In the last weeks of 1623 London was in the throes of one of those infectious disease outbreaks characteristic of the era. A “spotted fever,” most likely typhus, was cutting a swath through the city’s tightly packed neighborhoods, and in late November it laid low England’s most famous preacher. John Donne was fifty-one years old, and dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, though he had come late to holy orders. In his early days, as a womanizing gallant, he had authored the most scandalous and original love poetry of the era. Life, though, had transformed the young scapegrace and reordered his concerns.

After four hundred years, John Donne’s Devotions still contain truths we need to hear.