall into temptation." ...

In December 2017, Pope Francis argued that the "lead us not into temptation" is "not a good translation." He argued that God the Father does not lead people into temptation, but Satan does. "A father doesn't do that," he said. "He helps you get up right away. What induces into temptation is Satan."

This objection derives from developed theological reflection, as in James:

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

-- James 1:13f.

Unfortunately for the Pope, and James, the narratives of the gospels eschew such rationalism, indicating that the Spirit of God drove/led Jesus into the wilderness after his baptism to be tempted of the devil:

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

-- Matthew 4:1

And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.

-- Mark 1:12f.

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.

-- Luke 4:1f.

So clearly Jesus was led to the test by the Spirit of God. The Spirit, of course, didn't do the actual tempting, but it was indeed God's will for Jesus to come to the test.

The Lord's Prayer's petition in Matthew 6:13/Luke 11:4 "and lead us not to the test" (καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν) is hardly inconsistent with this. It simply reflects the skeptical view of human nature which Jesus intends his followers to adopt under the perilous conditions of eschatological time. This generation will be judged. Few will be saved.

It is also clear that Jesus did not press the fatherhood of God conception in the sentimental way that the pope does.

Every human father knows that there comes a time when a child must be allowed to fail at something if he is going to grow up with the necessary humility which comes from knowing one's limitations, just as every human father knows that there are some things which are necessary to endure in order to succeed. And every human father also knows there are some things to protect against at all costs lest a son be lost forever. Good fathers know these things about their children individually, for they are all different. The heavenly Father knows them best of all, according to Jesus. It is best to trust him.

Perhaps if the pope had been an actual father he might better know all this.

And perhaps not. Two years ago Pope Francis was ruminating about the utter necessity of temptation if faith is to grow.

This pope is clearly not a thinking man's pope.   

The torture of writer's block

 

 

 

 

 

Some strain in rhyme;

the muses on their racks

Scream, like the winding of ten thousand jacks.

-- Alexander Pope

Why Family Christian Stores is bankrupt for good: Pledged in 2012 to give 100% of profits to charity

That's no way to run a business, but it is a way to bankrupt it.

It took less than five years. And now over 3,000 employees who had jobs don't.

Good job, idiots!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Family Christian's own story here on November 29, 2012:

Family Christian, the nation's largest Christian retail chain with 280 stores in 36 states, announced today that its management team has partnered with a group of Atlanta-based Christian businessmen to acquire the company from its private equity owners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Under the new ownership, Family Christian's pledge is to contribute 100% of its profits to Christian causes and, specifically, ministries serving widows and orphans both in the U.S. and abroad. Family Christian has always been committed to providing resources for the Christian community, but the new ownership structure will allow the organization to not only equip Christians in their daily walk, but to increase the organization's impact by providing substantial financial support to faith-based causes.

Fast forward to now. Dateline Grand Rapids, Michigan, February 23, 2017 here:

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Family Christian Stores, the nation's largest chain of Christian book and merchandise stores, announced it will close its doors after 85 years in business.

The announcement on Thursday, Feb. 23, did not specify a timetable for the liquidation, which will affect more than 3,000 employees at more than 240 stores in 36 states.

In 2015, Family Christian shed about $127 million worth of debt to its suppliers, creditors and consignment vendors when it went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was sold for about $55 million.

"We had two very difficult years post-bankruptcy," said company president Chuck Bengochea in a news release, that blamed changing consumer habits and declining sales for the decision.

Giving profits away to charity is simply destruction of capital, which was needed to plow back into the company to keep it profitable under the very difficult retail circumstances of the online age after a terrible recession.

Too bad the ownership didn't think of its obligation to its employees and customers first. That they didn't indicates the ownership deserved this, but the lives now wrecked because of their blindness most certainly did not deserve it.

Big thinker Michael Novak, 83, has passed away after a battle with cancer

Michael Novak was an important Roman Catholic advocate for not just the compatibility of free market capitalism with Christianity, but for the idea that free market capitalism actually advanced the aims of Christianity, particularly the alleviation of poverty.

This made Novak an odd duck more among Catholics than among Protestants because Catholics had more generally posed as prophets like Jesus, ridiculing wealth, hoping they could inspire voluntary redistribution of it, whereas Protestants thought human beings should prove God's blessing by becoming, if not wealthy, at least self-sustaining members of society. Their shared error from the point of view of Jesus, however, is their mutual belief in human action.

