Religious poetry

“ The source and inspiration of Christian song is the word of Christ. ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.’ The common phrases of common life cannot satisfy the soul filled with the Spirit and rich with the wealth of Christ’s indwelling word. Religious emotion finds truer and more fitting expression in poetry than in prose. If God had not given to His Church poets, as well as apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, the best that is in us could never have been uttered. ”

“ THOMAS KEN, D.D., A SKETCH.
There is a soothing as well as a saving influence in religion; and when godliness finds appropriate utterance in poetry, no matter how modest and simple those utterances may be, doctrines find their way to the heart so readily, and sympathy and affection are so easily awakened and secured, it is not wonderful that so many devout persons should have embodied their religious hopes and fears, their opinions and sentiments, as well as their experience, in sacred song. ”

“ Now nothing is more certain than that poetry, impassioned imagination, is essentially religious both in its nature and its expression. It springs from that raised mood of mind in which the object present to thought is worshiped. This is true even in poetry relating to the senses and to human passion, for if we scrutinize it sharply, we shall find that the object which fills the poet’s mind, however low in itself, is still deified for the moment, and made the exclusive object of his adoration. ”

“ In that poem we perceive, unmistakably, how even war verse may rise to the spiritual dignity of absolute poetry, and by its ideal substance and spiritual grandeur achieve the highest moral and religious function—the function, namely, of dignifying or glorifying the human spirit with Christlikeness in self-slaying love for the perfection and happiness of humanity. ”

“ Add to this purity and holiness of life in him who speaks, and let him be in earnest, and he will be eloquent. Eloquence in the mouth of a consecrated teacher has a sacramental power. It is one of the divinely established ordinances for the propagation of religious truth, and for the conversion of a soul to God.
Poetry, too, is consecrated to the service of religion. The muse never soars her loftiest flight except when lifted up on the wings of religious inspiration. The most poetic word in language is that brief, immense word—God. ”

“ And when we find the Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be one of the order of the High Priests of nature? ”

“ Whatever made a great Poet but the inspiration of delight and love in himself, and an empassioned desire to communicate them to the wide spirit of kindred existence? Poetry, like Religion, must be free from all grovelling feelings; and above all, from jealousy, envy, and uncharitableness. And the true Poet, like the Preacher of the true religion, will seek to win unto himself and his Faith, a belief whose foundation is in the depths of love, and whose pillars are the noblest passions of humanity. ”

“ We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken of that purity and that elevation—and that it may now be a far holier and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of Apollo and the Muses. ”

“ The spirit of poetry, which bade him follow on in spite of discouragement, touched all on which it hovered with a mystic light, "moving him to melody". It was the soul of religion, binding the spirit of man to nature and to "human faces" in themselves, and to the Supreme, in whom all is One. ”

“ You do not doubt that he is deserving of praise for the elegance of his song; whence it happens that there is a religious poem of his written on the Passion of Our Lord,—a poem of such brilliancy, such sweetness, such ornateness, that one could believe it to be the work of the divine, rather than of a human, mind. ”

“ A time may perhaps come, when all church and state religions may be buried and forgotten; but Poetry and Love, whose flower is true religion, whose fruit Virtue, must forever rule the human heart in their holy Tri-unity,—the adoration of God as the source of all existence, the admiration of nature as his high work, and love to men as our brethren. ”

“ The poet and the true Christian have alike a hidden life. Worship is the vital element of each. Poetry has in it that kind of utility which good men find in their Bible, rather than such convenience as bad men often profess to draw from it. ”

“ We seem to feel more profoundly than they—to see, as it were, into a new world. The things of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. ”

“ But the beauty which we seek to incorporate into our spiritual intercourse should not be the dead ceremonious beauty which comes of mere dependence on tradition. It should be the freely upspringing lyric beauty which is rooted in intense personal feeling; the living beauty of a living thing. Nor need we fear the reproach that here we confuse religion with poetry. Poetry ever goes like the royal banners before ascending life; therefore man may safely follow its leadership in his prayer, which is—or should be—life in its intensest form. ”

“ But this inspiration has been esteemed so unlike religion, that the existence of the one almost supposes the absence of the other. The spirit of God is thought to be a very different thing when poetry is written, from what it is when the heart is sanctified. ”

“ But, as we have said, the great poet must perceive in things natural, in the beauty of the universe around him, in the sacred feelings of human emotion, a sacredness as worthy and as earnest, though less concentrated in character, as that which exists in the more direct function of religious worship. To the great poet, however he works, all things are sacred. ”

“ So saint and poet and artist-craftsman join in that appropriation of Christianity which was putting life into whatever had come from the Latin Fathers, by pondering upon it, loving it, living it, imagining it, and making it into poetry and art. ”

“ The temper even of our fallen spirits may be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute before his Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feel ourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessness laid upon us—but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, and the heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song—in the inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms—poetry indeed—if there be poetry on this earth? ”

