This should have been my monthly column for the American Magazine, 'First Things'

.......But it isn't being published there. Watch this space for the astonishing and worrying explanation of its non-appearance:

 

I am not sure if John Donne ever wrote anything else quite as alluring and seductive as this: ���The University is a paradise, rivers of knowledge are there, arts and sciences flow from thence���gardens that are walled in, wells that are sealed up; bottomless depths of unsearchable counsels ���The waters of rest, they flow from this good Master, and flow into him ag...