I remember hearing Novak speak at the University of Colorado in Boulder in the days surrounding the release of his 1982 book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, his most influential work. Already then it seemed to me he misunderstood the aims of Jesus, if not the aims of Jesus' heirs. As recently as 2014 he misunderstood them still, not appreciating that the Carpenter's Son turned his back on small business capitalism by giving up his job, which was in keeping with his requirement that his followers do the same, in the belief that God was about to intervene decisively in Jewish history. Jewish history, not world history.

Like many contemporary self-styled conservatives, Novak had formerly been a leftist. I maintain that his interpretation of Jesus shows that he remained a leftist, the essence of which is to introduce utopia through human action. The phenomenon is not uniquely left, however, but human, a form of rebellion. Christians, like the Pharisees before them, made the same mistake, believing that they could extend the kingdom of God among men by acting as God's agents through the democratization of holiness through the universal availability of his Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ.

Both misunderstood the liminal setting for the ideas of Jesus, who above all else eschewed human action, whether by the Tea Party of his time, the Zealots, or by the liberals of his time, the Pharisees, who sought to extend the particular holiness of the Temple's priestly class to all the people through the synagogue system. Through the genius of the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus, Christianity ended up making Pharisaism safe for the whole world, minus the food restrictions and the mutilation.

As the eschatological prophet of promise, however, Jesus did not believe that the eternal verities would or could come by such human action, but only by divine action, divine intervention. This implied judgment, the two sides of which were impending salvation and imminent doom. Jesus was fundamentally a pessimistic thinker from the human point of view who did not believe that most of his contemporaries would be "saved" in this advent of judgment.

There was only one way to escape, and that involved radical repentance, of which few were capable.

No man, he said, can be my disciple who does not say goodbye to everything that he owns.

In the final analysis, every individual says goodbye to everything that he owns, as Michael Novak has just done. The tragedy of human life is that most of us simply spend our lives imagining that we won't have to.

"Likewise as it was in the days of Lot--they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built . . .."

Outed for being secretly uncollegial, Yale University Professor of Philosophy publicly erupts with hatred for much more distinguished Oxford Christian colleague

Reminds me of the outburst directed at yours truly's happy disposish by another philosopher on the day after Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984. I guess it comes with the territory, but what idiot expects us to believe he believes anything will stay private on Facebook? Maybe Yale should recheck his credentials.

Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy, 344 College St, New Haven, CT 06511-6629, 203-432-1689, jason.stanley@yale.edu, whose public Facebook attack on University of Oxford Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Richard Swinburne is quoted here:

"'F*ck those assholes' ... wildly understates my actual sentiments towards homophobic religious proponents of evil like Richard Swinburne, who use their status as professional philosophers to oppress others with less power. I am SO SORRY for using such mild language. I am posting this on 'public' so that there will be no need for anyone to violate any religious code of ethics and take pictures of private FB pages to share my views about such matters."

That didn't take long: Just four months ago Camille Paglia predicted Ted Cruz' career would end in disgrace

On Wednesday night Ted Cruz was booed off the stage at the Republican National Convention for failing to throw his support behind Donald Trump.

Now many, including Larry Kudlow here, are saying his career is finished:

I was in the convention hall and the crowd's reaction was unbelievable. It started out as a few hands waving in the air and some booing and then it just grew and grew throughout the entire convention hall. And then boom! It was absolute bedlam.

I've been to most of the GOP conventions since 1980, and I've never seen anything like it. These people stood on their feet and booed. These are Republicans! They don't do this. They don't know how to stand up and boo! And yet, Cruz so divided them and worked them into such a frenzy that it happened.

Cruz tried to pass it off as just the New York delegation acting up. But that is wrong. The whole hall was in an uproar. You couldn't even hear the last two paragraphs of Cruz's speech because the booing had reached such a crescendo!

Cruz left an absolute disaster in his wake when he finished that speech. ... Ted Cruz will never politically recover from this. His delegation from Texas wanted him to play ball with Trump - and he wouldn't. He was freelancing in that speech. And that is why his political career is over. He's finished.

Paglia's prediction noted here.

The Feud With "The Jews" of the Fourth Gospel Was With "The Judeans" Not "The Jews"

As I have observed before, the Fourth Gospel's use of "the Jews" is so stark that on occasion it makes it look like Jesus and his disciples are outsiders and not Jews. And Paul the Jew oddly seems to blame "The Jews" for Jesus' death even though Paul in Romans thought that the gospel was for the Jew first.

