having, I verily believe, some revelation of the beautiful vision, he said, "I were miserable if I might not die"; and, after these words, closed many periods of his faint breath by saying often, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done!" His speech left him not till the last minute of his life; and then, being speechless, and seeing heaven, he did look steadfastly into it, and saw "the Son of man standing on the right hand of God" the Father; and, being satisfied with this blessed sight, as his last breath departed from him, and his soul ascended, he closed his own eyes, and disposed his hands and body into such a posture as required not the least alteration by those who came to shroud him.' So entered a learned, zealous, and able Minister of the New Testament into his rest. As another proof of his calm confidence in God, we quote a sentence from his will, written rather more than a year before he died: 'I give my gracious God an entire sacrifice of body and soul, with my most humble thanks for that assurance which His blessed Spirit now imprints in me of the salvation of the one, and the resurrection of the other.' It is as a poet that Dr. Donne is best known to us. We have said that his hymns and sonnets are rugged, and full of incongruous imagery and extravagant fancies; but many of them are both sweet and forcible, and a vein of deep spirituality runs through them all. As a specimen of his muse we give ‘A Hymn to God the Father,' written in sickness : 'Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin, though it were done before? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done; For I have more. 'Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two, but wallowed in a score? When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done; For I have more. 'I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore; #Run,' for ran. But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son Shall shine, as He shines now and heretofore; And, having done that, Thou hast done: I fear no more.' As a specimen of Donne's preaching, we give a passage on death: As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not, look upon, would trouble thine eyes, if the wind blew it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of a churchyard into the church, and a man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, "This is the patrician and this is the noble flour, this is the yeomanry and this the plebeian bran "?' Coleridge pronounces this very beautiful indeed.' Willmott says, Donne brought every aid of eloquence and oratory to the service of truth; and we are assured, by one who often heard him, that the congregation might take notes from his look and hand. In this respect he differed from Hooker, whom the multitude deserted for Travers. Walton exhibits him in the pulpit of the Temple church, his eyes turned steadfastly in one direction, and appearing to study as he spoke. The eminent preachers of that day did not read their sermons.' Donne's views on justification are given by himself in the following words: As the efficient justification, the gracious purpose of God, had done us no good without the material satisfaction, the death of Christ had followed; and as that material satisfaction, the death of Christ, would do me no good without the instrumental justification, the apprehension by faith, so neither would this profit without the declaratory justification, by which all is pleaded and established. God enters not into our material justification, that is only Christ's; Christ enters not into our instrumental justification, that is only faith's; faith enters not into our declaratory justification (for faith is secret), and the declaration belongs to works. Neither of these can be said to justify us alone; so as we may take the chain in pieces, and think to be justified by any one link thereof; by God without Christ, by Christ without faith, by faith without works.' |