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Tag Archives: Meditation 30

Edward Taylor,The Daintiest Draft.4

10 Sunday Jan 2021

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Edward Taylor, Meditation 30, new creature, poem, Poetry, The Daintiest Draft

Here is another level of the mystery and paradox of the Christ. His death upon the Cross was meant to maximize the shame he would experience: the death was degrading. It was made as public as possible, not merely to terrorize the populace (you will be next!) but to degrade the subject: you are utterly without power against the Roman government. 

And yet, upon his resurrection, those wounds which he still bears in his body, are his greatest ornament of power and praise. The rulers of the world did their worst and he overcame – not merely the men who attacked him but also the death itself. And in conquering death and bearing the penalty for sin he overcame the curse God had laid upon creation for the sin of Adam. 

There is another paradox here: not merely the paradox of power and glory in shame and weakness, but also the paradox of beauty. Isaiah 53:2 says of the coming messiah:

He had no form or beauty that we should look at him

And no beauty that we should desire him.

And yet, in his conquering, the Lord has become beautiful: the evil poured upon him turned to praise, honor and glory. As David prays in Psalm 27:4

One thing I have asked of the Lord

That I will seek after

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord 

All the days of my life

To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

And to inquire in his temple

And so Taylor, looking upon the broken Christ who wounds heal stops in the middle of mediation to praise the beauty of the Lord:

Oh! Lovely one! How doth thy loveliness

Beam through the crystal casement of the eyes (20)

Of saints and angels sparkling flakes of fresh

Heart ravishing beauty, filling up their joys?

And th’devils too; if envy’s pupils stood

Not peeping there these sparkling rays t’exclude?

This stanza is, for Taylor, rather straightforward. The beauty of Christ beams through the eye: The understanding being that rather than light reflecting the object gives off its radiance. This beauty is such that it is “heart ravishing” – it is also a beauty that creates joy in the one who sees the beauty. 

But there is something interesting here: Envy makes it impossible to see and enjoy this beauty. That is an interesting observation: rather than rejoicing in the beauty – which is a proper response to beauty – the devils look upon the sight of Christ with envy for his greatness and rather than rejoicing in the sight they experience envy. The envy in the one seeing the beauty blots out the sight of beauty.

Envy’s pupil peeps out (not the alliteration on the “p”) and excludes the sight of beauty. 

There is something here for us to understand about human nature too. 

Edward Taylor, The Daintiest Draft.2

23 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Edward Taylor, glory, Glory of God, image of God, Imago Dei, Meditation 30, poem, Poetry

The second stanza is perhaps the most difficult in the poem in that here the ambiguity of reference is focused. It looks upon the ruined imaged  and speaks of the heavenly sorrow at the tremendous loss:

What pity ‘s this? Oh! Sunshine art! What fall?

Thou that wast more glorious than glory’s wealth.

More golden far than gold! Lord, on whose wall

Thy scutcheons hung, the image of thyself!

It’s ruined, and must rue, though angels should

To hold it up heave while their heart strings hold.

What pity is this: What a thing is here to pity. 

Sunshine art must refer to the original, before it fell. Since Taylor was writing from a rural place in a Northern latitude during the “Little Ice Age,” a reference to sunshine would be especially potent.  

He is looking upon the ruined image which was “more glorious than glory’s wealth./More golden far than gold!” Rhythmically, note the inversion of the iamb to a trochee at the beginning of line 8:

THOU that was MORE GLORiou. 

The inversion of the “normal” order forces attention upon the “thou”. He focuses our attention upon the lost image. 

Jonathan Edwards who was a generation after Taylor, but whose father knew Taylor, writes of God’s glory in Christ (in the funeral sermon for David Brainerd) with similar imagery:

Their beatifical vision of God is in Christ; who is that brightness or effulgence of God’s glory, by which his glory shines forth in heaven, to the view of saints and angels there, as well as here on earth. This is the Sun of Righteousness, which is not only the light of this world, but is also the sun which enlightens the heavenly Jerusalem; by whose bright beams the glory of God shines forth there, to the enlightening and making happy of all the glorious inhabitants. “The Lamb is the light thereof; and so the Glory of God doth lighten it,” Rev. 21:23. No one sees God the Father immediately. He is the King eternal, immortal, invisible. Christ is the Image of that invisible God, by which he is seen by all elect creatures. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him and manifested him. No one has ever immediately seen the Father, but the Son; and no one else sees the Father in any other way, than by the Son’s revealing him.

Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards (New York: S. Converse, 1829), 459. 

The wall is the thus the human being created to display the image of God. God’s image was hung upon the walls. There are shields upon the walls which show the coat of arms of this royal family. But now it houses a treasonous family. 

The closing couplet (lines 11-12) are difficult in terms of their reference:

It’s ruined, and must rue, though angels should

To hold it up heave while their heart strings hold.

“It’s ruined” must refer to the house whose walls bear the image (or at least should do so). But what are we to make of “must rue.” Is that the house should rue it’s loss? Apparently so. But it could also be taken as a cohortative to the reader, you should rue this loss. Both are possible here. 

Angels are sent hold up house. This seems to be an oblique reference to Hebrews 1:14, where angels are explained to be ministering spirits sent out to care for those human beings who will inherit salvation on the basis of Christ’s work. 

We could also read this entire stanza as a reference to Christ in his passion, where he was struck down, killed and buried.  This removes much of the ambiguity of the stanza in-and-of itself. The reader sees this destruction and is called upon the rue the loss of such beauty, while the angels attend to the Savior. And it is angels who “long to look” into this salvation: a salvation which was granted to humanity but not to angels. 1 Peter 1:12.

As noted above, this ambiguity of reference makes theological sense because the image of God which is superlatively in Jesus Christ is by imitation the property of redeemed humanity. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes that as the redeemed behold glory of the Lord, the redeemed are transformed into the image which they behold:

2 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV) 

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 

Thus, that image is both Christ and also the property of renewed humanity. 

There is also reference to the First Adam, Adam of Genesis 2 who was created in the image of God and so quickly rebelled against his place of honor. 

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