An interesting story here suggests the solution is to translate differently:

One example from the New King James Version (NKJV) is instructive: “Then after this, [Jesus] said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the ioudaioi [Jews] sought to stone you and are you going there again?’” (John 11:7-8) Translating “ioudaioi” above as “Jews” presents an immediate problem. It implies that Jesus – even while called “rabbi” – was not Jewish, but an outsider, along with his disciples. This would include John, despite his insider knowledge of the people and places, customs and nuances of early first-century Israel.

It obscures the fact that John is describing a family dispute – albeit a bitter one – among some of his fellow Jews on whether Jesus was Israel’s deliverer. It implies that the Jews as a people were Christ’s monolithic foe, and perhaps even collectively culpable for his mistreatment and death.

In other words, rendering “ioudaioi” as “Jews” suggests the writer drew an impassable line between Jesus and his earliest followers and “the Jews.”

Clearly he did not. The problem rests with the translation. Ioudaioi here means “Judeans,” not “Jews.”

That the solution is plausible is accepted by the translators of the New King James Version, as the article itself notes, but is not carried through in John for some reason:

Don’t translators see the problem? Actually, the New King James Version (NKJV) translators did. In I Thessalonians 2:14-16, a portion from one of Paul’s letters, they rightly rendered ioudaioi “Judeans.” With this one simple change, they transformed a passage wielded infamously for centuries against the entire people of Israel into one that criticizes a miniscule clique of individuals – likely Caiaphas and his allies – within first-century Judea.

Why no similar corrections for John’s Gospel? Why indeed.

I Doubt Rachel Held Evans Would Follow The Real Jesus Even If She Met Him

No one else has.

In "Why Millennials Are Leaving The Church" here:

"You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus."

------------------------------------------

You mean this one?

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.

-- Matthew 19:21f.

The authenticity sought by the young is ever disappointed, but not until they are older and take a good long look in the mirror and meet all the hypocrites they've ever known.

Of Sticks With Pricks

"Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find pleasing words, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings which are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man."

-- Ecclesiastes 12:9ff.

Joel Miller Misunderstands "Martyr" From Every Angle

Joel Miller, here:

"Coptic Christians have long tattooed their wrists with small crosses, little blue-green marks that silently profess their faith. It’s not without irony that the word witness in Greek is martyr. Copts are often harassed by Muslim neighbors for their markings, and reports of Christian girls forced into Muslim marriages include references to having their crosses cut out or burnt off with acid."

Not only did Greek "martyr" not have the sense Christians later came to invest it with but had instead a long judicial pedigree which informs the main sense of "witness" in the New Testament itself, the idea of actually craving to be tortured and killed for Christ like Ignatius is probably the last thing on the Copts' minds when they get a small tattoo on the wrist. It's like an identity card you flash to identify yourself to a fellow Christian, or to a westerner you assume is Christian, in a country where you need all the friends you can get. 

A Knar of "K"

 

An honest man may take a knave's advice;

But idiots only may be cozen'd twice.

-- John Dryden

The Solitary End: Can You Handle The Truth?

Well, no matter. You will handle it all the same.

A fellow traveler to the grave captures it beautifully:

From the moment we are born, the possibilities ahead of us contract. Each moment sets one on a path which eliminates all other possible paths. Life is one giant contraction. To decide to go one way means one can never go on the other journeys available at that moment. If one decides, at age eighteen, to go to NC State University, to use an example, one eliminates all the other roads for life and spouses and jobs and experience which would have led through, say, UNC-Chapel Hill or Duke or Clemson. This is true for every single day of our lives.

As one ages, this awareness becomes particularly acute. The contraction becomes palpable. One begins to see in one's sights the pinpoint toward which all our days are converging. The number of decisions one still has to make in the future dwindles. The contraction continues until at the moment of death the self becomes a single point of consciousness. One must at the end let go of all family, friends, and all outside experience itself so that one becomes a solitary self. Finally even that point of light is darkened. The almost infinite possibilities present at birth end at that one dot.  

This awareness of mortality is not simply the awareness that somewhere in the distant future there will be an end. We experience the loss every day.  The contraction is continuous. The passing of time is nothing other than the experience of death. Loss and memory and longing are a form of the grave. We feel it when we look at baby pictures of long grown children or see a snapshot of a movie theatre in our youth that was torn down decades earlier. Nostalgia is mourning. Death is not a moment one encounters at the end of life. It is a condition one lives in. Mortality, the condition of being subject to death, pervades our creaturely existence. It is the sea in which we swim.

