Although there is no concrete proof that Herbert named his work The Temple, the title is apt for the unity of the work, especially in the typology of sacrifice. The Old Testament temple was used for sacrifices, each with different spiritual meanings. On the Day of Atonement, in the Jewish calendar, the high priest sacrificed a lamb on the temple altar for the sins of the people, but he had to do this every year; this sacrifice could not cleanse the Jewish people's sinful hearts. This propitiatory sacrifice was a "type" that foreshadowed the perfect sacrifice of Christ, the "antitype," on the cross, a sacrifice that redeems the sins of humanity and never has to be repeated. The New Testament meanings of "temple" are rich and varied, but all are intimately entwined with the typology of sacrifice. In the gospels, Christ repeatedly calls Himself (His body) the "temple," which He offers as a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. Believers who accept Christ's redemptive sacrifice for sin, through confession, must symbolically offer their bodies, or "temple[s] of the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor. 6:19, KJV), as "living sacrifice[s]" (Romans 12:1, KJV). This is their sacrifice of dedication in which they symbolically imitate Christ. These believers are also called the body of Christ, or the church: it is a living "temple," with Christ as the chief cornerstone. The Eucharist is celebrated in this new "temple," where believers offer a eucharistic sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise for Christ's redeeming sacrifice. Therefore, the metaphor of the "temple" and the typology of "sacrifice" are entwined in the symbol of the Eucharist, the theme of Herbert's The Temple.
It is in "The Altar" that these three kinds of sacrifice (dedicatory, eucharistic, propitiatory), perfectly entwined in the Eucharist, first appear. This poem appropriately commences "The Church," for, as Ann Pasternak Slater, the most recent editor of Herbert's English works, notes, "the altar" is the first thing one sees as he or she enters "the church" (xiv). Herbert's emphasis in "The Altar" is on the speaker's dedicatory sacrifice, which, as earlier explained, is both the symbolic sacrifice of self, when a person believes in Christ for salvation, and the sacrifice of life to God. As his sacrifice of dedication, the speaker offers his heart on an altar: "A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,/Made of a heart, and cemented with tears" (ll. 1-2). As Barbara Lewalski notes in her full-length study of Renaissance Protestant poetry, the heart as a synecdoche of the body was "a primary trope" in devotional poetry of this period (101). In his poem "Reasonable Sacrifice" (Lucus), Herbert himself states, "Through Christ's compacts . . . man becomes the living altar of God" (qtd. in Malcolmson, George Herbert, 61). The speaker must offer his heart, (his body), on the altar in order to symbolically dedicate his life to God, just as Paul commands believers to "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God" (Romans 12:1, KJV).
What makes such a sacrifice "acceptable" is the speaker's complete offering of himself on "a
broken ALTAR . . . cemented with
tears" (ll. 1-2). It is "acceptable" to God, therefore, only because the speaker is contrite, just as David the psalmist states, "The sacrifices of God are . . . a broken and a contrite heart" (Psalm 51:17, KJV). As Barbara Lewalski explains, in this poem the speaker displays "the need for his Old Testament stony altar-heart to be hewn by God's power and wholly transformed into its New Testament antitype, a heart of flesh" (312). In allowing his "hard heart" (l. 10) to be transformed by God, the speaker becomes a "neotype," for he acknowledges that his sacrifice is imperfect: his altar is "broken" (l. 1). However, it is Christ who has "cemented" (l. 2) and "frame[d]" (ll. 3, 11) it into a complete, and therefore perfect, altar, "whose parts are as
thy hand did frame" (l. 3). The speaker here offers in return only what has been given him by Christ. In "rear[ing]" his "broken ALTAR" (l. 1), the speaker's sacrifice becomes an imperfect, and therefore acceptable, imitation of Christ, the perfect pattern the speaker is commanded to follow.
