Three Thoughts: The Gate of Heaven

For those of you new to this blog (hello!), 'Three Thoughts' is a series in which I collect, without comment, three texts or extracts linked by a single word or phrase. In this case it's the 'gate of heaven', which comes ultimately from the story in Genesis 28:10-17.

I

John Donne, from a sermon preached on 29th February, 1628.

And those that sleep in Jesus Christ (saith the Apostle) will God bring with him; not only fetch them out of the dust when he comes, but bring them with him, that is, declare that they have been in his hands ever since they departed out of this world. They shall awake as Jacob did, and say as Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven. And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no foes nor friends, but one equal communion and identity; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity.

II

Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, I.31.

You never enjoy the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it, that you had rather suffer the flames of Hell than willingly be guilty of their error. There is so much blindness and ingratitude and damned folly in it. The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said "God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and the Gate of Heaven."

III

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries; Being a Personal Narrative of Events, 1888-1914 (New York, 1932), p. 229, describing a visit from William Morris in May 1896.

We had a long discussion whether the love of beauty was natural or acquired. 'As for me,' he said, 'I have it naturally, for neither my father nor my mother nor any of my relations had the least idea of it. I remember as a boy going into Canterbury Cathedral and thinking that the gates of Heaven had been opened to me--also when I first saw an illuminated manuscript. These first pleasures, which I discovered for myself, were stronger than anything else I have had in life.'

Canterbury Cathedral, from the Quire

John Donne on Misery

From Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, VIII and XIII.

Still when we return to that meditation that man is a world, we find new discoveries. Let him be a world, and himself will be the land, and misery the sea. His misery (for misery is his, his own; of the happiness even of this world, he is but tenant, but of misery the freeholder; of happiness he is but the farmer, but the usufructuary, but of misery the lord, the proprietary), his misery, as the sea, swells above all the hills, and reaches to the remotest parts of this earth, man; who of himself is but dust, and coagulated and kneaded into earth by tears; his matter is earth, his form misery.

...

We say that the world is made of sea and land, as though they were equal; but we know that there is more sea in the Western than in the Eastern hemisphere. We say that the firmament is full of stars, as though it were equally full; but we know that there are more stars under the Northern than under the Southern pole. We say the elements of man are misery and happiness, as though he had an equal proportion of both, and the days of man vicissitudinary, as though he had as many good days as ill, and that he lived under a perpetual equinoctial, night and day equal, good and ill fortune in the same measure. But it is far from that; he drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleans happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walk in happiness; and, which is worst, his misery is positive and dogmatical, his happiness is but disputable and problematical: all men call misery misery, but happiness changes the name by the taste of man.

Three Thoughts: 'Death, and the little perpetual daily dyings'

Three texts I came across this week, which resonated with each other.

I

John Donne, from his last sermon, 'Death's Duel':

This exitus à morte is but introitus in mortem; this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb which grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave.
...
That which we call life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them.


II

William Wordsworth, from 'Intimations of Immortality':

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy:
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.


III

Walter Pater, from Marius the Epicurean:

There is a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he has come to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs of circumstance which are in a measure removable -- some inexplicable shortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself -- death, and old age as it must needs be, and that watching for their approach, which makes every stage of life like a dying over and over again. Almost all death is painful, and in every thing that comes to an end a touch of death, and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one, of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given faultless men and women, given a perfect state of society which should have no need to practise on men's susceptibilities for its own selfish ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own interest or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation.

John Donne's last Easter sermon: 'Devotion is no marginal note, no interlineary gloss, no parenthesis that may be left out'

John Donne gave his last Easter sermon at St Paul's, London, on March 31, 1630.  He preached on the text He is not here, for he is risen, as he said; Come, see the place where the Lord lay, the words spoken in Matthew's Gospel by the angel to the women at the empty tomb.  Donne's sermon discusses a number of aspects of this moment in the gospel, but I've chosen to post just the first section, where he reflects on the devotion of the women and the fact that they sought the tomb 'early in the morning'.  I've also included a passage towards the end of the homily, which echoes two of Donne's most famous works, 'Death be not proud' and Meditation XVII, 'ask not for whom the bell tolls'; John Donne died a year to the day after giving this sermon, on March 31, 1631.

The whole text can be found here.

BL Royal 20 D V, f.45

He is not here, for he is risen, as he said; Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

These are words spoken by the angel of heaven, to certain devout women, who, not yet considering the resurrection of Christ, came with a pious intention to do an office of respect, and civil honour to the body of their Master, which they meant to embalm in the monument where they thought to find it. How great a compass God went in this act of the resurrection! Here was God, the God of life, dead in a grave, and here was a man, a dead man, risen out of the grave; here are angels of heaven employed in so low an office, as to catechise women, and women employed in so high an office, as to catechise the apostles. I chose this verse out of the body of the story of the resurrection, because in this verse the act of Christ's rising, (which we celebrate this day) is expressly mentioned, surrexit enim, for he is risen: which word stands as a candle, that shows itself, and all about it, and will minister occasion of illustrating your understanding, of establishing your faith, of exalting your devotion in some other things about the resurrection, than fall literally within the words of this verse. For, from this verse we must necessarily reflect, both upon the persons (they to whom, and they by whom the words were spoken) and upon the occasion given. I shall not therefore now stand to divide the words into their parts and branches, at my first entering into them, but handle them, as I shall meet them again anon, springing out, and growing up from the body of the story; for the context is our text, and the whole resurrection is the work of the day, though it be virtually, implicitly contracted into this verse, He is not here, for he is risen, as he said; Come, and see the place where the Lord lay.

