In the notes he typed for this talk about the chapel windows, Frye made some holograph additions and deletions to the typescript. Below, the deletions are marked by a strike-through, and the additions are followed by an asterisk. The beginning of each page of notes is marked by a bold-face number in square brackets. The order in which Frye spoke from these pages is uncertain. Reprinted by permission of Victoria University.
[1]
Get gown, stupid*
Introduction: Text from Wisdom (get the quote) [see end of this entry]
Some of you will have been before
—quiet desperation
—old-fashioned but in good faith
—not to criticize but define your own.
Coat of arms: fourfold division
—still exists: art science, religion
—social sciences as law
Four people. Three universities
In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, the seventh chapter, the fifteenth verse: “God hath granted me to speak as I would, and to conceive as is meet for the things that are given me: because it is he that leadeth unto wisdom, and directeth the wise.”
[2]
John 18:20. “I spake openly to the world, and in secret have I said nothing.”
Building: height of modernity in 1892
Chapel: Methodist belief in no sharp separation of church and world: worship and auditorium: liturgy and doubtful jokes
Architecture: faces north: Corinthian columns: harsh light and me invisible
Can see the windows: central one the coat of arms
Other four leaders in Nonconformist tradition [Milton, Wesley, Newton, Luther]
Nothing wrong in other traditions, but a quiet pride in our own
[3]
Luther: picture and motto
Diet of Worms: speech in Latin and German
Ready-made drama at time—Emperor understood neither
[?] Erasmus on*
What he did not say: conscience and p.j. beyond him
What he said: get quote [apparently the quotation at the end of this entry]
Christian law:
—not police or rules but integrity of life
—sacramental law crossing both worlds*
—profession of students one of detachment
—broke power and saved R.C. as well as reformed Ch.*
—when you’re through you know it’s life and death
—raised gap between God & man: freed man by linking human powers*
—intellectual honor most difficult in peace
—fight against the total human institution, as today*
—war on the self-sufficient institution
—unconscious influence on democracy*
—isolation of Christ: Peter and Paul
Nicer man (Erasmus) wouldn’t work: power of Church
—saved both churches negative mighty lunge
It is impossible for me to recant unless I am proved to be in the wrong by the testimony of Scripture or by the evidence of plain reason.1
[4]
Milton:
Career: civil war and blindness: world full voices
Collapse of hopes at Restoration. P.L. [Paradise Lost] motto
One thing clear not doing God a favor—quote
Christian art:
—broken dejected gouty blind—where did he get all this energy2*
—driving energy of mighty poem
—not doing God a favor*
—offering taking its merit from acceptance
—dilemma: self, public, posterity*
—all writing on the same level for God
—hence cheerfulness (get quote)
cf. Haydn
“As those Priests of old were not to be long in sorrow, or if they were, they could not rightly execute their function; so every true Christian in a higher order of Priesthood is a person dedicated to joy and peace, offering himself a lively sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and there is no Christian duty that is not to be seasoned and set off with cheerfulness.”3
Bach to follow.
[5]
Jim Carscallen*4
Bach: German musical tradition Luther started
Petty sniping: subversive harmonizing; strange females
Chance he wanted: Kapellmeister
Brilliance and beauty of secular music
Back to organist
—cut in salary (20 children) and (harder) rank
—loss of fame—Samuel Wesley5
—got Passion and Mass out of it
Not imitate but sign of integrity: class by itself
Three levels: Beethoven and Mozart
—God composes: portal to real music
Truant poem
—“We will not join” can be positive
Attachments within rather than without.6
[6]
Newton: mathematical achievement familiar
—calculus, optics, motion, gravitation
Cambridge and the Mint—latter more time for Bible7
—Mathematics all very well but Bible test
—serious man—only once uproariously amused—quote
—get quote. Solid, conventional, institutional
—vs. Pascal—get quote8
End of life—get quote9
—last phrase on window the key
—not moral mock modesty
—not superstitious fear of jealous god
Christian science:
—not knowledge but right to search
—greatest empire except Aristotle*
—looks forward amiably to bottom blown out 1905
—vision of law never final*
—not failure—only when trust to wrong things
—exhilaration of ignorance: cf. St. T.A. [Thomas Aquinas]
[7]
Wesley: motto at end of life
Tumultuous family: 2 sons and drs. extraordinary
—talented weak foolish father
—ed. dissenting academies V.C. [Victoria College] descended from
—back in Church; John at Oxford
—Susanna (Annesley name) held family.10
Holy Club—priggish rather than saintly.
Georgia: yoke hard and burden heavy11
—bungling love affair with girl he didn’t love
—marriage; refusal of communion; libel; flight12
—shipboard; cabin boy; learning something
—motto and under law: find quotes.13
place where something happened*
—conversion to gospel
Methodist revival—mistakes; not moving with caution
—like a man possessed*
—insensitivity to persecution, rain, fatigue
at that time wild parts of the country*
Christian religion:
—not belief in God but humanity of God
—best human standards minimum of divine
—hence no worship of ourselves, but doubt
—Wesley moral not mental doubter—18th c.