Читать книгу Centuries of Meditations - Thomas Traherne - Страница 23

enjoyment of the blessed (for I cannot see that his words will bear any other construction) is, I must needs think, much to be lamented. It is true that the thought did not originate with Traherne, and that others before and since his time have entertained it ; but that one so enlightened as he should have held so inhuman a belief is surely a thing to be deeply regretted. So much I have felt bound to say, for I hold (as I think most men, whatever their religious opinions may be, now hold) that any belief which shocks our sense of humanity must necessarily be false. Better not believe in God at all than believe Him to be a cruel and unforgiving tyrant. But that was not, unhappily, the general opinion until long after Traherne's time ; and I suppose that even now there are some few zealots who believe in predestination and eternal punishment. That it is not now possible for any good man to think or write as Traherne thought and wrote in the passage I have quoted is at any rate a proof that humanity since his time has gone forward a long way upon the path of enlightenment.

Of our author as a literary artist much might be said ; and it was my first intention to dwell at considerable length upon this aspect of his work. This, however, I will not now attempt to do, except in the merest out- line. A good many critics, judging only from the specimen extracts from the " Centuries " and " Christian Ethicks," which I quoted in the Introduction to the poems, have expressed the opinion that Traherne was a greater master of prose than of verse : and it

xxv