Having the peculiar benefit of living in a house placed between two tennis courts, Blaise Pascal was able to write -
"Let no one maintain that I have said nothing new; my arrangement of the material is new. In a game of tennis we both play with the same ball, but one of us uses it to better advantage. I would as soon it were said that I have used well-worn words. The same thoughts, when differently arranged, form a new body of speech; just as the same words differently arranged express new thoughts"
I hope that is how you will find these lessons. They traverse familiar ground; yet I pray they may still sparkle with freshness. Not because these pages contain stunning new ideas, but because of the personal colour I have sought to build into each paragraph. To paraphrase Pascal just a little: "I have said nothing new; but my arrangement of the material is new."
This course is a close companion to the subject "Emmanuel". But whereas that series deals with the person of Christ, this deals with the work of Christ. Especially, with the historical work of Christ, and even more particularly with the events surrounding his passion - that is, the crucifixion and the resurrection.
St. Bernard once said, "That which makes us better makes us worse, if we attribute the merit of it to ourselves." I have no illusions about this course making me any better merely because I am its author; but I would be a fool if I allowed it to make me worse, by imagining myself to be the source of any merit it might contain. I have made only a husk. The creator of the true bread is Christ.
