teach one brother
To forgive and love another;
That copying thy mercy here,
Thy goodness may hereafter rear
Our souls unto thy glory, when
Our dust shall cease to be with men. _Amen._
CHAPTER XVI.
HENRY MORE AND RICHARD BAXTER.
Dr. Henry More was born in the year 1614. Chiefly known for his mystical
philosophy, which he cultivated in retirement at Cambridge, and taught
not only in prose, but in an elaborate, occasionally poetic poem, of
somewhere about a thousand Spenserian stanzas, called _A Platonic Song of
the Soul_, he has left some smaller poems, from which I shall gather good
store for my readers. Whatever may be thought of his theories, they
belong at least to the highest order of philosophy; and it will be seen
from the poems I give that they must have borne their part in lifting the
soul of the man towards a lofty spiritual condition of faith and
fearlessness. The mystical philosophy seems to me safe enough in the
hands of a poet: with others it may degenerate into dank and dusty
materialism.
RESOLUTION.
Where's now the objects of thy fears,
Needless sighs, and fruitless tears?
They be all gone like idle dream
Suggested from the body's steam.
* * * * *
What's plague and prison? Loss of friends?
War, dearth, and death that all things ends?
Mere bugbears for the childish mind;
Pure panic terrors of the blind.
Collect thy soul unto one sphere
Of light, and 'bove the earth it rear;
Those wild scattered thoughts that erst
Lay loosely in the world dispersed,
Call in:--thy spirit thus knit in one
Fair lucid orb, those fears be gone
Like vain impostures of the night,
That fly before the morning bright.
Then with pure eyes thou shalt behold
How the first goodness doth infold
All things in loving tender arms;
That deemed mischiefs are no harms,
But sovereign salves and skilful cures
Of greater woes the world endures;
That man's stout soul may win a state
Far raised above the reach of fate.
Then wilt thou say, _God rules the world_,
Though mountain over mountain hurled
Be pitched amid the foaming main
Which busy winds to wrath constrain;
* * * * *
Though pitchy blasts from hell up-born
Stop the outgoings of the morn,
And Nature play her fiery games
In this forced night, with fulgurant flames:
* * * * *
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