The Art of Divine Meditation in George Herbert’s The Temple

George Herbert’s The Temple exemplifies the principles of Protestant meditation described by Joseph Hall in The Art of Divine Meditation (1606). Shaped by Catholic and Protestant traditions, Hall’s approach to meditation combines deliberate and extemporary reflection on natural and artificial objects. Like Hall, Herbert in The Temple practices the Augustinian habit of reading mundane signs as emblems with spiritual signification. More particularly Hallian are the stages—from the preparation of the subject for meditation through the dynamic concentration on the object of meditation to the transformation of the subject—that the reader of Herbert’s poems follows. Taken individually, in sets, and in the whole three-part collection, the sacred poems and private ejaculations of The Temple are spiritual exercises that bear the hallmarks of Anglican meditation.