SOURCE: A review of 'A Holy Tradition of Working: Passages from the Writings of Eric Gill', edited by Brian Keeble, Parabola, Vol. IX, No. 2, April, 1984, pp. 102-4.

In the following essay, Remde describes Gill as a flawed—and thus deeply human—writer.

This extraordinary book [A> Holy Tradition of Working: Passages from the Writings of Eric Gill] is a selection of Eric Gill's writings representing his thought over a period of many years. That the book may be called extraordinary is due to man's present situation. In a normal (traditional) society, i.e., a society in which human actions conform to spiritual needs, this book would not have been written; Gill would be an ordinary man. But all around us, now as in Gill's lifetime, an empty knowledge accumulates—empty not in itself, but in the way that we receive it.

The compiler of this book has selected...