Daily Inspiration Quote by Bishop Robert South

Wonder here isn’t treated as a virtue so much as a reflex - a brief flare caused by ignorance rubbing up against novelty. South, a Restoration-era Anglican cleric with a taste for pointed moral psychology, collapses “wonder” into “surprise,” and then reduces surprise to a temporary condition cured by exposure. It’s a cold, almost prosecutorial definition: once you’ve seen enough, the mind stops gasping and starts cataloging.

The line carries a gentle insult aimed at the credulous. In a 17th-century religious culture crowded with claims of miracles, portents, and “enthusiasms,” South’s formulation works as a prophylactic against spiritual sensationalism. If wonder is just surprise, and surprise evaporates with experience, then the person forever marveling may be advertising not holiness but naïveté. Experience becomes an epistemic disinfectant: it strips the world of theatricality and leaves behind what’s stable, knowable, and therefore governable - the kind of order a churchman defending institutional authority would value.

The subtext is also about power. To say wonder “stops” is to suggest that maturity looks like emotional restraint, even a kind of disenchantment. South implies that the seasoned observer should not be easily moved; awe is for beginners. That’s rhetorically useful in a pulpit: it nudges listeners away from chasing religious thrills and toward disciplined assent.

Still, the sentence has an anxious edge. If experience kills surprise, what keeps faith from becoming mere habit? South is betting that religion should outlast the fireworks.