Where, in Easter Day, the description of the Divine Presence is given (xix, l. 640, et seq.), it is suggested with an awe and vagueness which certainly narrow the conception to no material presentation.
In addition to this vividness of contrast between the first three and the following Sections, the realistic force with which the poem opens has a yet further result. The uncompromising character of the realism opens the way for a more readily accorded credence in the subsequent events of the night. He who describes the vision has likewise seen the congregation in Zion Chapel. When he “flung out” of the meeting-house, his mood was certainly not indicative of imaginative idealism or mystic contemplation. He is in a frame of mind little likely to prove unduly susceptible to supernatural influences. A realization of this mental attitude is essential to a fair estimate of the line of argument throughout the poem.
I. Sections I, II, and III are thus occupied with the description of the Chapel and the congregation gathered within its walls, of the preacher and the spiritual food whereby he proposes to sustain the members of his flock. And notice: the speaker has entered perforce, driven within the sacred precincts by the violence of the elements. He is an outsider, and, as such, prepared to assume the attitude of critic rather than of sympathizer. And the severity of the criticism is intensified by physical and intellectual repulsion at the scene before him. Hence he recognizes all that is peculiarly objectionable in the special aspect of non-conformity presented within the Chapel. He perceives at once (1) “the trick of exclusiveness,” and the consequent self-satisfaction induced; and (2) the “fine irreverence” of the preacher in presenting the “treasure hid in the Holy Bible” as “a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, not improved by [his] private dog’s-ears and creases.” He perceives “the trick of exclusiveness” which causes the congregation to hold itself to be
The men, and [that] wisdom shall die with [them],
And none of the old Seven Churches vie with [them].
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And, taking God’s word under wise protection,
Correct its tendency to diffusiveness. (ll. 107-112.)
Later, when freed from the physical irritation attendant on proximity to this special collection of representatives of humanity, his prejudices are sufficiently modified to allow of the perception that some explanation of this exclusiveness is possible.
These people have really felt, no doubt,
A something, the motion they style the Call of them;
And this is their method of bringing about
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The mood itself, which strengthens by using. (ll. 238-245.)
The speaker is quite willing (when at a distance from the Chapel) to admit this right of attempting a reproduction of that mood in which the original conversion may have been effected. Nevertheless, he will not admit the right of the flock to shut the gate of the fold in the face of any outsider seeking entrance. Still
Mine’s the same right with your poorest and sickliest
Supposing I don the marriage vestiment. (ll. 119-120.)
In Johannes Agricola in Meditation this personal satisfaction of the Calvinist is presented in a still more extreme form.
Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled
The heavens, God thought on me his child;
Ordained a life for me, arrayed
Its circumstances every one
To the minutest.