Holiness is Wholeness: According to Thomas Carlyle

There is a wonderful quote from Thomas Carlyle on the meaning of holy. If you do not know who he is, I will give you a short description following the quote. He once said:


It is a curious thing, which I remarked long ago, and have often turned in my head, that the old word for `holy` in the Teutonic languages, heilig, also means `healthy.` Thus Heilbronn means indifferently `holy-well` or `health-well.` We have in the Scotch, too, `hale,` and its derivatives; and, I suppose, our English word `whole` (with a `w`), all of one piece, without any hole in it, is the same word. I find that you could not get any better definition of what `holy` really is than `healthy.` Completely healthy; mens sana in corpore sano [Applause]. A man all lucid, and in equilibrium. His intellect a clear mirror geometrically plane, brilliantly sensitive to all objects and impressions made on it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions; not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation: healthy, clear and free, and discerning truly all round him. We never can attain that at all. In fact, the operations we have got into are destructive of it. You cannot, if you are going to do any decisive intellectual operation that will last a long while; if, for instance, you are going to write a book, - you cannot manage it (at least, I never could) without getting decidedly made ill by it: and really one nevertheless must; if it is your business, you are obliged to follow out what you are at, and to do it, if even at the expense of health. Only remember, at all times, to get back as fast as possible out of it into health; and regard that as the real equilibrium and centre of things. You should always look at the heilig, which means `holy` as well as `healthy.`

Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address Edinburgh University

Here's a concise history of who Carlyle was:

Thomas Carlyle (Born Dec. 4, 1795, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scot. — died Feb. 5, 1881, London, Eng.) Scottish historian and essayist. The son of a mason, Carlyle was reared in a strict Calvinist household and educated at the University of Edinburgh. He moved to London in 1834. An energetic, irritable, fiercely independent idealist, he became a leading moral force in Victorian literature. His humorous essay "Sartor Resartus" (1836) is a fantastic hodgepodge of autobiography and German philosophy. The French Revolution, 3 vol. (1837), perhaps his greatest achievement, contains outstanding set pieces and character studies. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) showed his reverence for strength, particularly when combined with the conviction of a God-given mission. He later published a study of Oliver Cromwell (1845) and a huge biography of Frederick the Great, 6 vol. (1858 – 65). Britannica Concise Encyclopedia.



In Christ,



Pastor Jon