Our first consideration is upon the persons; and those we find to be angelical women, and evangelical angels: angels made evangelists, to preach the Gospel of the resurrection, and women made angels, (so as John Baptist is called an angel, and so as the seven bishops are called angels) that is, instructors of the church; and to recompense that observation, that never good angel appeared in the likeness of woman, here are good women made angels, that is, messengers, publishers of the greatest mysteries of our religion. For, howsoever some men out of a petulancy and wantonness of wit, and out of the extravagancy of paradoxes, and such singularities, have called the faculties, and abilities of women in question, even in the root thereof, in the reasonable and immortal soul, yet that one thing alone hath been enough to create a doubt, (almost an assurance in the negative) whether St. Ambrose's Commentaries upon the Epistles of St. Paul, be truly his or no, that in that book there is a doubt made, whether the woman were created according to God's image; therefore, because that doubt is made in that book, the book itself is suspected not to have had so great, so grave, so constant an author as St. Ambrose was; no author of gravity, of piety, of conversation in the Scriptures could admit that doubt, whether woman were created in the image of God, that is, in possession of a reasonable and an immortal soul.

The faculties and abilities of the soul appear best in affairs of state, and in ecclesiastical affairs; in matter of government, and in matter of religion; and in neither of these are we without examples of able women. For, for state affairs, and matter of government, our age hath given us such a queen, as scarce any former king hath equalled; and in the Venetian story, I remember, that certain matrons of that city were sent by commission, in quality of ambassadors, to an empress with whom that state had occasion to treat; and in the stories of the Eastern parts of the world, it is said to be in ordinary practice to send women for ambassadors. And then, in matters of religion, women have evermore had a great hand, though sometimes on the left, as well as on the right hand. Sometimes their abundant wealth, sometimes their personal affections to some church-men, sometimes their irregular and indiscreet zeal hath made them great assistants to great heretics; as St. Jerome tells us of Helena to Simon Magus, and so was Lucilia to Donatus, so another to Mahomet, and others to others. But so have they been also great instruments for the advancing of true religion, as St. Paul testifies in their behalf, at Thessalonica, Of the chief women, not a few; great, and many. For many times women have the proxies of greater persons than themselves, in their bosoms; many times women have voices, where they should have none; many times the voices of great men, in the greatest of civil, or ecclesiastical assemblies, have been in the power and disposition of women.

Hence is it, that in the old epistles of the bishops of Rome, when they needed the court, (as, at first they needed courts as much, as they brought courts to need them at last) we find as many letters of those popes to the emperors' wives, and the emperors' mothers, and sisters, and women of other names, and interests in the emperors' favours and affections, as to the emperors themselves. St. Jerome writ many letters to divers holy ladies...

If women have submitted themselves to as good an education as men, God forbid their sex should prejudice them, for being examples to others. Their sex? no, nor their sins neither: for, it is St. Jerome's note, That of all those women, that are named in Christ's pedigree in the Gospel, there is not one, (his only blessed Virgin Mother excepted) upon whom there is not some suspicious note of incontinency. Of such women did Christ vouchsafe to come; He came of woman so, as that he came of nothing but woman; of woman, and not of man. Neither do we read of any woman in the Gospel, that assisted the persecutors of Christ, or furthered his afflictions; even Pilate's wife dissuaded it. Woman, as well as man, was made after the image of God, in the creation; and in the resurrection, when we shall rise such as we were here, her sex shall not diminish her glory: of which, she receives one fair beam, and inchoation in this text, that the purpose of God, is, even by the ministry of angels, communicated to women. But what women? for their preparation, their disposition is in this text too; such women, as were not only devout, but sedulous, diligent, constant, perseverant in their devotion; to such women God communicated himself; which is another consideration in these persons.

