The brink of mystery

Austin Farrer in his later years was striving for new depths of simplicity and insight. This collection of Farrer sermons, preached mainly to undergraduate audiences, is the third to be published since his death. Even readers who never heard him speak can form from the printed text a true impression of his qualities of imagination, humor, and spirituality. For preachers he not only advocates but illustrates preaching as a creative art; to the 'ordinary' Christian he shows how worthwhile it is to take trouble with the questions of faith: to face them as issues of truth, to probe them this way and that, and to feel that language and imagery are friendly tools for undertaking the work. For theologians, too, he has a message: not to conceive their task too narrowly and to let a wide range of human resources, mind and heart, contribute to the task of clothing in words our experience of God.