Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use
them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger. When the logic
leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then
narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the
symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which
has withered into an apple of Sodom. Witness some of the writings of the
European master of the order--Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in
truth; the lowest are poverty-stricken indeed.
In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and
devoutest of men--and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between
contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared
right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter.
Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare--he pleased
neither Royalists nor Puritans. Dull of heart and sadly unlike a mother
was the Church when, by the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., she drove
from her bosom such a son, with his two thousand brethren of the clergy!
He has left us a good deal of verse--too much, perhaps, if we consider
the length of the poems and the value of condensation. There is in many
of them a delightful fervour of the simplest love to God, uttered with a
plain half poetic, half logical strength, from which sometimes the poetry
breaks out clear and fine.
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