FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>   >|  
orms of truth employed by St. Paul and St. John. This last poem, concerning humility as the house in which charity dwells, is very truth. A repentant sinner feels that he is making himself little when he prays to be made humble: the Christian philosopher sees such a glory and spiritual wealth in humility that it appears to him almost too much to pray for. The very essence of these mystical writers seems to me to be poetry. They use the largest figures for the largest spiritual ideas--_light_ for _good, darkness_ for _evil_. Such symbols are the true bodies of the true ideas. For this service mainly what we term _nature_ was called into being, namely, to furnish forms for truths, for without form truth cannot be uttered. Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger. When the logic leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which has withered into an apple of Sodom. Witness some of the writings of the European master of the order--Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in truth; the lowest are poverty-stricken indeed. In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men--and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare--he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. Dull of heart and sadly unlike a mother was the Church when, by the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., she drove from her bosom such a son, with his two thousand brethren of the clergy! He has left us a good deal of verse--too much, perhaps, if we consider the length of the poems and the value of condensation. There is in many of them a delightful fervour of the simplest love to God, uttered with a plain half poetic, half logical strength, from which sometimes the poetry breaks out clear and fine. Much that he writes is of death, from the dread of which he evidently suffered--a good thing when it drives a man to renew his confidence in his Saviour's presence. It has with him a very different origin from the vulgar fancy that to talk about death is religious. It was refuge from the fear of deat
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
poetry
 

symbol

 

writers

 

appeared

 

Baxter

 
symbols
 
largest
 

uttered

 
humility
 

spiritual


Puritans

 

Royalists

 
partisans
 

pleased

 
Uniformity
 

Charles

 
Church
 
mother
 

unlike

 

surely


sought

 

contending

 

parties

 

opposing

 

siding

 

refuge

 

religious

 

drives

 

suffered

 

simplest


Saviour

 
confidence
 

delightful

 

fervour

 

evidently

 
breaks
 

strength

 
poetic
 

logical

 
writes

clergy
 

brethren

 
thousand
 
origin
 

condensation

 

length

 
presence
 

vulgar

 
figures
 

darkness