Pure Mathematics of the Spirit

"The spirits of the living world were never meant to be so neighbourly with the spirits of that other. "Grant to them eternal rest, O Lord. And let light eternal shine upon them." Let them rest in their own places of light; far, far from us be their discipline and their endeavour. The phrases of the prayers of intercession throb with something other than charity for the departed; there is a fear for the living. Grant them, grant them rest; compel them to their rest. Enlighten them, perpetually enlighten them. And let us still enjoy our refuge from their intolerable knowledge.

"As if in a last communion with the natural terrors of man, Margaret Anstruther endured a recurrent shock of fear. She recalled herself. To tolerate such knowledge with a joyous welcome was meant, as the holy Doctors had taught her, to be the best privilege of man, and so remained. The best maxim towards that knowledge was yet not the Know thyself of the Greek so much as the Know love of the Christian, though both in the end were one. It was not possible for man to know himself and the world, except first after some mode of knowledge, some art of discovery. The most perfect, since the most intimate and intelligent, art was pure love. The approach by love was the approach to fact; to love anything but fact was not love. Love was even more mathematical than poetry; it was the pure mathematics of the spirit. It was applied also and active; it was the means as it was the end. The end lived everlastingly in the means; the means eternally in the end."

From Charles Williams, Descent Into Hell, pp. 68-69

Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images

Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images (London: Dacre, 1949).

No one has applied himself to the question of the literary art of the Apocalypse with more relentlessness than Austin Farrer. The book is a masterpiece and a puzzle, at once impressive and bemusing. The entire book is dominated by the conclusion (or shall we say, conviction) that the Apocalypse “is the one great poem which the first Christian age produced” (6). Accordingly, in this study of the book of Revelation, Farrer claims “to introduce into the field of scriptural divinity a known method of poetical analysis” (20). The origins of Christianity were, in fact, a “rebirth” of the imagery of the Jewish Scriptures. The most complete rebirth was accomplished in Revelation; in John’s poetical labor, the images of the Old Testament were reborn completely with Christ as the new center. Farrer saw, more than many, the sophistication of the book. He approaches the book as a work of genius, not that of a madman, though the difference between the two has often thought to be slight. He traces the themes of the Apocalypse much like one might trace the genius of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno. In fact, the result of the Farrer’s analysis is so complex and dense, one might wonder whether Farrer has seen more than is actually there.