It’s now nearly forty years since that iconic scene in Crocodile Dundee, when an American gangster threatens Mick Dundee with a knife, only for Mick to look condescendingly at the weapon, and say, “That’s not a knife!” – then to draw out his own blade, wave it with confidence and a cheeky smirk and utter those larrikin words: “Now that’s a knife!”

But Mick’s famous line has actually been said before. By a church minister, nearly four hundred years ago. Englishman William Gurnall, in his famous The Christian in Complete Armour, exhorts ministers to be useful and sharp in their preaching and teaching: “Everything is good, as it is good for the end it is appointed to. A knife, though it had a haft [handle] of diamonds, yet if it will not cut, it is no knife’. In other words, it may be rightly said of a minister who cannot teach and preach the Bible, though he be immaculately dressed in glittering clerical garb: “That’s not a knife”.

The challenge of course is, having now pointed the finger, to point it back and ask the question: Am I just all handle and no blade? Or if the blade is there, is it dull or sharp? Again, if the blade it is there, is it the size of a small street gangster, or of a bushman in the wilds of Australia? Again, is it able to defeat leviathan, or to only wound fleas and flies? Pray hard for your ministers!