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Mundane Work for Christ -- George Herbert

All may of thee partake: 

Nothing can be so mean, 

Which with his tincture (for thy sake) 

Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause 

Makes Drudgerie divine: 

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 

Makes that and th' action fine.

This is that famous stone 

That turneth all to gold: 

For that which God doth touch and own 

Cannot for lesse be told.

-- George Herbert

" ... merely desiring to act "for thy sake" is enough, not because of any power or merit in human will, but because "his tincture" (this tincture, but also his tincture, Christ's own attitude - his own speech infused into the speaker) has already transformed the unworthy to "gold"'. But the other meaning of 'his' is not 'this' ... but rather 'its'. In other words the tincture 'for thy sake' belongs not merely to Christ but also to the action; the motive of the doer is also 'for thy sake'. The ambiguous 'his' attributes the transformation of the deed to both grace and good will.

"Herbert had a precedent for a pun turning on the vexed paradox of free will co-operating with grace in Spenser's Faerie Queene. After the Red Cross Knight has defeated the dragon, Una thanks him:

Then God she prais'd, and thank't her faithful knight,

That had achiev'd so great a conquest by his might.

(I.xi.55.8-9)

"As A. C. Hamilton remarks in his edition of The Faerie Queene (London and New York, 1977), 'There is a deliberate ambiguity in his: it refers to both God and the Knight. Man's might and God's grace merge as the Knight is revealed in the lineaments of Christ...' "

"Christ as the philosopher's stone in George Herbert's 'The Elixir.'.." Retrieved Dec 11 2021 from

 https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Christ+as+the+philosopher%27s+stone+in+George+Herbert%27s+%27The+Elixir.%27.-a055015201

APA style: Christ

Truths Out of Favor

"For, dear me, why abandon a belief

Merely because it ceases to be true?

Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt

It will turn true again, for so it goes.

Most of the change we think we see in life

Is due to truths being in and out of favor.

As I sit here, and often times, I wish

I could be monarch of a desert land

I could devote and dedicate forever

To the truths we keep coming back and back to."

––from "The Black Cottage" Robert Frost