Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herbert Discussing the Word 144
Although not explicit, the poem does end in communion. It is not the communion meal,
Herbert is in Christ, and through confession they commune within one another, or as Strier
states, ‘The regenerate Christian becomes a “member” of the body of which Christ is the
head, and is therefore “in” Christ’. 35
Summers reminds us that in ‘his English writings
Herbert always used “altar” and “sacrifice” according to the “orthodox” Protestant
tradition of his time: “altar” is never applied to the Communion Table nor is the Holy
Communion ever called a “sacrifice”’, 36 so readers should not assume that ‘The Altar’ and
‘The Sacrifice’ have been an offering of the Eucharist to them, rather, it is after these
events occur that a believer can expect Holy Communion to take place. It is also of
interest that when the reader looks at the following poem, even though it does not fall into
the same conversation of the four previous poems, the reader sees the first reference to
Herbert drinking the communion wine. In ‘The Agonie’ the death of Jesus and the role
that sin plays in his death is discussed in the imagery of a wine press. In what is assuredly
an uncomfortable and macabre illustration of the consequences of sin on the body of Jesus,
Herbert allows his readers to contemplate the bitter-sweet nature of the communion meal
and the sanctification which they enjoy. As Robert Whalen states, ‘The Christ who in
Pauline terms becomes sin . . . is filled here with sin’s poison, which displaces the divine
blood that in turn becomes that of the communicant, who, presumably, was filled hitherto
with the sin now coursing through his saviour’s veins’. 37
In this short homily, Herbert’s
lesson on sin tells us that
Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
35 Love Known, pp. 53-54.
36 Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert (London, 1954), p. 141.
37 Robert Whalen, The Poetry of Immanence (London, 2002), p. 122.