From the Winter Meanjin of 1994.

A wise old preacher I knew once told me: ‘Have few books, and know them well.’ His name was Will Gale. He had entered the Churches of Christ theological college in Melbourne in 1904, the year it was founded, and he gave me this advice in 1957, when I was about to enter the college. He also gave me a little book by the classicist and religious historian T. R. Glover, which I enjoyed so much that I went out and bought every other book by Glover I could find. In 1904, even in 1957, in that church, you could pay no greater respect to a man’s faith than to describe him as ‘a man of one book’, namely the Bible. Like many ministers I have known, Will Gale was well-read and had a substantial library, but he was a man of one book.