“ Cultivate the habit of binding the whole realm of feeling in music together, the hymns and the songs, to make religion mean beauty and devotion and to make the finer sentiments of life truly religious. ”

“ But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine. ”

“ The church has been the celestial crucible in which whatever of human art or invention had within it the essential attributes of higher and spiritual goodness has been purified and adapted to the service of religion. Has poetry sought to please the imaginations of men? the church of Christ unfolded before her the annals of Christianity, with her grand central sacrifice of infinite love, and all her demonstrations of heroic suffering and courageous faith; and poetry drew holier inspiration from the view, and incited men by higher motives to a higher life. ”

“ It is to bow to their immutable terms, to lay all passion and vexation of spirit prostrate at [81] their feet, and to approach their divine presence with a mind so calm and so void of littleness as to be ready to receive the dictates of fantasy and the revelations of truth. Thus the art becomes a divinity, man approaches her with religious feelings, his inspirations are God's divine gifts, and his aim fixed by the same hand from above which helps him to attain it. ”

“ Christ may come to us when our thoughts are cleaving to the ground, and ready to grow earthy of the earth—through noble poetry, noble music, noble art—through aught which awakens once more in us the instinct of the true, the beautiful, and the good. ”

“ In the prophets, the Psalms and the Book of Job, nature is regarded as a transparent medium, which is consumed in the search after the divine and rolled away like a mist.
There is another kind of poetry equally purifying in which nature itself is dwelt upon and its glories are made so impressive that the soul is conscious of an unseen presence pervading it. ”

“ So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent on creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will outlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry will be deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known among men. ”

“ For, whatever some sects may think of religion’s being a divine philosophy in the mind, the poet must exhibit man’s addresses to Heaven in ceremonies, and Heaven’s intervention by visible agency.”
So that the intermixture of religion, in every point of view, is not only agreeable, but necessary to the very genius of, at least, the highest class of poetry. Ancients and moderns 168 might therefore be led to the display of this sacred scenery, without affectation. ”

“ Leaving the sonnets, we come to a far more interesting portion of the works before us—the religious poems. As a Christian, our author is indeed admirable. He evinces not only a deep, strong, real, and realizing faith, but much fruitful thought over the mental details, so to speak, and a wonderful comprehension of the theory, theology, and mysteries of the church.
More properly than religious poems, we should speak of poems on religion; for the man's whole life is a religious poem. Scarcely a scrap is not full of his deep Catholicity. ”

“ Wherever divine service is only appreciated in so far as it is “well rendered,” as rich music or stately enunciation charm the ear, and the surroundings are æsthetic,—wherever the gospel is heard with enjoyment only of the eloquence or controversial skill of its rendering, wherever religion is reduced by the cultivated to a thrill or to a solace, or by the Salvationist to a riot or a romp, wherever Isaiah and the Psalms are only admired as poetry, and heaven is only thought of as a languid and sentimental solace amid wearying cares,—there again is a making of the sacred balms to smell thereto. ”

“ When mysticism plays in high poesy on the theme of the Divine Nearness, in the mood that “sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind,” it quickens religious emotion, but affords no genuine illumination in theology. ”

“ They belong to that rare class of poems which, once read, haunt the imagination with a perpetual charm. A more natural expression of true religious feeling than that contained in the closing stanzas, is nowhere to be met with. ”

“ Upon their spirits there hath come a breath;
Who reads their verse
Will rise to higher life, or taste of death
In blessing or in curse.
The Poet is great Nature's own high priest,
Ordained from very birth
To keep for hearts an everlasting feast —
To bless or curse the earth.
They cannot help but sing; they know not why
Their thoughts rush into song,
And float above the world, beneath the sky,
For right or for the wrong. ”

“ As a principle regulating our conduct, Religion is a habit, and like all other habits, of slow growth, and gaining strength only by repeated exertions. But it may likewise be considered as a taste, an affair of sentiment and feeling, and in this sense it is properly called Devotion. Its seat is in the imagination and the passions, and it has its source in that relish for the sublime, the vast, and the beautiful, by which we taste the charms of poetry and other compositions that address our finer feelings; rendered more lively and interesting by a sense of gratitude for personal benefits. ”

“ Here we have the genuine utterances of religious sensibility,—fresh, natural, and original, as they come from a mind of singular fertility and beauty, and a heart overflowing with love to God and love to man. ”

“ Even when you have only natural religion, you will still have supernatural poetry. And it will be poetic be, cause it is particular, not because it is general. The new priest may proclaim, "The sea is God, the land is God and the sky is God; but yet there are not three Gods, but one God." But even if the old priest be silenced, the old poet will always answer, "God is in a cave; God is in a stable; God is disguised and hidden. ”

“ But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its very essence—how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this spirit—how shall we limit it—measure it—and accustom it to the curb of critical control? ”

“ But, though poetry did not confer that higher state, poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breathe audibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetry may even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; because poetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itself out to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry there may be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language and strong in the spirit of that word—unexistent but for the Old and the New Testament. ”