As our Saviour Christ was pleased, that one of these women should be celebrated by name, for another act upon him, Mary Magdalen, and that wheresoever his Gospel was preached, her act should be remembered, so the rest, with her, are worthy to be known and celebrated by their names; therefore we consider, Quae, and quales; first who they were, and then what they were, their names first, and then their conditions. There is an historical relation, and observation, That though there be divers kingdoms in Europe, in which the crowns may fall upon women, yet, for some ages, they did not, and when they did, it was much at one time, and all upon women of one name, Mary. It was so with us in England, and in Scotland it was so; so in Denmark, and in Hungary it was so too; all four, Marys. Though regularly women should not preach, yet when these legati a latere, these angels from heaven did give orders to women, and made them apostles to the apostles, the commission was to women of that name, Mary; for, though our expositors dispute whether the blessed Virgin Mary were there then, when this passed at the sepulchre, yet of Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James, there can be no doubt. Indeed it is a noble, and a comprehensive name, Mary. It is the name of woman, in general; for, when Adam says of Eve, She shall be called woman, in the Arabic translation, there is this name, She shall be called Mary; and the Arabic is, perchance, a dialect of the Hebrew. But in pure, and original Hebrew, the word signifies exaltation, and whatsoever is best in the kind thereof. This is the name of that sister of Aaron, and Moses, that with her choir of women assisted at that eucharistical sacrifice, that triumphant song of thanksgiving, upon the destruction, the subversion, the summersion of Egypt in the Red Sea. Her name was Miriam; and Miriam and Mary is the same name in women, as Josuah and Jesus is the same name to men. The word denotes greatness, not only in power, but in wisdom, and learning too; and so signifies often prophets and doctors; and so falls fitliest upen these blessed women, who, in that sense, were all made Marys, messengers, apostles to the apostles; in which sense, even those women were made Marys, (that is, messengers of the resurrection) who, no doubt, had other names of their own... That blessing which God gave to these Marys, which was, to know more of Christ, than their former teachers knew, he will also be pleased to give to the greatest of that name amongst us, that she may know more of Christ, than her first teachers knew. And we pass on, from the names, to the conditions of these women.

And first we consider their sedulity; sedulity, that admits no intermission, no interruption, no discontinuance, no tepidity, no indifferency in religious offices. Consider we therefore their sedulity if we can. I say, if we can; because if a man should sit down at a bee-hive, or at an ant-hill, and determine to watch such an ant, or such a bee, in the working thereof, he would find that bee, or that ant so sedulous, so serious, so various, so concurrent with others, so contributary to others, as that he would quickly lose his marks, and his sight of that ant, or that bee; so if we fix our consideration upon these devout women, and the sedulity of their devotion, so as the several evangelists present it unto us, we may easily lose our sight, and hardly know which was which, or, at what time she or she came to the sepulchre. They came in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn, towards the first day of the week, says St. Matthew: They came very early in the morning, upon the first day of the week, the sun being then risen, says St. Mark; They prepared their spices, and rested the Sabbath, and came early the next day, says St. Luke; They came the first day, when it was yet dark, says St. John. From Friday evening, till Sunday morning, they were sedulous, busy upon this service...

Beloved, true devotion is a serious, a sedulous, an impatient thing. He that said in the Gospel, fast twice a week, was but a Pharisee; he that can reckon his devout actions, is no better; he that can tell how often he hath thought upon God to-day, hath not thought upon him often enough. It is St. Augustine's holy circle, to pray, that we may hear sermons profitably, and to hear sermons that we learn to pray acceptably. Devotion is no marginal note, no interlineary gloss, no parenthesis that may be left out; it is no occasional thing, no conditional thing; 'I will go, if I like the preacher, if the place, if the company, if the weather'; but it is of the body of the text, and lays upon us an obligation of fervour and of continuance. This we have in this example of these, not only evangelical, but evangelistical (preaching) women; and thus much more, that as they were sedulous and diligent after, so they were early, and begun betimes; for, howsoever the evangelists may seem to vary, in the point of time, when they came, they all agree they came early, which is another exaltation of devotion...

Even this woman, Mary Magdalen, be her sin what you will, came early to Christ; early, as soon as he afforded her any light. Christ says, in the person of Wisdom, love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me; and a good soul will echo back that return of David, O God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee; my flesh longeth for thee; and double that echo with Esay, With my soul have I desired thee in the night, and with my spirit within me, will I seek thee early.

Now, what is this early seeking of God? First, there is a general rule given by Solomon, Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; submit thyself to a religious discipline betimes. But then, in that there is a now inserted into that rule of Solomon's, (Remember now thy Creator, in the days of thy youth), there is an intimation, that there is a youth in our age, and an earliness acceptable to God, in every action; we seek him early, if we seek him at the beginning of every undertaking. If I awake at midnight, and embrace God in mine arms, that is, receive God into my thoughts, and pursue those meditations, by such a having had God in my company, I may have frustrated many temptations that would have attempted me, and perchance prevailed upon me, if I had been alone, for solitude is one of the devil's scenes; and, I am afraid there are persons that sin oftener alone, than in company; but that man is not alone that hath God in his sight, in his thought. Thou preventest me with the blessings of goodness, says David to God. I come not early enough to God, if I stay till his blessings in a prosperous fortune prevent me, and lead me to God; I should come before that. The days of affliction have prevented me, says Job. I come not early enough to God, if I stay till his judgments prevent me, and whip me to him; I should come before that. But, if I prevent the night watches, and the dawning of the morning, if in the morning my prayer prevent thee O God, (which is a high expression of Davids, That I should wake before God wakes, and even prevent his preventing grace, before it be declared in any outward act, that day) if before blessing or cross fall upon me, I surrender myself entirely unto thee, and say, Lord here I lie, make thou these sheets my sheets of penance, in inflicting a long sickness, or my winding-sheet, in delivering me over to present death, here I lie, make thou this bed mine altar, and bind me to it in the cords of decrepitness, and bedridness, or throw me off of it into the grave and dust of expectation, here I lie, do thou choose whether I shall see any to-morrow in this world, or begin my eternal day, this night, thy kingdom come, thy will be done; when I seek God, merely for love of him, and his glory, without relation to his benefits or to his corrections, this is that early seeking, which we consider in those blessed women, whose sedulity and earnestness, when they were come, and acceleration and earliness, in their coming, having already considered, pass we now to the ad quid, to what purpose, and with what intention they came, for in that alone, there are divers exaltations of their devotion.

