To say my blogging has slowed considerably in the past couple of weeks would be an understatement. In fact, to call that statement an understatement is an understatement, especially following the previous few weeks of consistency. I really do not know what I should credit with that spurt of relative prolificacy (for me). It began, undeniably, with the Challies King for a Week nomination, which was a big motivator. However, motivation is not inspiration, and I seem to be lacking that necessary inspiration these days. I have recently received and just today begun reading The Christian in Complete Armour (thanks for the recommendations). Included is a biography of the author by J.C. Ryle, who acknowledges his main source, identified only as “a writer named M’Keon,” whose biography of Gurnall is said to be factually helpful, but poorly written. Ryle makes the following statement of M’Keon, which I found quite descriptive of me.

In accumulating facts he was most successful; in arranging them and exhibiting them to the reading public I certainly think he failed. He seems, in fact, to have been a type of that peculiar class of men who have the faculty of getting things into their heads, while they are unable to bring them out again—mighty at heaping up knowledge, but impotent at spreading it—clever at accumulating literary knowledge, but utterly incapable of spending it.

I have had several things on my mind that I could easily ramble on about, but nothing coherent enough to merit the attention of you, my forbearing readers. Under these circumstances, it has seemed best to do what most of us ought to do more of: shut up and listen; so that is what I intend to do. Until I have something original to say (Ecclesiastes 1:9), I am not going to say anything—you’re welcome, don’t mention it. Instead, I will pass on to you some of what I am reading, usually with little or no comment. Today, I give you a quote from the previously mentioned The Christian in Complete Armour that I find especially pertinent to my own habits:

A chief part of David’s arithmetic of numbering our days, lies in that which we call division, as to cast the account of this our short life so as to divide the little whole sum thereof into the several portions of time due for performing of every duty in. An instrument is not in tune, except it have all the strings, and these will not make good music, if the musician hath not wisdom to cause every string to speak in its due time. The Christian is not in tune, except he takes in all the duties of his place and calling, neither will the performance of them be harmonious in God’s ear, if every one be not done in its proper season. O my friends, labour not only to do the duty of your place, but that duty in its own place also. Hear when you should hear. Know your time for closet, and time for shop; and when your retiring time comes, a few minutes now and then spent in taking a repetition of what you formerly heard, shall not, I hope, another day be reckoned with your lost time.