II
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
But there is no salvation for us in the Cross until it kindles the same flame of love in us, until that immeasurable love of His becomes an irresistible power in us, so that we henceforth live unto Him that loved us. It must, if it is to be efficacious, shift all our values and set us to loving as He loved—"He who would not in the same cases do the same things Jesus Christ hath done can never be saved," for love is never timorous.[40] The love of Christ is to dwell within us and every man is to be the object of it. God and we are to become one spirit, that is, one in will and one in desire. Christ must live within us. We must be filled with the Holy Ghost, which is the God of Love; we must be of the same mind with Christ Jesus and led by His Spirit, and we must henceforth treat every man in respect to the greatness of Christ's love—this is salvation in Traherne's conception of it, and holiness and happiness are the same thing.[41] The Cross has not done its complete work for us until we can say: "O Christ, I see thy crown of thorns in every eye; thy bleeding, naked, wounded body in every soul; thy death liveth in every memory; thy crucified person is embalmed in every affection; thy pierced feet are bathed in every one's tears and it is my privilege to enter with thee into every soul."[42]
However contemplative and mystical the bent of Traherne's mind may have been, he always finds the {334} terminus of spiritual life in action, indeed, in brotherly service, in what he calls "blessed operations." Speaking apparently of himself, he finely says: "He thought it a vain thing to see glorious principles buried in books, unless he did remove them into his understanding; and a vain thing to remove them into his understanding unless he did revive them and raise them up with continual exercise. Let this therefore be the first principle of your soul—that to have no principles or to live beside them is equally miserable. Philosophers are not those that speak but do great things."[43] "It is," he writes in words which sound like those of his contemporary Winstanley, "it is an indelible principle of Eternal truth, that practice and exercise is the Life of all. Should God give you worlds and laws and treasures, and worlds upon worlds, and Himself also in the Divinest manner, if you will be lazy you lose all. The soul is made for action and cannot rest till it be employed. . . . If therefore you would be happy, your life must be as full of operation as God of treasure."[44]
Love, once kindled in the soul, is the mother of all heroic actions; love knows how to abound and overflow—the man who has lighted his life from Christ's love is constant in trials, patient in sufferings, courageous in assaults, prudent in difficulties, victorious and triumphant in action.[45]
Traherne shares with Boehme and with the Cambridge Platonists the view that Eternity is as much here as anywhere. Those Christians, he thinks, who put off felicity and defer their enjoyment with long delays "are to be much suspected."[46] "'Tis not," so he states his law, "change of place, but glorious principles well practised that establish Heaven in the life and soul. An angel will be happy anywhere and a devil miserable, because the principles of the one are always good, of the other, bad. From the centre to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills all is Heaven before God, and full of {335} treasure; and he that walks like God in the midst of them is blessed."[47] "You are in Heaven everywhere."[48] The real business of life, as he elsewhere declares, is to "piece this life with the life of Heaven, to see it as one with all Eternity, a part of it, a life within it,"[49] which reminds us of Vaughan's great words:
I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, As calm as it was bright: And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres, Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world And all her train were hurl'd.[50]
And with much penetration Traherne tells us that Eternity is not an endless addition of "times "—a weak infinite series of durations, but rather a Reality in which all true realities abide, and which retains in a present now all beginnings and all endings.[51] Eternity is just the real world for which we were made and which we enter through the door of love.
It is a spiritual world within, A living world and nearer far of kin To God than that which first He made. While that doth fade This therefore ever shall endure Within the soul as more divine and pure.[52]
[1] See my Studies in Mystical Religion, chap. xix.
[2] Book III. lines 51-55.
[3] Book III. lines 194-197.
[4] Book I. line 18. Since this chapter was written, Alden Sampson's Studies in Milton (New York, 1913) has been published. His valuable chapter on "Milton's Confession of Faith" reveals in Milton a very wide acquaintance with the ideas which I have been tracing, and shows by a vast number of quotations how frequently the poet used these ideas sympathetically.
[5] Francis Quarles' "My Beloved is Mine."
[6] George Herbert's poem "Man."
[7] Francis Quarles' "Light."
[8] Centuries of Meditations (London, 1908), iii. 16. For details of his life and for the story of the discovery of his writings, see the Introduction to The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne (1903) by Bertram Dobell.
[9] Traherne's pom "Wonder," iii.
[10] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 1, 2 and 3.
[11] "Wonder," i.
[12] "The Salutation"
[13] Vaughan's "The Retreat."
[14] Traherne's "The Approach."
[15] Ibid.
[16] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 8.
[17] Ibid.
[18] "Dumbness."
[19] "The Preparative."
[20] Centuries of Meditations, iii. 46.
[21] Ibid. ii. 81. See also ii. 70 and 83.
[22] Centuries of Meditations, ii. 92.
[23] Ibid. iv. 70.
[24] Ibid. i. 19, and iv. 81.
[25] Ibid. ii. 23.
[26] "My Spirit."
[27] "Fullness."
[28] "The Choice."
[29] Centuries of Meditations, ii. 17.
[30] Ibid. ii. 1 and 17.
[31] Ibid. ii. 6.
[32] Ibid. i. 26.
[33] Ibid. i. 25 and 27.