In the first verse of this chapter it is said, They came to see the sepulchre; even to see the sepulchre was an act of love, and every act of love to Christ, is devotion. There is a love that will make one kiss the case of a picture, though it be shut; there is a love that will melt one's bowels, if he do but pass over, or pass by the grave of his dead friend. But their end was not only to see the sepulchre, but to see whether the sepulchre were in such state, as that they might come to their end, which was, To embalm their Master's body.

...

His rising declares him to be the Son of God, who therefore can, and will, and to be that Jesus, an actual Redeemer, and therefore hath already raised us. To what? To that renovation, to that new creation, which is so excellently expressed by Severianus, as makes us sorry we have no more of his; Mutator ordo rerim, The whole frame! and course of nature is changed; Sepulchrum non mortuum, sed mortem devorat, The grave, (now, since Christ's resurrection, and ours in him) does not bury the dead man, but death himself; my bell tolls for death, and my bell rings out for death, and not for me that die; for I live, even in death; but death dies in me, and hath no more power over me.

...

Let nothing therefore that can fall upon thee, despoil thee of the dignity and constancy of a Christian; howsoever thou be severed from those things, which thou makest account do make thee up, severed from a wife by divorce, from a child by death, from goods by fire, or water, from an office by just, or by unjust displeasure (which is the heavier but the happier case), yet never think thyself severed from thy head Christ Jesus, nor from being a lively member of his body. Though thou be a brother of dragons and a companion of owls, though thy harp be turned into mourning, and thine organ into the voice of them that weep, nay, Though the Lord kill thee, yet trust in him. Thy Saviour when he lay dead in the grave, was still the same Lord; thou, when thou art enwrapped, and interred in confusion, art still the same Christian.

...

If these meditations have raised you from the bed of sin, in any holy purpose, this is one of your resurrections, and you have kept your Easter day well. To which, he, whose name is Amen, say Amen, our blessed Saviour Christ Jesus, in the power of his Father, and in the operation of his Spirit.

'O might those sighs and tears return again'

O might those sighs and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent,
That I might in this holy discontent
Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain.
In mine idolatry what showers of rain
Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent!
That sufferance was my sin, now I repent;
'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain.
Th' hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief,
The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud
Have the remembrance of past joys, for relief
Of coming ills. To poor me is allowed
No ease; for long, yet vehement grief hath been
The effect and cause, the punishment and sin.


This is one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets (number III). I often turn to John Donne in Lent, and this poem especially touched me today. It's partly because the first few lines remind me of a dreadful story I read as a child, which I have never been able to forget: it was in an annual from the 1950s, if I remember rightly, and the premise was that the little protagonist, a boy prone to unnecessary tears, is shown by magic that there's a place where all children's tears are stored and measured; you only get a certain number of tears in your lifetime, he's told, so you shouldn't waste them on frivolous things. I'm sure the moralising author who wrote this story was very well-meaning, but when I was seven years old it horrified me - how could you know what was a frivolous thing to cry for? What if you wasted all your tears on something which seemed important at the time, and then later, when you really needed tears, there were none left? (I think this was the dilemma faced by the poor little boy in the story - he couldn't cry when his brother went missing, or something like that). I've since learned that tears are a bottomless well, and there's really not much danger of any of us running out; I hadn't wasted my lifetime's supply by the age of seven. Presumably John Donne knew this too, which makes the first few lines of this poem slightly odd, but the conceit fits the rueful tone of the poem, part self-mocking, part heartfelt grief. It's difficult to judge how serious it is - 'the itchy lecher' and 'self-tickling proud' are wonderfully piquant descriptors, almost a little too clever for someone engaged in pious self-reproach! But witty and sincere are not mutually exclusive for Donne, of course.

