Sermon for Proper 23 Yeat A - Second Lesson
Sermon by the Rev. Dr. George Lewis Boar-Hays, Vicar of Macomb. ________________ I first heard of the book in 1952, in a footnote. The footnote—number 17 in an otherwise forgettable article by Sebastián Varela on the Macedonian manuscripts of the monastery of Hagios Demetrios—occupied nearly half a page and concerned a codex which Varela had catalogued five years earlier under the indifferent title De rebus cogitandis . I have sought the article since and have not found it. This circumstance, which once annoyed me, now seems appropriate. The codex, Varela tells us, consisted of one hundred and forty-seven leaves of coarse parchment. The binding was probably seventeenth-century; the text, if text it can be called, was older. On the first leaf appeared nine sentences. The remaining leaves were blank. The sentences were these: Whatever is true. Whatever is honorable. Whatever is just. Whatever is pure. Whatever is lovely. Whatever is commendable. If there is excellence. If ther...