No
Man is An Island
-A sermon-
Rev.
John Donne*
1572-1631
Perchance
he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls
for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as
that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll
for me, and I know not that.
The
church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does
belongs to all. When she
baptizes a child that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected
to that body which is my head too, and in grafted into that body
whereof I am a member.
And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind
is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is
not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language;
and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators;
some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some
by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall
bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book
shall lie open to one another
As
therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher
only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but
how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both poetry and
dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious
orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined,
that they should ring first that rose earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for
our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early,
in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed
it is.
The
bell cloth toll for him that thinks it cloth; and though it intermit again,
yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united
to God. Who casts not up
his eye to the sun when it rises?
But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out?
Who bends not his car to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?
But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself
out of this world?
No
man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main. If
a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own
were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for
thee.
Neither
can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though
we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from
the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.
Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction
is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.
No
man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and
made fit for God by that affliction.
If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and
have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him
as he travels. Tribulation
is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use
of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.
Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction
may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him;
but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that
gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own
into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my
God, who is our only security. []
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* John Donne was a famous Elizabethan poet, writer, scholar, and minister.
This may be the most famous of all his works. Although read in universities
and quoted widely, it was nevertheless a sermon. As you read this sermon,
you can see where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., got some of his inspiration
for his famous, Letter From A Birmingham Jail. See Donne s poem,
Death Be Not Proud,
also studied widely in the universities.