I find it particularly interesting that Donne considers his own past sin to have been not lechery but idolatry - a word which comes up elsewhere in his religious poems, referring to his early loves (here's one example).  But these are not just lovers - the 'profane mistresses' of that poem are the 'Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses)' of this one, from which he asks to be divorced.  'All things that are loved here and pass away', from which Lent tries to free us.  Even with John Donne as company, Lent is not my favourite season. I know it's not supposed to be pleasant - but if only there were some way to profit from its holy discontent without adding grief on top of grief!  For one reason or another I've spent quite a few tears over the past year or so, and the thought of all that fruitless weeping, instead of the kind of Lenten repentance which might actually be profitable, is indeed somewhat frightening to contemplate; like Donne (at least as I understand the poem), my repentant sorrow this Lent is mostly for all the sorrow I've wasted on unworthy things.  But then it's just sorrow whichever way you look, and back to George Herbert: 'Alas, my King; can both the way and end be tears?'

When I googled this poem and read a few interpretations of it, I found a number of people said it reminded them of Hopkins' 'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day'. I couldn't see the connection at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see it:

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

'Vehement grief hath been / The effect and cause, the punishment and sin.' The worst misery is in having to live with your own worst self.

Rags of heart

The Broken Heart
John Donne


He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us love draws;
He swallows us and never chaws;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me; but Love, alas!
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

A Hymn to God the Father

This is the anniversary of the death in 1631 of John Donne, and after pondering for a little which poem to post in his honour, I decided on one of his most famous, 'A Hymn to God the Father' - mostly because of what Izaak Walton says of this poem in his Life of Dr John Donne:

I have the rather mentioned this Hymn, for that he caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the Choristers of St. Paul’s Church, in his own hearing; especially at the Evening Service; and at his return from his customary devotions in that place, did occasionally say to a friend, "the words of this Hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it. And, O the power of church-music! that harmony added to this Hymn has raised the affections of my heart, and quickened my graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe that I always return from paying this public duty of prayer and praise to God, with an unexpressible tranquility of mind, and a willingness to leave the world."

I.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.

Flowers that glide

George Herbert died on 1 March, 1633, but in some places he is commemorated today, 27 February. 'The Flower' is my favourite poem of his, and it's the perfect poem for this season when the spring flowers are coming tentatively to life.

There are some lovely things in this poem: I'll talk about gliding below but the other one I want to point out is the irresistible idea that the flowers in winter go to visit their 'mother-root', where they 'keep house unknown' - very much like John Donne's tree-sap which in winter 'doth seek the root below', but a more homely, cheerful kind of image.


The Flower

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.


These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell,
We say amisse,
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were;
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offring at heav’n, growing and groaning thither:
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring-showre,
My sinnes and I joining together;


But while I grow to a straight line;
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.


'We are but flowers that glide.' glide is one of those impossibly beautiful words where just reading the dictionary list of citations is like reading a piece of found poetry. To take just one or two medieval examples: in the Old English Andreas, a ship moves through the water 'as a bird glides through the heavens'; in Beowulf the sun 'glides' above the earth; a Middle English homily compares the penitent sinners' tears to 'burning embers that glide down their faces'; Havelok's blood pours from his wounds 'like water that glides from the well'...

In Old and Middle English and as late as Herbert's day, glide is associated with any kind of smooth movement - flying through the air, sailing, skating; the progress of the sun and moon across the sky, or of the sun's beams towards the earth; the swift movement of a weapon, running water, the glance of an eye, and things which slip or which, like time and life, just slip away. In a more abstract context, as the Middle English Dictionary shows, it could even be used of the relationship between the Holy Ghost and the other members of the Trinity - where we say the Spirit 'proceeds from the Father and the Son', several ME sources have 'the Ghost which glides from them both', appropriate perhaps because a gliding movement is imperceptible, impossible to track. Ghosts in the literal sense are of course especially associated with gliding: in medieval poetry I can't help thinking of Langland's triumphant assertion that no 'grisly ghost' may glide where the protecting shadow of the cross falls; and there is an unforgettable passage in the romance Sir Amadace where a knight's mysterious ghostly benefactor 'glode away as dew in the sun'.

In Herbert's line the sense of glide is 'pass away', with perhaps the kind of imperceptible 'melting' into death envisaged by John Donne:

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

I wouldn't exactly associate flowers with this kind of gliding away - I would have thought they wither too quickly - but it comes up several times in the Bible, of which Herbert was surely thinking here: man "cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not' (Job 14:2); "the days of man are but as grass: for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more" (Psalm 103: 15-16); "all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it" (Isaiah 40:6-7). Strangely enough, or perhaps not so strangely, there's swift and smooth movement in all these passages. The fleeing shadow, the wind moving over the flower, the spirit of the Lord blowing upon it; any of those verbs might have called gliding to Herbert's mind. Shadows and spirits glide, as we saw above; and death, too, could glide, as in this fourteenth-century poem, another one full of fading flowers:

Ne is no quene so stark ne stour,
Ne no leuedy so bryht in bour
That ded ne shal by glyde.