Just as the speaker's offering of himself on "the altar" becomes a sacrifice of dedication, so also "rear[ing]" (l. 1) such an altar becomes a eucharistic sacrifice. As earlier explained, eucharistic sacrifices offer praise and thanksgiving to God. As such, it is the speaker's "hard heart" (l. 10) that "meets in this frame/To praise thy name" (ll. 11-12). The speaker cannot adequately praise God until he has symbolically sacrificed himself on "this frame" (l. 11), the altar. It is his imperfect sacrifice, his imitation of Christ, that prompts the speaker to praise God; it is also such a sacrifice of himself that makes the speaker's eucharistic sacrifice acceptable to God. This is why the speaker proclaims, "[I]f I chance to hold my peace,/These stones to praise thee may not cease" (ll. 13-14). It is the "stones" (l. 14) of the speaker's "hard heart" (l. 10), transformed into an altar, that can adequately and unceasingly "praise" (l. 14) God.
The speaker's dedicatory and eucharistic sacrifices, on his "broken ALTAR" (l. 1), are made complete and acceptable, however, only because of Christ's perfect, redeeming sacrifice of propitiation. The speaker desires to "let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine" (l. 15), an explicit reference to Christ's Passion, which is revealed in "The Sacrifice," the poem soon to follow. In desiring to imitate and claim Christ's perfect sacrifice for himself, the speaker equates himself with Christ. What appears to be a "idolatrous" desire on the speaker's part (Malcolmson, George Herbert, 61), and argued as such by some critics, is, however, a just and reasonable desire. I agree with Terry Sherwood that "the request to embody Christ's sacrifice in praise is itself implicitly a sacrifice of praise" (16-17), but I would go further, for the speaker's desire to imitate Christ embodies both dedicatory and eucharistic kinds of sacrifices, not just the latter.
The final line of the poem holds the key to the enigma: "And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine" (ll. 16). It is Christ's sacrifice alone that renders the speaker's dedicatory and eucharistic sacrifices acceptable to God. It is, therefore, Christ's sacrifice alone that can "sanctify" (l. 16) the speaker's "broken ALTAR" (l. 1). Victorian theologian William Smith says, "The sacrifice of Christ is set forth to us as the completion of that perfect obedience to [God's] will . . . which is the natural duty of sinless man" (579, italics mine). This "representative rather than vicarious" atonement represents the speaker's sacrifice of himself to God (579). The speaker is duty-bound to obey God by offering himself on the altar. However, it is only by Christ's redeeming sacrifice of Himself that the speaker's imperfect sacrifice of himself is rendered both possible and acceptable. As Thomas Stroup states, "As through His death and passion Christ offered His sacrifice for man, so Christian man . . . offers a life of sacrifice to Christ" (157). It is only by his imitation of Christ's sacrifice (l. 15) that Christ can "sanctify this," the speaker's, "ALTAR" (l. 16), which is by extension himself. Sanctification is the means by which the speaker becomes like and imitates Christ.
"[T]hy blessed SACRIFICE" (l. 15) acts as a unifying connector between "The Altar" and "The Sacrifice," and prepares us for a presentation of Christ's perfect, redeeming, never-to-be-repeated sacrifice of Himself. "The Sacrifice," therefore, is a reenactment of Christ's Passion, with Christ, the antitype, as the speaker. Numerology in this poem illuminates the uniqueness of Christ's propitiatory sacrifice. As Sibyl Lutz Severance explains, "The Sacrifice" is the second poem in "The Church," just as Christ is the second person of the Trinity, which emphasizes His divinity, since He is the only perfect sacrifice for humanity's sins (236). The poem's four-line stanzaic structure consists of three lines of ten syllables each for a sum total of thirty-three syllables, which is traditionally Christ's age when he died. Three also symbolizes the Trinity, while ten is the number of Christ (241). Herbert here specifically points to Christ's sacrifice as the antitype of Old Testament sacrifices. The one rhyme of each stanza points to "God, the perfect, the three-in-one" (232). The six-syllable fourth line "establishes the persona as Christ, the perfect man"; four is the number of man, while six, the first perfect number, symbolizes perfection (232). Sibyl Lutz Severance also notes that the sixty-three stanzas of "The Sacrifice" represent both "physical and spiritual transformation" (231) and "the movement from the mortal to the eternal" (233). Christ's perfect sacrifice in the poem therefore makes possible believers' "spiritual transformation" (231), which cannot come to fruition until the end of the poem's sixty-third stanza, the moment of Christ's death. Such transformation is also our "movement from the mortal," a spiritual second death, "to the eternal," a spiritual new life in Christ, made possible only by Christ's death (233).
