Centuries of Meditations

I.52-55. Friendship with God comes next. If God’s will is the soul’s own, all His treasures are hers, and the soul that wills as He does becomes the universal heir. Such a soul is never desolate, for all ages, saints, councils and temples are present to it, and it can visit Noah in the ark or Solomon in his glory by journeys of thought. The movement ends by placing the Cross above all these sights, as the throne of delights and the tree of life, and it adds the soul’s presence in all times, which the Cross will make concrete.

I.56-61. The Cross now takes the centre. It draws all men as the earth’s centre draws heavy things, and a litany gives it title after title, abyss of wonders, school of virtues, gate of heaven. It is the one mirror in which things show their true colours, Jacob’s ladder, and a tree burning with invisible flame. The movement ends on the crucified as tutor to King Charles the Martyr and master of St Paul, the school where the soul learns to love all men as Christ did, and it adds a theology of the Cross as a place of vision.

I.62-69. Exposition turns to prayer. The speaker addresses Christ crucified as his friend and joy, applies the five senses to Golgotha, and then looks back through the wounds to the creation made for him before he was redeemed. Heaven and earth, the body with eyes like diamonds, the Image of God and all other souls are received as gifts. The movement ends in praise of a God infinitely infinite in all His doings, and it adds the first-person voice of devotion, which governs most of the rest of the Century.

I.70-74. Love is given its laws. God commands all men to love each one, and each to love all whom He loves, so that no soul can be loved in isolation. Love lives in its objects and is multiplied by them. The movement ends in a small hymn to a kingdom where every one is happy in every other and all are like gods, since the same good is increased by being enjoyed. It adds the arithmetic of felicity, which answers any charge that the book’s happiness is selfish.

I.75-79. The Fall and redemption are told in prayer. The speaker prays in the person of Adam, who offended in an apple against the giver of the whole world, and confesses that he would never have known the dignity of his nature if Christ had not taken it on. The world is sprinkled with the Saviour’s blood and so restored to him. The movement ends with a prayer to spend blood, estate, life and time for the good of all, knit together in godly love, and it adds penitence to praise.

I.80-85. I.80, which Traherne later struck through, speaks to the friend directly, asks whether two souls united by Christ’s blood cannot love each other at a distance of a hundred miles, and counsels her to make the place she lives in fragrant with virtue. It is a letter within the book. The meditations that follow commend the poor as Christ’s members, the hidden saints like jewels in ruins, and friends who exchange souls. The movement ends by rebuking those who busy themselves only with things at home, when by seeing the saints of all ages they might live in their company, and it adds the communion of saints across all ages.

I.86-90. The prayers return to the Cross. Kneeling before the crucified, the speaker learns that Christ loves each soul wholly, as if it were alone, and asks to gaze on Him until he is changed into Him. The prayers follow the signs of the Passion, the darkened sun, the rent veil and the opened graves, and find God most divine when He appeared as a man. The movement ends with Christ as the true Samson, who by dying killed all his enemies and carried away the gates of death, and it adds the most intense devotional writing in the book.

I.91-94. The prayers grow more urgent. They seek a will made one with God’s, a love as strong as death and a fire that never goes out on the altar of the heart. The speaker would rather suffer hell with St Anselm, the medieval archbishop of Canterbury, than sin, and he learns that the Cross is equally near across all the ages, and the soul is an endless temple. The movement ends with St Paul’s prayer from Ephesians, to know the breadth and length and depth and height of Christ’s love, and it adds the union of wills that the whole Century has been seeking.

I.95-100. The Spirit is the last theme. The prayers turn to Pentecost, the new commandment and the communion of saints, and ask for a love that leaves the soul never alone. The Century then closes in exposition. God made us His sons in capacity, and the Spirit makes us sons in act when we prize all things as He does, and things are truly present only in a soul that sees them. The movement ends with the song of Moses and the Lamb, and it adds the distinction of capacity and act that governs the rest of the book.

The Second Century

II.1-6. The Second Century begins with the world’s services. The world is the first gift God gives every infant and the gate of eternity. Only one who sees it as his own can weigh sin, the Fall and the Redeemer, since a man who does not know to what he is redeemed cannot prize redemption. The movement ends by arguing that a God who gave heaven and earth can easily be believed to have given His Son as well, and it adds the claim that a right view of creation is the ground of faith.