Christ's Journal

by Paul Alexander Bartlett

Farewell Thoughts

I

hope these thoughts may be helpful. It is very late and lamplight flickers...

Inside a man of light there is light and with this light he lights the world.

The angels and the prophets will come to you and give you strength.

Blessed are the ones who have heard the Father’s word and kept it in truth.

Have you then discovered the beginning so that you ask the end? Where the beginning is, there the end will be.

The kingdom is inside you. When you really understand you will know that you are the son of the living Father. If you do not under­stand yourself you will be in poverty.

Split wood and I am there. Pick up a stone; there you will find me.

Come to me because my yoke is easy, my lordship gentle. You will find rest.

The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.

Blessed are the solitary and the elect; you shall find the kingdom because you have come from it and you shall go there again.

I say, whenever one is one he will be filled with light, but whenever he is divided he will be filled with darkness.

Love your brother as your own soul. Guard him as the apple of your eye.

There will be days when you seek and you will not find me.

ÿ

Note:

These logia appear for the first time in a journal.

They are from the 4th century Coptic book,

The Gospel According to Thomas,

discovered in Hammadi, Egypt,

quoted through the courtesy

of the translator, Dr. Ray Rummers,

Chairman, Department of English, Baylor University.

About the Author

P

aul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a writer and artist, born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been ex­hibited in more than forty one-man shows in leading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken. More than 350 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified col­lection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an archive of Bartlett’s literary work, fine art, and letters.

Paul Alexander Bartlett’s fiction has been commended by many authors, among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of many grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation.

His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published poet, is the author of seven­teen published books of poetry, numerous poems, short stories, and essays pub­lished in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., is the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry that honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.

Paul and Elizabeth’s son, Steven, edited and designed this volume.

Christ’s Journal

was set in Garamond type by Autograph Editions. The typeface is named after Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561), a French type designer and publisher and the world’s first commercial typefounder. Garamond’s contribution to the history of typesetting was substantial. He perfected the design of Roman type: The fonts that he cut beginning in 1531 were recognized as possessing a superior grace and clarity, so much so that Garamond’s fonts influenced European printing for the next cen­tury and a half.

It is interesting to note that Garamond type is the evolutionary ancestor of the type used to print the first official copies of the Declaration of Independence. In the 1730s, Englishman William Caslon refined Garamond’s version of Aldine roman, the well-balanced typeface became popular, and was introduced to the American colonies by Benjamin Franklin.

Despite his considerable contribution to the evolution of typography, Garamond was not a successful businessman and he died in poverty.

During the past five centuries, so many variations of Garamond’s type designs have been created that the phrase ‘Garamond type’ has come to be used loosely, with little memory remaining of its history.