Herbert uses paradoxes in "The Sacrifice" to illustrate the propitiatory nature of Christ's sacrifice. Paradoxically, Christ can redeem humanity only because of His divinity, as the second person of the Trinity, since only God can remove sin from the heart; however, Christ can also redeem humanity only by becoming human, and dying a human death. Christ speaks of his drops of blood as a balm "for both the Hemispheres:/Curing all wounds but mine" (ll. 26-27). It is Christ's blood alone that saves His people from their sins, "curing" their spiritual death-"wounds," but paradoxically, Christ's "wounds" cannot not be cured, which means that He must die for such salvation to take place (l. 27). Christ, the perfect sacrifice for sin, must also "suffer binding," His death, in order to "loos[e]" humanity's "bands" and free them from the curse of sin and death (l. 47). Christ also calls Himself "the Temple," which "to the floor/In three days raz'd, and raised as before" (ll. 65-66), pointing forward in time to His resurrection. As earlier explained, the Old Testament temple was used for these three different kinds of sacrifice. Here, therefore, Christ's body is "the Temple" (l. 65), which, paradoxically, must be both literally (Christ's sacrificial death) and symbolically (Old Testament law) destroyed in order to be resurrected, with Christ as the new law written on human hearts, the eternal sacrifice for all. Paradoxically again, Christ's cross is "the tree of life to all, but only me" (l. 203), for it is only by Christ's death that He can offer eternal life to believers. As Christ hangs on the cross "betwixt two thieves," He paradoxically states, since He is not a thief, "Alas! what have I stolen from you? death" (ll. 229, 231). Christ's sacrificial death removes the threat of eternal death from believers, for His death brings them life. Christ's death is also His "woe, man's weal" (l. 250), for He must die to bring humanity saving grace.
In "The Sacrifice," Christ is also the antitype, the perfect and complete sacrifice for humanity, especially in His comparison of Himself with Adam. One possible reason for such a comparison is the inherent paradox in "The Sacrifice." Christ's propitiatory sacrifice is "once and for all," but it is eternally repeated each time someone believes in Christ for salvation. At the beginning, Christ has not yet died, since He is still speaking; therefore, the sins of humanity are not yet forgiven. They are still under the curse of Adam, as when Christ states, "So sits the earth's great curse in Adam's fall/Upon my head: so I remove it all/From th' earth unto my brows, and bear the thrall" (ll. 165-67). As Adam's sin brought spiritual death into the world, so Christ's death redeems humanity and brings spiritual life, saving them from the fruit of Adam's sin, eternal damnation.Continued on Next Page »
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1.) "Altar" through "Easter Wings (2)"
2.) See Matthew 26:26-29, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
3.) See "The Altar," ll. 1-10
4.) See also Ilona Bell, "'Setting Foot into Divinity,'" 63-83; Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 171, 293-94; William V. Nestrick, "'Mine' and 'Thine' in The Temple," 116-18; Michael Schoenfeldt, Prayer and Power, 157-61; and Richard Strier, Love Known, 49-54.
5.) Genesis 22:1-19
6.) Exodus 12:1-30, 42-51
7.) Numbers 21:5-9
8.) Hebrews 7:27, 9:26-28, 10:5-12
9.) See Ira Clark, Christ Revealed: The History of the Neotypological Lyric in the English Renaissance, 1-28.
10.) Psalm 107:22, 116:17; Amos 4:5, Philippians 4:17-18, Hebrews 13:15-16
11.) See Ira Clark, Christ Revealed, 80-106; Donald Dickson, The Fountain of Living Waters, 80-123; Albert Labriola, "The Rock and the Hard Place," 61-69; Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, chapters 4 and 9; C. A. Patrides, "The Experience of Otherness," 181-82; Rosamond Tuve, A Reading of George Herbert, 24-41.
12.) See Julia Carolyn Guernsey, Pulse of Praise, 15-17; John R. Mulder, "The Temple as Picture," 3; Joseph Summers, George Herbert, 140-43. Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics (283-316), notes the use of praise in these poems, but never acknowledges them as a type of sacrifice. Diana Benet, Secretary of Praise (87-90, 124-27), notes Herbert's use of praise, but calls it his poetic vocation, and never applies the concept to these poems.
