Henry Osborn Taylor

“ I have read that God is love; not that He is honour, or dignity. God indeed demands to be feared as Lord, to be honoured as Father, and as Bridegroom to be loved. Which excels the rest? Love, surely. Without it, fear is penal, and honour graceless. Fear is slavish till manumitted by love; and the honour which does not rise from love is adulation. To God alone belong honour and glory; but He will accept neither unless it is flavoured with love's honey.
"Love asks neither cause nor fruit beyond itself. I love because I love; I love that I may love. A great thing is love. ”

“ The high lot is thine, thou crown of human blessing. Thou shalt be the Grail's lord; with thee thy wife Condwiramurs, and thy sons Lohengrin and Kardeiz, whom she bore to thee after thy going. Thy mouth shall question Anfortas—unto his joy. Now the planets favour thee; thy grief is spent. The Grail and the Grail's power shall let thee have no part in evil. When young, thou didst get thee sorrow, which betrayed thy joy as it came;—thou hast won thy soul's peace, and in sorrow thou hast endured unto thy life's joy. ”

“ Black-coloured the unsteadfast comrade; white the man whose thoughts keep troth. False comradeship is fit for hell fire. Likewise let women heed whither they carry their honour, and on whom they bestow their love, that they may not rue their troth. Before God, I counsel good women to observe right measure. Their fortress is shame: I cannot wish them better weal. The false one gains false reward; her praise vanishes. Wide is the fame of many a fair; but if her heart be counterfeit, 'tis a false gem set in gold. The woman true to womanhood, be hers the praise—not lessened by her outside hue. ”

“ His mind was filled with the figures of Romance; a knight would he be at least; why not a paladin, whom all the world should wonder at? So he dreamed, and so he acted out his whim as best he might on the little stage of Assisi; for Francis was a poet, and a poet even more in deed than in words. He was endowed with exquisite fancy, and he did its dictates never doubting. His life was to prove an almost unexampled inspiration to art, because it was itself a poem by reason of its unfailing realization of the conceptions of a fervent and beautiful imagination. ”

“ I drove Almighty God from His throne in heaven, and took His human life from Him, and then with honour gave Him back to His Father; how couldst thou, poor worm, save thyself from me!" [42]
What then will love's omnipotence exact from this poor Soul? Merely all. Drawn by yearning, the Soul comes flying, like an eagle toward the sun. "See, how she mounts to us, she who wounded me"—it is the Lord that is speaking. "She has thrown away the ashes of the world, overcome lust, and trodden the lion of pride beneath her feet—thou eager huntress of love, what bringest thou to me?" ”

“ Is any one troubled, let Jesus come into the heart and thence leap to the lips, and behold! at the rising of that bright name the clouds scatter and the air is again serene. If any one slips in crime, and then desponds amid the snares of death, will he not, invoking that name of life, regain the breath of life? In whom can hardness of heart, sloth, rancour, languishment stand before that name? In whom at its invocation will not the dried fount of tears burst forth more abundantly and sweetly? ”

“ But as nature is frail and weak, love is compelled by necessity first to serve itself. This is carnal love, whereby, above everything, man loves himself for his own sake. It is not set forth by precept, but is rooted in nature; for who hates his own flesh? As love becomes more ready and profuse, it is not content with the channel of necessity, but will pour forth and overspread the broad fields of pleasure. At once the overflow is bridled by the command, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' This is just and needful, lest what is part of nature should have no part in grace. ”

“ In solitude he lives the reaches of his life; from solitude he draws his utmost bliss. To leave it involves the torture of separation, and then all the petty pains of unhappy labour and distasteful intercourse with men. "Whoever would reach the summit of perfection should keep within the cloister of his seclusion, cherish spiritual leisure, and shudder at traversing the world, as if he were about to plunge into a sea of blood. For the world is so filthy with vices, that any holy mind is befouled even by thinking about it." [1]
Here speaks the hermit temper, by the mouth of a supreme exponent. ”

“ The pain of the Soul severed, not yet a bride, is deeper than the abyss, bitterer than the world; but her joy shall exceed that of seraphs, she, Bride of the Trinity. [45]
The Soul must surrender herself, and become sheer desire for God. [46] God's own yearning has begotten this desire. As glorious prince, as knight, as emperor, God comes; also in other forms:
"I come to my Beloved
As dew upon the flowers." [47]
For each other are these lovers wounded, for each other these lovers bleed, and each to the other is joy unspeakable and unforgettable. ”

“ Is it not enough that you brought miserable me into the misery of this hateful world? that you, sinners, in your sin produced a sinner? and that him born in sin, in sin you nourished? Envying the mercy which I have obtained from Him who desireth not the death of a sinner, would you make me a child of hell?
"O harsh father! savage mother! parents cruel and impious—parents! rather destroyers, whose grief is the safety of the child, whose consolation is the death of their son! ”

“ No mightier prince of the Church, no stronger, juster ruler could be found. Said Pope Honorius after Engelbert's death: "All men in Germany feared me from fear of him." From the lay and German side is heard the hearty voice of Walther von der Vogelweide, no friend of priests! "Worthy Bishop of Cologne, happy should you be! You have well served the realm, and served it so that your praise rises and waves on high. Master of princes! if your might weighs hard on evil cowards, deem that as nothing! ”

“ Truly that takes place when the itching palate is suppressed, when the pert tongue is held in silence, the ear is shut off from distractions and the eye from unpermitted sights; when the hand is held from cruel striking, and the foot from vainly roving; when the heart is withstood, that it may not envy another's felicity, nor through avarice covet what is not its own, nor through anger sever itself from fraternal love, nor vaunt itself arrogantly above its fellows, nor yield to the ticklings of lust, nor immoderately sink itself in grief or abandon itself wantonly to joy. ”

