Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger.

When the logic leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which has withered into an apple of Sodom.

Witness some of the writings of the European master of the order--Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in truth; the lowest are poverty-stricken indeed.
In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men--and no mean poet either.

If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter.
Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare--he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans.

Dull of heart and sadly unlike a mother was the Church when, by the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., she drove from her bosom such a son, with his two thousand brethren of the clergy! He has left us a good deal of verse--too much, perhaps, if we consider the length of the poems and the value of condensation.