Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 431

Chap.

AXD THE WRITTEN WORD

II]

With

reference to the

first

407

of tliese characteristics,

it

is

readily seen, that writing first of all relieves the spoken word " The word that is heard passes away, of its transitoriness.

the letter that

is

written remains."

(Verba volant,

littera

Our voice creates words, but lacks the ability to hold them fast. One word drives the other on. The spoken scripta manet.)

word, therefore, bears the character of the transitory and It the changeable, which are the marks of our mortality. conies in order to go,

and lacks the

It is a iravra pel koL ovhev

fie'vet

ability to

maintain

itself.

(everything flows and noth-

And even when, by the phonograph, it is secured that the flowing word congeals and is presently liquefied, it gives us at most a repetiBut this tion of what was spoken or sung, and no more. very imperfection is met by the mighty invention of human

ing remains) in the most mournful sense.

writing.

By

writing, in

its

present state of perfection, the

word

It is or thought spoken is lifted above transitoriness. taken out of the stream of time and cast upon the shore, there to take on a stable form, and after many ages to do the same service still which it performed immediately upon its first appearing. The correspondence, which is discovered by a fellah in a forgotten nook of Egypt and presents us with the interchange of thought between the then Eastern princes and the court of Egypt, speaks now as accurately as three thousand years ago and if, after the fall into sin, the bitter emotions of his soul could have been written down by Adam, our hearts could sympathize to the last minutiae with what went on in Adam so many thousand years ago. AVriting, indeed, is human thought set free from the process of time. By writing, human thought approaches the eternal, ;

the enduring, and, to a certain extent, impresses self a

Divine stamp.

It is

noteworthy, therefore,

upon

how

it-

in

Holy Scripture the durability and permanence of the thoughts of God are expressed by the figure of the Book of Life, the Book of the Seven Seals, etc. Nor is this all. Not only, thanks to writing, does human thought approach in a measure the eternal, but also by writing onl}-, on the other hand, does it meet the demand raised by the unity of the

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