History Book: The secretary of God’s praise

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, July 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Today, we spotlight one of Cambridge’s most celebrated voices from the 1600s: the “orator.”

Being “the orator” was a big deal in the 1600’s. This person crafted and delivered speeches at major events. Think royal visits, even the King of England!

REICHARD: But only on his deathbed did this particular orator reveal a quieter calling, one that’s brought comfort to the brokenhearted for more than 400 years.

Here’s WORLD’s Caleb Welde.

CALEB WELDE: George Herbert knows he’s on his deathbed. He asks a friend if he’ll look at his poems. Herbert says the poems are, “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul.”

Life hasn’t been easy. Hebert’s father died when he was three. His mom remarried when he was sixteen, but by then Herbert was leaving for Cambridge. He graduated with a Bachelors, then a Masters, then settled into life on campus as a Fellow. He was offered the orator position at twenty-seven.

Herbert was initially thrilled to be orator. He wrote it was “the finest place in the University.” a job that would “please a young man well.”

But five years into the position something changed.

ORRICK: I have uh, I have the quote here.

Jim Orrick is a pastor, professor, and author of, A Year with George Herbert. He’s reading Herbert’s later thoughts on those orator days.

ORRICK: I can now behold the court with an impartial eye and see plainly that it is made up of fraud, titles and flattery and many other such empty, imaginary and painted pleasures, pleasures that are so empty.

When Herbert entered Cambridge, he’d wanted to become an Anglican priest. He recommitted his efforts at thirty-one. When King James died, Herbert delegated the honor of giving his funeral oration to someone else.

Herbert’s recommitment marked the beginning of –in the words of one scholar– the blackest years of Herbert’s life.

ORRICK: I think all of his adult life he was sick.

1626 stands out. He endured a prolonged fever that would mysteriously come and go. His mother died the next year. They’d always been close.

ORRICK: There were times when he was given to very deep, dark despair.

Herbert also struggled financially during those years. He stayed with friends and relatives until 1629 when he married. The couple moved to a small village in the English countryside. Here, Herbert was finally ordained as a priest. Professor Orrick actually visited his church.

ORRICK: I don't see how that little building could have held more than 30 people if they were packed in there and here is one of the most talented men in the world who is devoted his efforts in to pastoring a tiny group of people in a little-known town.

Herbert pastored that church for three years. And then he died of tuberculosis at thirty-nine.

When Herbert was seventeen before the fame, fortune, and heartbreaks. He lamented “the vanity of those many love poems that are daily writ consecrated to Venus.” Herbert vowed, “my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God’s glory.” After Herbert death, his friend does publish his poems under the title, “The Temple.”

PIPER: It is no office, art or news, nor the exchange nor busy Hall, but, it is that which, while I use, I am with thee.

John Piper wrote about Herbert in his 2014 book, “Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully.”

PIPER: Writing poems for George Herbert was NOT the recording of an experience with God. It was the HAVING of an experience with God.

Hungry souls can sense real experience with the real God. In Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis says of all the authors he read during his pre-Christian days,

ORRICK: The most alarming of all was George Herbert.

Jim Orrick again, reading from Lewis’ memoir.

ORRICK: Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment.

But Herbert wasn’t just realistic– Lewis could also sense his joy.

Literary critic Samuel Coleridge was another drawn to the beauty of Holiness captured in Herbert’s poetry. He wrote a friend “I find more substantial comfort now in the Pious George Herbert’s “Temple” than in all the poetry since Milton.”

Coleridge spent most of his adult life addicted to opiates. Perhaps he related to Herbert’s poem titled Love, Three.

ORRICK: Let my shame go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. So he's still arguing with love! I don't deserve to be here, I've messed up the gifts that you've given to me, and love continues to insist you are a guest who's worthy to be here. And finally, love says you must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat.

Herbert likely had no idea some of the greatest orators would one day savor his work. Preachers like Charles Spurgeon, who wrote, “I love George Herbert from my very soul.” The marathon preacher would finally relax on Sunday afternoons to his wife reading Herbert.

MUSIC: Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life

Christians have also been singing Herbert’s verses for at least three centuries.

Herbert kept that vow he made at seventeen where he promised his “poor abilities” would ever and always be consecrated to God.

PIPER: Of the 167 poems in the Temple, not one is written about a human being, or in honor of a human being.

The subject of every poem in “The Temple” is God.

PIPER: Shall I write and not of thee? through whom my fingers bend to hold my quill? Shall they not do the right of all the creatures, both in sea and land, only to man. Thou hast made known thy ways and put the pen alone into his hand and made him Secretary of thy praise.

For WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde.

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