Excellent essay (written in 1908 -- and the literacy is immediately apparent). Everyone should know Traherne. His Centuries may be a superb choice for spiritual reading during the Christmas-Epiphany season. *** To no man who ever lived were these mysteries more open than to Traherne, and no man was ever more constantly in communion with them. It has been said that most men have only enough religion to make them hate one another; and it is at least certain that in the past religion has more often been the cause of strife and division among mankind than of love and concord. But Traherne at least knew well and acted up to the knowledge that “love is the one supreme duty and good, that love is wisdom and purity and valour and peace, and that its infinite sorrow is infinitely better than the world’s richest joy.” The love of love filled him and possessed him, guided his every action, and ruled all his thoughts. He lived habitually on the highest levels of spiritual life, without any of those ignoble descents to the depths of sensualism which, in men compounded, as most of us are, more of sense than spirit, too often follow hard upon our moods of exaltation... The “Centuries of Meditations” represents (in comparison at least) the spirit of free religious thought. In the “Imitation” we behold the doubts, fears, and perplexities of a soul oppressed by the consciousness of real or imaginary sins: in the “Centuries” the rapturous aspirings of a joyful and happy soul, conscious of its kinship with God Himself, and sure of its own divinity and of its glorious destiny. The author of the “Imitation” wanted to save his own soul; Traherne wanted to save the world. However much assured he might have been of his own salvation, the latter writer would never have been content merely with that. He desired with an exceeding great desire to make all men as happy as himself. All were immortal creatures, and it was within the power of all to make their peace with God, and enter into their great inheritance. This is the continual burden of his verse, and the message which informs his prose with its fire of conviction, and its unmatched persuasiveness. He would have rejected with scorn any faith whose benefits were to be confined to himself, or to a narrow circle of the elect. It was a matter of the deepest sorrow to him that men should be so indifferent to those things which to himself seemed to be the only objects worthy of thought. He could not even conceive that God Himself could be content or happy while men rebelled against His ordinances, or rejected His offered love... Traherne’s enthusiasm was the source of his power, and the motive-force of his spirit. It was not in his nature to balance between two opinions, or act upon motives of expediency. A positive faith, admitting of no doubts or misgivings, was a necessity of his existence. It was easier for him to understand how men could be absolute unbelievers, than how they could be mere indifferent conformists. I am almost tempted to assert that he was the truest Christian that ever lived, by which I mean that he was the one who believed most entirely in the faith, and ruled his conduct most strictly in accordance with its precepts. Of course this may be disputed by all those Christians who are not members of the Church of England; but all who look to the essentials of the faith, and disregard the minor differences of its various sects, will, I am sure, allow that a more perfect Christian than Traherne could not be. Nor has the Church, I firmly believe, ever had an advocate whose life and whose works could plead more eloquently in its favour than the life and the works of the author of “Centuries of Meditations.” - See more at: idler.co.uk/article/introduction-to-thomas-trahernes-centuries-of-meditation/#sthash.bWFRa4nI.dpuf
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 13:01:17 +0000
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