"Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father's Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband's chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.
"You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself {331} floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
"Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it: and more rejoice in the palace of your glory, than if it had been made but to-day morning.
"Yet further, 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. . . . 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.'"[34]
But notwithstanding his exuberant and overflowing joy in creation, Traherne is conscious that the world has {332} its "dreggy parts," that it has been "muddied" by man's misuse of it, and that the havoc of sin is apparent. The light which shined in infancy becomes eclipsed as the customs and manners of life close down over it and cover it. Men's mouths are full of talk of fleeting, vulgar, and worthless things, and they speak no syllable of those celestial and stable treasures which form the only wealth of life. The emphasis in education is on the wrong things. So with much ado the innocent child is "corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world," which he must again unlearn and become a little child once more in the Kingdom of God.[35] The taint, however, is not in the native structure of the soul, it is not through a biological transmission, it is due to false training—it is from the parents' lives rather than their loins. Let parents, he says, who desire holy children learn to make them possessors of divine things betimes. It is "deadly barbarous and uncouth" to "put grubs and worms" into little children's minds, to teach them to say this house is mine, this bauble is a jewel, this gew-gaw is a fine thing, this rattle makes music, when they ought to be made instead to see the spiritual glory of the earth and sky, the beauty of life, the sweetness and nobility of Nature, and to live joyously, like birds, in union and communion with God. I am sure, he concludes, that barbarous people that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and the Angels, in the simplicity of their wealth, than do many among us who partake of what we nick-name civility and mode.[36] The entire work of redemption is, thus, to restore man to himself, to bring him once more to the Tree of Life, to enable him to discover the glory all about him, to reveal to him the real values of things, and to bring to birth within him an immortal love. The true healing of the soul is always through the birth of love. Before a soul loves, it lives only to itself; as soon as love is born it lives beyond itself and finds its life in the object of its love. It is Christ who first reveals the full measure of love, who makes us see the one adequate Object of love, and who {333} forges within our human spirits the invisible bonds of a love that binds us forever to Him who so loved us. Here in Him—"a Man loving all the world, a God dying for mankind"[37]—we see that we are infinitely beloved, that the foundations of an eternal Friendship are laid, that God is infinitely prone to love, and that true love spares nothing for the sake of what it loves—"O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering on a Cross for me!"[38] "That Cross is a tree set on fire with invisible flame which illuminateth all the world. The flame is love: the love in His bosom that died upon it."[39]
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]