13.) Wall 213.
14.) Malcolmson, George Herbert, 64, 66-68.
15.) Benet 112.
16.) See Elizabeth Clarke and Barbara Lewalski for Herbert's Calvinism; see Richard Strier for Herbert's Lutheranism.
17.) Ilona Bell "'Setting Foot into Divinity," 63-66; Elizabeth Clarke, Theory and Theology in George Herbert's Poetry, 10-13; Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 293-94; Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert, 64; Heart-Work, 1-7; and Richard Strier, Love Known, 49-54.
18.) Heather Asals, Equivocal Predications, 4-5; Diana Benet, Secretary of Praise, 107-15; Stanley Stewart, George Herbert, 89-97; Rosamond Tuve, A Reading of George Herbert, 23-99.
19.) See Mario Di Cesare, "Sacred Rhythms and Sacred Contradictions," 6-8; Donald Dickson, The Fountain of Living Waters, 8-9, 95; Patrick Grant, The Transformation of Sin, 75-99; Christopher Hodgkins, Authority, Church, and Society in George Herbert, 2-5, 32; Richard Todd, The Opacity of Signs, 1-20; Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Reformation Spirituality, 23-41; John Wall, Transformations of the Word, 1-3.
20.) See John Mulder, "The Temple as Picture," 3.
21.) See William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 229-33; Stanley Fish, The Living Temple and Self-Consuming Artifacts; Julia Carolyn Guernsey, Pulse of Praise; Barbara Leah Harman, Costly Monuments; Susannah B. Mintz, "Unstrung Conversations"; William Pahlka, Saint Augustine's Meter and George Herbert's Will; Michael Schoenfeldt, Prayer and Power; Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert; and James Boyd White, 'This Book of Starres.'
22.) See Malcolmson, George Herbert, xii.
23.) Hebrews 7:27; 9:7-10, 25-26; 10:11-14
24.) Matthew 26:61, 27:40; John 2:19-21
25.) See also 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19
26.) Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17, Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, 25-27; 2 Cor. 6:16, Ephesians 2:20-22, 1 Peter 2:4-8
27.) "The Dedication": "Lord, my first fruits present themselves to thee;/Yet not mine neither: for from thee they came,/And must return" (ll. 1-3).
28.) Luke 19:40: "I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out" (KJV).
29.) Malcolmson argues that "the speaker's desire in line 15 of 'The Altar' verges on an unreasonable sacrifice, since he moves beyond acknowledging the power of grace to the desire to imitate Christ" (George Herbert 64).
30.) Michael Schoenfeldt, in Prayer and Power, argues that the poem "is about the dangers of covert usurpation of divine authority implicit in devotional action" (161). In "'That Spectacle of Too Much Weight,'" he argues that in "The Sacrifice," "the event which the speaker of 'The Altar' prays to appropriate is unfathomable and unreachable by humanity" (574).
31.) William V. Nestrick, "'Mine and Thine' in The Temple," notes "that sanctification is the means whereby the self is remade like God" (116), but fails to apply this idea to "The Sacrifice" and "The Thanksgiving," where he argues that "the idea of converting thy Passion into my passion becomes impossible" (118).
32.) Romans 6:23
33.) Matthew 26:61, 27:40; John 2:19
34.) Romans 5:12-19
35.) Exodus 16:13-15
36.) Exodus 12:1-30, 42-51
37.) Exodus 17:5-6
38.) "They strike my head, the rock" (l. 170)
39.) Romans 3:20
40.) Mark 10:21
41.) "My God, my God, why dost thou part from me?" (l. 9)
42.) "When they did call,/With Manna, Angels' food, I fed them all" (ll. 238-39).
43.) "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come" (1 Cor. 11:26, KJV).
44.) Exodus 12:1-30, 42-51
45.) The New International Version (1984) is more explicit: "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" (italics mine). Herbert, however, would not have been familiar with the NIV.