“ Is it possible that the Middle Ages should speak to us, as through a common humanity? Their mask is by no means dumb: in full voice speaks the noble beauty of Chartres Cathedral. Such mediaeval product, we hope, is of the universal human, and therefore of us as well as of the bygone craftsmen. Why it moves us, we are not certain, being ignorant, perhaps, of the building's formative and earnestly intended meaning. ”

“ Elsewhere Damiani suggests how the hermit may acquire the "grace of tears":
"Seclude thyself from the turmoil of secular affairs and often even from talk with thy brethren. Cut off the cares and anxieties of mundane action; clear them away as a heap of rubbish which stops the fountain's flow. As water in a cavern of the earth wells up from the abyss, so sadness (tristitia) wells in a human heart from contemplation of the profundity of God's Judgment, and yet will not flow forth in tears if checked by the clods of earthly hindrance. Sadness is the material of tears. ”

“ From all directions men began to pour in, for penance and to bequeath in pity their goods to the poor, while others utterly forsook the world and with fervent spirit hastened to the holy way of life. For this most blessed man was as one of the Seraphim, himself burning with the flame of divine love, and kindling others, wherever he went, with the fires of his holy preaching. Often, while speaking, a vast contrition brought him to such floods of tears that, breaking off his sermon, he would flee anywhere for refuge, like one demented. ”

“ To do right, to imitate Christ and obey and love Him, is a privilege. Can it be other than a joy? Indeed, this following of Christ is so blessed, that not to rejoice continually in it, betokens some failure in obedience and love. Many have approved this Christian logic; but to realize it in one's heart and manifest it in one's life, was the more singular grace of Francis of Assisi. His heart sang always unto the Lord; his love flowed out in gladness to his fellows; his enchanted spirit rejoiced in every creature. The gospel of this new evangelist awoke the hearts of men to love and joy. ”

“ Thou dost carry thyself in this world as if thou hadst come hither to gaze and wonder at the forms of bodies.
"May God be gracious to thee, that the feet of thy mind may find no resting-place, so that somehow, O soul, thou mayest return to the Ark, like Noah's dove.
"Prosperity is a snare, adversity the knife that cuts it; prosperity imprisons us from the love of God; adversity breaks the dungeon in pieces. ”

“ If pursued with chaste and sober mind, it floods our thoughts with immense love. How admirable to mount the heavens in spirit, and with inquiring reason consider that whole celestial fabric, and from every side gather in the mind's reflective heights what those vast recesses veil. ”

“ As thyself—how does the monk love himself? why, unto Christ and his own salvation. He does not love his sinful pleasures, nor those matters of earth which might not be sins, had he not realized how they conflicted with his scheme of life. His love for a fellow could not recognize those pleasures which he himself had cast away. He must love his fellow, like himself, unto the saving, not the undoing, of him—be his true lover, not his enemy. This vital principle of Christian love had to recast pagan passion and direct the affections to an immortal goal. ”

“ Gawain bethinks him it is love that binds the knight. Seeing that Parzival is gazing on three drops of blood, he gently covers them with a silken cloth. Parzival's wits return; he moans: "Alas, lady wife of mine, what comes between us? A cloud has hidden thee." Then, astonished, he sees Gawain—a knight without lance or shield—does he come to mock? With noble courtesy Gawain disclosed himself and led the way to Arthur's Court, where fair ladies and the king greeted the hero whom they had come to seek. A festival was ordained in his honour. ”

“ Weeping eyes terrify the devil; he fears the onslaught of tears bursting forth, as one would flee a tempest of hail driven by the fury of all the winds. As the torrent's rush cleanses the river-bed, the flowing tears purge the weeper's mind from the devil's tares and every pest of sin. ”

“ For the dew of tears cleanses the soul from every stain and makes fruitful the meadows of our hearts so that they bring forth the sprouts of virtue. For often as under an icy frost the wretched soul sheds its foliage, and, grace departing, it is left to itself barren and stripped of its shortlived blossoms. But anon tears given by the Tester of hearts burst forth, and this same soul is loosed from the cold of its slothful torpor, and becomes green again with the renewed leafage of its virtues, as a tree in spring kindled by the south wind. ”

“ Indeed all the horrors of ceaseless interminable war are everywhere, and no more dreadful horror through the whole story than the bloody sack of Limoges commanded by that perfect knight, the Black Prince, himself stricken with disease, and carried in a litter through the breach of the walls into the town, and there reposing, assuaging his cruel soul, while his men run hither and thither "slaying men, women and children according to their orders." ”

“ This speculative knowledge shines in the brightness of the light of day, that through it men may see and consider their acts. This brightness is of the human mind carefully looking about itself; and this glorious knowledge appears as a white mist permeating the minds of the peoples, as quickly as mist is scattered through the air; it is light as the light of day, after the brightness of that most glorious work which God benignly works in men, to wit, that they shun evil and do the good which shines in them as the light of day.... ”

“ He will be moved to come to meet her. Now her guardians (the Senses) bid her attire herself. "Love, whither shall I hence?" she cries. The Senses make answer: "We hear the murmur; the Prince will come to meet you in the dew and the sweet-bird song. Courage, Lady, He will not tarry."
The Soul clothes herself in a garment of humility, and over it draws the white robe of chastity, and goes into the wood. ”