Shakespeare is Alive

One of the foremost things I have learn to value at New Saint Andrews is that we need to be those who learn from the past. When I read Luther, Calvin or Augustine often I am so immersed in the text or their ideas more generally, it is like there are right there, alive and well. It is if they are speaking and teaching me this very day. G.K. Chesterton comments on the same phenomena:

"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with an original song. That who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth he has never seen before."