Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
Please note that some of our content may not be available on this web archive at this time. If you cannot find a specific article, please contact us.
Articles
Contra Mundum
The world unfurls its flag of toleration,issues its edicts of equality,and he who bears the sign of our salvationis banished as a public enemy.As Athanasius, when the world awoketo...
Spring
I love to see the leaves arrive,the new green spangling the blue,when branches, struggling alive,remake my window’s skyward view;or, looking down, to see the soilpierced by the grassy vanguard’s...
Cosmology
They told us that we lost our lofty placewhen Galileo shattered Ptolemy’sconcentric spheres, hurled Earth into the seasof ever-growing, godless outer space.They told us that the precious human raceoriginated...
Quebec
The tourists traipse; the sights go by, a blur of cramped and cobbled streets where faux cafés and sellers of souvenirs administer the sacraments of our despairing days. Four-hundred-year-old...
By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them
Hard words, Lord Christ! For what good fruits bear I? For all your care and tending, what my yield? You gave me to a garden well concealed and watered...
On Listening to Haydn
“At the thought of God my heart leaps for joy, and I cannot help my music doing the same. n ”Joseph Haydn n If God were only Wisdom-born-of-Power, and...
Gargoyle
Consider the fierce stone features of its face a vaccination of demonic strain, a backfire lit on purpose to contain hell’s wildfire outside this glade of grace. For if...