Introducing George Herbert

Having read twice through The Temple by George Herbert, for your own good, I would like you to meet my friend.

On the love of God (from “Evensong”):

My God, thou art all love.
Not one poor minute ‘scapes thy breast,
But brings a favor from above;
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

On confession (from “The Church Porch” 145-148):

By all means use sometimes to be alone.
Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.
Dare to look in they chest; for ‘tis thy own:
And tumble up and down what thou find’st there.

He calls prayer “the Church’s banquet,” “the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,” “church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood.” (from “Prayer”)

Imputed righteousness (from “Sunday”):

The brightness of that day [the Lord’s Day, Sunday]
We sullied by our foul offence:
Wherefore that robe we cast away,
Having a new at his expense,
Whose drops of blood paid the full price,
That was required to make us gay,
And fit for Paradise.

Faith is a gift from God (“The Holdfast”):

Then will I trust, said I, in him alone.
Nay, ev’n to trust in him, was also his:
We must confess, that nothing is our own.
Then I confess that he my succor is.

Herbert fights false doctrine like a Christian and a Reformer. “The Church Militant” is his 279-line conclusion to his collection of poems on the Church. In it he summarizes the history of the church, calls the pope the antichrist, and charges the Catholic church as an accessory to hell.

Thus Sin triumphs in Western Babylon;
Yet not as Sin, but as Religion.

In “Holy Communion,” he explicitly denies transubstantiation.

That Flesh is there, mine eyes deny:
And what should flesh but flesh descry,
The noblest sense of five?
If glorious bodies pass the sight,
Shall they be food and strength and might
Even there where they deceive?

His poems were published in 1633 just after he died at 40 years old. A few years later, Richard Baxter said of him, “Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth in God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and Heaven-work make up his book.”

Reading his poems will do you good and make you smile, perhaps pensively with a pleasing pain. His invention has made me more grateful for salvation, surprised me at beauties I had not seen, and inspired me to confess lurking sins. My pattern has been to read one each morning before the Bible.

The edition made by John Wall is the one I have, and the footnotes are very helpful for working through the old English.

Since you will not meet this Puritan in Pastor Beeke’s excellent Meet the Puritans, I invite you now to stop by Herbert’s porch and listen a while. If you love John Bunyan and Charles Spurgeon, you will find yourself not changed, but rather grown from a visit with Herbert, like Hobbits who drank from the Entwash.