And thou like adamant

I don't have much heart to blog right now, and I imagine the world will survive without my opinions for a few days. Instead here's John Donne's first Holy Sonnet, an appropriately Lenten poem. Since this is Shrove Tuesday and the day to be shriven, I'll make my confession: I hate Lent. I find it so miserable and not in a positive, growth-through-pain way - more in a 'nothing you do will ever be good enough and so what's the point' way. All talk about it is sounding hollow to my ears at the moment, but for some reason I can just about bear this poem.



Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and Death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way;
Despair behind, and Death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee
By Thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt

I've been exploring Benjamin Britten's settings of John Donne's 'Holy Sonnets', with distinctly mixed results - but whatever the flaws of the settings, this one is beautiful poetry beautifully sung.




Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravishèd,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers offering all thine:
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea, devil put thee out.



This poem was written after the death of Donne's wife, around the same time as 'A Hymn to Christ' which I posted last week, and it has obvious similarities to that poem in playing with the idea of God as a jealous lover, to whom earthly affections must be sacrificed but to whom, perhaps, they also lead. (These lines are the most extraordinary compliment: "Here the admiring her my mind did whet/To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head"). I confess myself puzzled by the liquid imagery which also shows up in both poems: streams, thirst, dropsy, floods, seas, sap... I wonder what's going on there.

Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one

A bit more John Donne - one of the Holy Sonnets.


Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vowes, and in devotione.
As humorous is my contritione
As my prophane Love, and as soone forgott:
As ridlingly distemper'd, cold and hott,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day
In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God:
To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.
So my devout fitts come and go away
Like a fantistique Ague: save that here
Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.

John Donne's 'A Hymn to Christ'

Every time I think I know the canon of John Donne all through, I read something that surprises me. I don't know how I missed this one, his 'A Hymn to Christ', written "at the author's last going into Germany".

That journey was apparently in 1619. The editor in that link also calls attention to the double meaning in the lines, "Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, thou free / My soule" - Ann More being the name of Donne's wife, who had died two years previously. Donne famously plays on her name and his own in this poem.



The going overseas theme, and the tension between forced and self-sought separations, rather reminds me of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, though perhaps that's just me being literalistic. That poem is about Hopkins' exile (as he felt it) in Ireland, the period in which he wrote the so-called 'terrible sonnets'; and there's something terrible about this Donne poem too, in the true sense of the word - he seeks to divorce himself from all other loves in order to find the love of God, to sever himself from every earthly attachment by voluntarily choosing a state he refers to as winter, darkness, everlasting night. It's very bleak, really.


A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's last going into Germany

In what torne ship soever I embarke,
That ship shall be my embleme of thy Arke;
What sea soever swallow mee, that flood
Shall be to mee an embleme of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face; yet through that maske I know those eyes,
Which, though they turne away sometimes,
They never will despise.

I sacrifice this Iland unto thee,
And all whom I lov'd there, and who lov'd mee;
When I have put our seas twixt them and mee,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sinnes and thee.
As the trees sap doth seeke the root below
In winter, in my winter now I goe,
Where none but thee, th'Eternall root
Of true Love I may know.

Nor thou nor thy religion dost controule,
The amorousnesse of an harmonious Soule,
But thou would'st have that love thy selfe: As thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, thou free
My soule: Who ever gives, takes libertie:
O, if thou car'st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov'st not mee.

Seale then this bill of my Divorce to All,
On whom those fainter beames of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered bee
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.
Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I goe out of sight:
And to scape stormy dayes, I chuse
An Everlasting night.




Posting this was not just an excuse to include pictures of 'churches with least light' - that was just a bonus (from the top: Canterbury Cathedral, Doddington, Ickham).

Lullay, lullay, little child, softly sleep and fast / In sorrow endeth every love but thine, at the last

This is an exquisitely sad nativity song, a lullaby addressed to the baby Christ, but full of compassion and pain and regret for the suffering that the child will later undergo. It's from the same manuscript as this lullaby and is on roughly the same subject, but this is a much finer treatment (they both come from a book belonging to the friar John Grimestone, who may or may not be the author). Today's lullaby is also very close in style and theme to this poem in the same metre, which is not addressed to Christ but to an ordinary baby - that anonymous poem laments the sorrows of the world and the human condition, while this focuses on the sorrows of Christ. In both cases the central image is of the crying child, innocent and ignorant, who weeps for no reason - and yet has a reason to weep, though he doesn't know it, because of the world he has been born into.

This poem is almost too sad to post at Christmas, really, but today is the feast of the Holy Innocents, whose own sad, strange lullaby still exerts a strong power; and Christmas is not all jollity - as John Donne said, in a sermon he preached on Christmas Day 1626:

The whole life of Christ was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the manger as uneasy at first, as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.

This poem perfectly illustrates that idea.


Lullay, lullay, litel child, child, rest thee a throwe,
From heighe hider art thou sent wyth us to wonen lowe;
Poure and litel art thou made, uncouth and unknowe,
Pyne and wo to suffren heer for thyng that nas thyn owe.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, sorwe mythe thou make;
Thou are sent into this world, as thou were forsake.