Read more from this wise man, Paul Gregory Alms, at http://lrast.blogspot.com/2010/08/mortality-thrash-metal-and-church-by.html .


It reminded me of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act Five, Scene Five, here, where each tomorrow creeps in to the last, becoming shadowy yesterdays of nothing:

SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.


MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

What's Bigger Than The Bond Market?

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot's activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but "pervades and regulates the whole." He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.

-- From TheDevilsDictionary.com

The Place of the Idiot: Where the Unbeliever Sits, or the Novice?

ton topon tou idiotou (Greek New Testament)

locum idiotae (Latin Vulgate)

the room of the unlearned (King James Version)

the place of the uninformed (New King James Version)

the position of an outsider (Revised Standard Version)

the place of the ungifted (New American Standard Bible)

the place of the unlearned (Authorized Standard Version)

1 Corinthians 14:16

An Abecedary of Fools, Fops, Idiots and Sots

THE ALCHEMY OF "A"

For fools are stubborn in their way, As coins are harden'd by th' allay.

-- Hudibras

"B" BAWLS

When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.

-- Shakespeare

A CHAMFER FOR "C"

Changelings and fools of heav'n, and thence shut out, Wildly we roam in discontent about.

-- Dryden

THE DEPTHS OF "D"

They damn themselves, nor will my muse descend  To clap with such who fools and knaves commend.

-- Dryden

THE EFFRONTERY OF "E"

I lose my patience, and I own it too, Where works are censur'd, not as bad, but new; While, if our elders break all reason's laws, Those fools demand not pardon, but applause.

-- Pope

THE FOPPERY OF "F"

Fools to popular praise aspire Of publick speeches, which worse fools admire; While, from both benches, with redoubled sounds, Th' applause of lords and commoners abounds.

-- Dryden

A GANDER AT "G"

Mighty dulness crown'd, shall take through Grub-street her triumphant round; And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once, Behold a hundred sons, and each a dunce.

-- Pope

A HA'PENNY FOR "H"

Half-wits are fleas, so little and so light, We scarce could know they live, but that they bite.

-- Dryden

IAMBS FOR "I"

On ev'ry thorn delightful wisdom grows, In ev'ry stream a sweet instruction flows; But some untaught o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, Inspite of sacred leisure, blockheads still.

-- Young

A JABOT OF "J"

From this last toil again what knowledge flows? Just as much, perhaps, as shows That all his predecessor's rules Were empty cant, all jargon of the schools.

-- Prior

A KNAR OF "K"

An honest man may take a knave's advice; But idiots only may be cozen'd twice.

-- Dryden

THE ILLUSIONS OF "L"

Strange coz'nage! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

-- Dryden

MUGGED BY "M" I AM

I'm stopp'd by all the fools I meet, And catechis'd in ev'ry street.

-- Swift

"N" RAISES A DIN

Vain show and noise intoxicate the brain Begin with giddiness, and end in pain.

-- Young

"O" CASTS A SHADOW

But now these Epicures begin to smile, And say, my doctrine is more safe than true; And that I fondly do myself beguile, While these receiv'd opinions I ensue.

-- Davies

A PRODUCTION FROM "P"

Here gathering chroniclers, and by them stand Giddy fantastick poets of each land.

-- Donne

PIQUANT "Q"

What, are you dumb? Quick, with your answer, quick, Before my foot salutes you with a kick.

-- Dryden's Juvenal

THE RESTRAINT OF "R"

Rhyme is a crutch that lifts the weak along, Supports the feeble, but retards the strong.

-- Smith

"S" IS FOR SEED PLOT

The pestilent seminaries, according to their grossness or subtility, activity, or hebetude, cause more or less truculent plagues.

-- Harvey

"T" TELLS A TALE

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears.

-- Pope

OH UNQUALIFIED "U"!

How can the muse her aid impart, Unskill'd in all the terms of art? Or in harmonious numbers put The deal, the shuffle, and the cut?

-- Swift

AN INTERVENTION OF "V"

Sad accidents, and a state of affliction, is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning.

-- Taylor

"W" MAKES A WASTREL

Young master next must rise to fill him wine, And starve himself to see the booby dine.

-- King

UNEXAMPLED "X"

Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be, Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree; The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise, And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.

-- Pope

"Y" PLAYS THE TYRANT

Love is your master, for he masters you: And he that is so yoked by a fool, Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

-- Shakespeare

"Z", IT SEEMS

We that acquaint ourselves with ev'ry zone, And pass the tropicks, and behold each pole; When we come home, are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own soul.

-- Davies