Set Out into Deep Waters
Daring to Seek Meaning & Magnificence
The scene is a hospital room. Four men in business suits are there to examine the patient, while his neurosurgeon looks on. The patient has a growth in the brain that must be removed immediately. Even the delay of a few days, a delay he has insisted on, puts his life at greater risk. His father, himself a physician but estranged from his son, nervously paces the ward outside the closed door, while the patient’s young fiancée sits and waits for the examination to be over. It will take three hours.
“You say Wordsworth was a champion of human reason,” says one of the examiners, “but now you say there is mysticism at the heart of his work. Do not reason and mysticism contradict one another? How can you maintain both at once?”
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Christianity from the online archives
30.3—May/June 2017
Insider Attempts to Disorient the Orthodox by Alexander F. C. Webster
22.6—July/August 2009
on the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life by Leon J. Podles
33.3—May/June 2020
Human & Divine Societies Require Careful Thought & Discourse by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
27.4—July/August 2014
The Bible, Sacred Theology & the Mind of Christ by Patrick Henry Reardon
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
Remembering Angka & the Idolatry of the Khmer Rouge 40 Years Later by Les Sillars
32.2—March/April 2019
on Preserving Physical & Spiritual Nourishment by Nathanael Devlin
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