[Lullay, lullay, little child, rest you a while; from on high you are sent hither to dwell with us below. Poor and little are you made, unrecognised and unknown, to suffer pain and woe for a crime that was not your own. Lullay, lullay, little child, sorrow you might well make; you are sent into this world like one who has been forsaken.]

Lullay, lullay, litel grome, kyng of alle thyng,
What I thenke of thy myschief me listeth wel litel synge;
But caren I may for sorwe, if love were in myn herte,
For swiche peynes as thou shalt dreyen were nevere non so smerte.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, wel myghte thou crie,
For-than thy body is bleik and blak, soon after shal ben drye.

[Lullay, lullay, little boy, king of all things! When I think of your sad situation I hardly feel like singing; but I may lament, for sorrow, if love be in my heart, because such sharp pains as you will suffer have never been known. Lullay, lullay, little child, well might you cry! Your body then will grow pale and white, and then it shall grow dry.]

Child, it is a wepyng dale that thou art comen in;
Thy poure cloutes it proven wel, thy bed made in the bynne;
Cold and hunger thou most thoeln, as thou were geten in synne,
And after deyen on the tree for love of all mankynne.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, no wonder thogh thou care,
Thou art comen amonges hem that thy deeth shullen yare.

[Child, it is a weeping world that you have come into! Your poor rags prove this well, and your bed in the manger. Cold and hunger must you suffer, like one begotten in sin, and afterwards die upon the cross for the love of all mankind. Lullay, lullay, little child, no wonder that you cry; you are come among those who shall cause your death.]

Lullay, lullay, litel child, for sorwe myghte thou grete;
The anguissh that thou suffren shalt shal don the blood to swete;
Naked, bounden shaltow ben, and sithen sore bete,
No thyng free upon thy body of pyne shal ben lete.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, it is al for thy fo,
The harde bond of love-longyng that thee hath bounden so.

[Lullay, lullay, little child, for sorrow you may well cry; the anguish that you shall suffer will make you sweat blood. Naked, bound, you will be, and afterwards sorely beaten; no part of your body shall be left free of pain. Lullay, lullay, little child, it is all for your foe - the hard bond of love-longing that has bound you so.]

Lullay, lullay, litel child, litel child, thyn ore!
It is al for oure owene gilt that thou art peyned sore.
But wolden we yet kynde ben and lyven after thy lore,
And leten synne for thy love, ne keptest thou no more.
Lullay, lullay, litel child, softe sleep and faste,
In sorwe endeth every love but thyn atte laste.

[Lullay, lullay, little child, little child, your mercy! It is all for our guilt that you are sorely suffering. But if we yet acted rightly and lived according to your teaching, and left sin for your love, your suffering would be at an end. Lullay, lullay, little child, softly sleep and fast; in sorrow ends every love but yours, at the last.]

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy's Day

In John Donne's time, this was the shortest day of the year - St Lucy's, 'both the year's and the day's deep midnight'. This setting of his poem (charming pronunciation and all) is heart-breaking.

John Donne's effigy in St Paul's Cathedral, based on a drawing of him in his death-shroud.

Three Thoughts: On 'Occasional Mercies'

'Occasional mercies' is John Donne's term for what a non-believer would call coincidences - moments of grace which come out of nowhere; reminders of mercy in a passing word or something suddenly heard or seen; flashes of heaven.

Here are his examples:

The air is not so full of motes, of atoms, as the Church is of mercies; and as we can suck in no part of air, but we take in those motes, those atoms; so here in the congregation we cannot suck in a word from the preacher, we cannot speak, we cannot sigh a prayer to God, but that whole breath and air is made of mercy. But we call not upon you from this text, to consider God's ordinary mercy, that which he exhibits to all in the ministry of his Church, nor his miraculous mercy, his extraordinary deliverances of states and churches; but we call upon particular consciences, by occasion of this text, to call to mind God's occasional mercies to them; such mercies as a regenerate man will call mercies, though a natural man would call them accidents, or occurrences, or contingencies.

A man wakes at midnight full of unclean thoughts, and he hears a passing Bell; this is an occasional mercy, if he call that his own knell, and consider how unfit he was to be called out of the world then, how unready to receive that voice, "Fool, this night they shall fetch away thy soul." The adulterer, whose eye waits for the twilight, goes forth, and casts his eyes upon forbidden houses, and would enter, and sees a Lord have mercy upon us upon the door; this is an occasional mercy, if this bring him to know that they who lie sick of the plague within, pass through a furnace, but by God's grace, to heaven; and he without, carries his own furnace to hell, his lustful loins to everlasting perdition.

What an occasional mercy had Balaam when his ass catechised him! What an occasional mercy had one thief when the other catechized him so, Art not thou afraid, being under the same condemnation? What an occasional mercy had all they that saw that when the devil himself fought for the name of Jesus, and wounded the sons of Sceva for exorcising in the name of Jesus, with that indignation, with that increpation, Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye?

