An Offering
The Gift of a Pure Heart
The speaker invites the reader to bring an offering, questions the purity of the heart, and points to Christ's incarnation as the ultimate cure for impurity.
Come, bring your gift.✦ If blessings were as slow as people's returns, what would happen to fools?1 What do you have there? a heart? but is it pure?✦ Search carefully and see; for hearts have many holes.✦2 Yet one pure heart is nothing to offer: in Christ two natures met to be your cure.✦3
One Heart for Many Gifts
The speaker laments the impossibility of multiplying hearts for many gifts, but affirms that one good heart can stand for many, even as one person can intercede for a nation.
Oh, if only hearts could multiply within us—since many gifts call for many hearts! Yet one, if it's good, may claim the standing of many; and single things grow fruitful by their merits.45 In public judgments, one person can stand for an entire nation and hold off a plague while others sleep and slumber.
Recovering the Divided Heart
The speaker fears the heart is neither good nor one because of lusts and passions, but urges recovery of these divisions so that many gifts may be offered in one.
But all I fear is that your heart will displease, as neither good nor one: so often your lusts have made divisions, and not your lusts alone; your passions also have their set partitions.6 These parcel out your heart: recover these, and you may offer many gifts in one.7
The Balm of Christ's Blood
The speaker points to the heavenly balm of Christ's blood that cleanses and heals all wounds, urging the reader to seek it and then bring the gift with a hymn.
There is a balm—or rather a blood—dropping from heaven, which both cleanses and closes every kind of wound; of such strange power it is.✦✦ Seek out this all-heal, and don't rest until you find it and use it for your good. Then bring your gift, and let your hymn be this:8
The Offering of a Transformed Heart
The speaker prays that God accept the heart He has transformed from sadness to gladness, surrenders all that is his, and asks that the offering be made savory and salvific.
Since you turn my sadness into gladness, Lord, accept what you have kept as your rightful due.9 If I had many, if I had any (for this heart is nothing), all would be yours and none of mine; yours alone, surely.10 Yet your favor may give savor to this poor offering, and raise it to be your praise, and be my salvation.
Read the original English
Come, bring thy gift. If blessings were as slow As mens returns, what would become of fools? What hast thou there? a heart? but is it pure? Search well and see; for hearts have many holes. Yet one pure heart is nothing to bestow: In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.
O that within us hearts had propagation, Since many gifts do challenge many hearts! Yet one, if good, may title to a number; And single things grow fruitfull by deserts. In publick judgements one may be a nation, And fence a plague, while others sleep and slumber.
But all I fear is lest thy heart displease, As neither good, nor one: so oft divisions Thy lusts have made, and not thy lusts alone; Thy passions also have their set partitions. These parcell out thy heart: recover these, And thou mayst offer many gifts in one.
There is a balsome, or indeed a bloud, Dropping from heav'n, which doth both cleanse and close All sorts of wounds; of such strange force it is. Seek out this All-heal, and seek no repose, Untill thou finde and use it to thy good: Then bring thy gift, and let thy hymne be this;
Since my sadnesse Into gladnesse Lord thou dost convert, O accept What thou hast kept, As thy due desert.
Had I many, Had I any, (For this heart is none) All were thine And none of mine; Surely thine alone.
Yet thy favour May give savour To this poore oblation; And it raise To be thy praise, And be my salvation.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Matt.5.23-Matt.5.24 — So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, Matt.5.24 — leave your gift there before the altar, and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
- ↩Matt.5.8 — Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
- ↩Ps.139.23-Ps.139.24 — Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Ps.139.24 — See if there is any way of grief in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
- ↩John.1.14;Isa.53.5 — And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Isa.53.5 — But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
- ↩Jer.8.22 — Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my people not been restored?
- ↩1John.1.7 — But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Notes
- 1 ↩Source 'mens returns' means reciprocal gifts or thank-offerings people give back, not financial returns; modernized possessive and generic 'people's' for contemporary readability.
- 2 ↩'holes' kept as Herbert's image for leaks, gaps, and hidden defects by which devotion drains away.
- 3 ↩'two natures' names the hypostatic union (divine and human in Christ); retained for doctrinal specificity rather than paraphrased away.
- 4 ↩Early modern legal/title idiom: a single good heart may claim the right to count as many.
- 5 ↩Rendered as 'merits' (what is deserved), not wastelands.
- 6 ↩"One" means single/undivided, continuing the poem's claim that one good heart may stand for many gifts.
- 7 ↩"These" points back to the lusts, passions, and their partitions that have divided the heart; "recover" means reclaim/reunite what was parceled out.
- 8 ↩All-heal keeps Herbert's herbal name for a universal remedy (a panacea plant), applied here to the heavenly blood/balm of s1.
- 9 ↩Early modern 'desert' here means deserved claim or merit (what is rightly owed), not barren land; rendered as 'rightful due'.
- 10 ↩Source 'this heart is none' is rendered as 'this heart is nothing' (empty/worthless as an independent offering), not as a denial that a heart exists.
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