46.) Donald Dickson (The Fountain of Living Waters 93n24), Barbara Lewalski (Protestant Poetics 171), Cristina Malcolmson (George Herbert 64), Michael Schoenfeldt (Prayer and Power 157-58), and Richard Strier (Love Known 49n47), responding to Bell's reading of "The Sacrifice," agree that the poem ironically refutes the Catholic fallacy that the speaker can imitate Christ.
47.) Romans 6:2-11, Colossians 2:12
48.) 1 Corinthians 15:14-17
49.) Isaiah 48:10, Zechariah 13:9, Malachi 3:2-3
50.) Gene Edward Veith, Jr., referring to Calvin's Institutes, acknowledges "the speaker's interaction and involvement with the atonement of Christ" (71), but argues that "Herbert conceived his poetry as a means of participation with Christ" (72-73). He ignores the theological implications of his earlier statement.
51.) The doctrine of justification states that man, by faith, is made perfect in Christ. By faith he stands before God clothed with the righteousness of Christ. See Romans 3:23-26, 5:9-19; 2 Corinthians 5:21, Philippians 3:9.
52.) Ilona Bell, "'Setting Foot into Divinity," 71-78; Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert, 64.
53.) John 19:15 -- "We have no king but Caesar" (KJV).
54.) Although Diana Benet seems to acknowledge the scriptural basis for imitation of Christ, in these lines, she argues that the speaker's "zeal is commendable but ignorant and misdirected" (112). See also Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Reformation Spirituality, 72; and John Wall, Transformations of the Word, 213.
55.) Richard Strier argues that "Herbert is presenting the desire to imitate Christ as the essence of misguided good intentions" (50). See also Sharon Seelig, The Shadow of Eternity, 11-12.
56.) Ilona Bell argues that the speaker's turning to the Bible is the Protestant answer to Catholic meditation on Christ's Passion (77-78). However, she fails to note that the speaker still sees "Victory!" (l. 48) in this "solution"; it is faith alone through confession of sin, not the Bible, that allows the speaker to "imitate" his Savior.
57.) Richard Strier argues that in these two lines, "imitation falls away as an evasive and rationalizing fiction" (52). Richard Todd argues that "for all divine gifts but one it is possible . . . to make imitative reparation. For the Passion, however, it is not" (150). See also Marion White Singleton, God's Courtier, 112-13; Cristina Malcolmson, Heart-Work, 90-91; and Michael Schoenfeldt, "'That Spectacle of Too Much Weight," 577.
58.) Elizabeth Clarke argues that "since Christ's death is the cause of every good act the believer can do, there is nothing the believer can give to Christ" (193), which is theologically unsound. The believer is expected to dedicate his life to Christ, a great sacrifice on his or her part.
59.) Ilona Bell argues that "the speaker here announces unequivocally that he cannot participate in Christ's Passion" (78). However, she fails to analyze the rest of the poem. Although William Pahlka seems to acknowledge imitation here, he confuses the speaker and Herbert, who "acts out an imitation of the Passion in the 'creative groaning' of his poems" (107). Palhka does not acknowledge the theology of imitation and sacrifice. John Wall argues, in these lines, that "there is only loving response, or response through loving" (213), a non-theological argument.
60.) Elizabeth Clarke argues that, at the end of the poem, "Herbert seems to have forgotten that the battle is supposed to be over" (193). She mistakenly equates Herbert with the speaker. Stanley Fish argues, that, "having found the art of love," the speaker "finds that its perfection in Christ has left him with nothing to do" (Self-Consuming Artifacts 183). Fish's non-theological reading is inadequate.
61.) Romans 6:2-11, Colossians 2:12
62.) Richard Strier argues that "to come into Christ's conquest . . . is not a matter of consciously imitating Him but rather of being conformed to Him" (54). However, "being conformed to [Christ]" (54) is the speaker's symbolic imitation.
63.) Gene Edward Veith, Jr. argues that, in these lines, "all the Christian need do, according to Reformation theology, is to receive God's love" (68). However, the Christian must do much more than this, according to Reformation theology; he must dedicate his life to Christ. Thanking God without serving Him appears superficial.
64.) See Sibyl Lutz Severance, "Numerological Structures in The Temple, 229-49; and Louis Martin, "Numerological Wit in Herbert's 'Sepulchre,'" 56-64.
65.) Doctrine of justification -- see footnote 51.
