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

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Herbert Discussing the Word 152<br />

Me thoughts I heard one calling, Childe:<br />

And I reply’d, My Lord. (33-36)<br />

Once again there is a fighting followed by a returning to God, but here there is no<br />

repentance besides the inherent repentance contained in the reply of submission: ‘My<br />

Lord’. And it is this type of approach to God, this use of the Incarnation as a medium<br />

between God and humans that is discussed in the next two poems, ‘Faith’ and ‘Prayer (I)’.<br />

In both ‘Faith’ and ‘Prayer (I)’, Herbert uses the Incarnation and the incarnational<br />

paradox, to describe how humanity can believe in and talk to God. ‘Faith’s first stanza<br />

sets forth a question that asks if faith, bestowed by the Lord, brings ‘all things’ to man:<br />

Lord, how couldst thou so much appease<br />

Thy wrath for sinne, as when mans sight was dimme,<br />

And could see little, to regard his ease,<br />

And bring by Faith all things to him?<br />

Faith in this question would be working in the same manner as the Incarnation. Faith is<br />

being sent down to humans from God in order that they can use it to approach him, and<br />

that, by this same faith, he is then able to bless them. Faith, then, is constantly descending<br />

and ascending. And in this movement God does indeed use faith to bring all things to him.<br />

Significantly, in the next stanza the Lord is shown providing for Herbert’s need in the very<br />

same image found in the ultimate communion meal described in ‘Love (III)’. In ‘Faith’ on<br />

reads:<br />

Hungrie I was, and had no meat:

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