I've posted about some of my own occasional mercies before: this moment in Norway was one, this discovery another. One came on St Margaret's day last week. Francis Thompson saw the Kingdom of God in similar chance moments:

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;–
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
‘Tis ye, ‘tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;– and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry;– clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesareth, but Thames!


And so did G. K. Chesterton (who died on this day in 1936), in the words of King Alfred's vision of the Virgin Mary in the Ballad of the White Horse:

"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.

"And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart."

That Library

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another."


Something made me think of this - the last line, at least. It's from Donne's 'no man is an island' sermon. I think of it often when I'm in a library, especially the Bodleian, which owns a copy of every book published in the UK, and has done since 1610. According to trusty Google, they have more than 11 million books; they get 1000 new items every working day. Can you even begin to imagine how many books that is? I can't. And if I choose to, I can go and read any one of them, but I could never read - never even begin to hope to read - even a tiny fraction of what there is. I like books, and find them fascinating, and so it's a bit depressing to think about all the books I'll never read; but I find people even more fascinating, and so it's even more depressing to think about all the people I will never understand.

This sermon just gives me a little hope that 'never' only means 'not in this world'.

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight

Today is St Lucy's Day, and after a misty morning the sun is now shining brightly - it doesn't look like deepest winter here at all. Nonetheless, this day belongs to one dark poem for me, perhaps the saddest elegy in English and the most complex of all John Donne's riddling poems.


A Nocturnall Upon St. Lucies Day, Being The Shortest Day

’Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes,
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes,
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes;
The worlds whole sap is sunke:
The generall balme th’ hydroptique earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar’d with mee, who am their Epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have;
I, by loves limbecke, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two Chaosses, when we did show
Care to ought else; and often absences
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death — which word wrongs her —
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown;
Were I a man, that I were one,
I needs must know; I should preferre,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; All, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew.
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne
At this time to the Goat is runne
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall,
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this
Bothe the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

Always Autumn

"God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons: but God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; in paradise, the fruits were ripe, the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumne, his mercies are ever in their maturity."

John, I know you were speaking metaphorically, but if turns out to be always autumn in heaven I think I would be OK with that.

Involved in Mankind

I came home from the college bar last night, the last night of term, and found myself sitting up until 2 in the morning reading John Donne's sermons. That's a normal thing to do, right? Besides this Christmas sermon, which I like to read at all times and seasons, this famous Meditation means a lot to me right now:

XVII. MEDITATION.

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

Merry Christmas!

Perhaps it's a little late, but Christmas doesn't end on the 25th, you know. In the true medieval spirit of festival and octave, this is a Christmas post. And here's one of my favourite Christmas sermons:

John Donne's sermon at St Paul's for the evening of Christmas Day, 1624.

The air is not so full of motes, of atoms, as the Church is of mercies; and as we can suck in no part of air, but we take in those motes, those atoms; so here in the congregation we cannot suck in a word from the preacher, we cannot speak, we cannot sigh a prayer to God, but that whole breath and air is made of mercy. But we call not upon you from this text, to consider God's ordinary mercy, that which he exhibits to all in the ministry of his Church, nor his miraculous mercy, his extraordinary deliverances of states and churches; but we call upon particular consciences, by occasion of this text, to call to mind God's occasional mercies to them; such mercies as a regenerate man will call mercies, though a natural man would call them accidents, or occurrences, or contingencies.

A man wakes at midnight full of unclean thoughts, and he hears a passing Bell; this is an occasional mercy, if he call that his own knell, and consider how unfit he was to be called out of the world then, how unready to receive that voice, "Fool, this night they shall fetch away thy soul." The adulterer, whose eye waits for the twilight, goes forth, and casts his eyes upon forbidden houses, and would enter, and sees a Lord have mercy upon us upon the door; this is an occasional mercy, if this bring him to know that they who lie sick of the plague within, pass through a furnace, but by God's grace, to heaven; and he without, carries his own furnace to hell, his lustful loins to everlasting perdition. What an occasional mercy had Balaam, when his ass catechised him: What an occasional mercy had one thief, when the other catechised him so, "Art not thou afraid, being under the same condemnation?" What an occasional mercy had all they that saw that, when the Devil himself fought for the name of Jesus, and wounded the sons of Sceva for exorcising in the name of Jesus, with that indignation, with that increpation, "Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are ye?"

If I should declare what God hath done (done occasionally) for my soul, where he instructed me for fear of falling, where he raised me when I was fallen, perchance you would rather fix your thoughts upon my illnesses and wonder at that, than at God's goodness, and glorify him in that; rather wonder at my sins, than at his mercies, rather consider how ill a man I was, than how good a God he is. If I should inquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ my name in the book of life, I should sooner be afraid that it were not so, than find a reason why it should be so. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies. In paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianum, our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday, he never says you must again tomorrow, but today if you will hear his voice, today he will hear you.

If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now - now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.