Heaven on Earth

It was his wisdom made you need the sun. It was his goodness made you need the sea. Be sensible of what you need, or enjoy neither. Consider how much you need them, for thence they derive their value. Suppose the sun were extinguished or the sea were dry. There would be no light, no beauty, no warmth, no fruit, no flowers, no pleasant gardens, feasts, or prospects, no wine, no oil, no bread, no life, no motion. Would you not give all the gold and silver in the Indies for such a treasure? Prize it now you have it, at that rate, and you shall be a grateful creature. Nay, you shall be a divine and heavenly person. For they in heaven do prize blessings when they have them. They in earth when they have them prize them not, they in hell prize them when they have them not.

To have blessings and to prize them is to be in heaven. To have them and not to prize them is to be in hell, I would say, upon earth. To prize them and not to have them is to be in hell. Which is evident by the effects. To prize blessings while we have them is to enjoy them, and the effect thereof is contentation, pleasure, thanksgiving, happiness. To prize them when they are gone, envy, covetousness, repining, ingratitude, vexation, misery. But it was no great mistake to say, that to have blessings and not to prize them is to be in hell. For it maketh them ineffectual, as if they were absent. Yea, in some respect it is worse than to be in hell. It is more vicious, and more irrational. 

John Brett, The British Channel Seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs, oil on canvas, 1871.

They that would not upon earth see their wants from all eternity, shall in hell see their treasures to all eternity. Wants here may be seen and enjoyed, enjoyments there shall be seen, but wanted. Wants here may be blessings; there they shall be curses. Here they may be fountains of pleasure and thanksgiving, there they will be fountains of woe and blasphemy. No misery is greater than that of wanting in the midst of enjoyments, of seeing and desiring yet never possessing. Of beholding others happy, being seen by them ourselves in misery. They that look into hell here may avoid it hereafter. They that refuse to look into hell upon earth, to consider the manner of the torments of the damned, shall be forced in hell to see all the earth, and remember the felicities which they had when they were living. Hell itself is a part of God's kingdom, to wit his prison. It is fitly mentioned in the enjoyment of the world. And is itself by the happy enjoyed, as a part of the world.

The misery of them who have and prize not, differeth from others, who prize and have not. The one are more odious and less sensible, more foolish and more vicious; the senses of the other are exceeding keen and quick upon them, yet are they not so foolish and odious as the former. The one would be happy and cannot, the other may be happy and will not. The one are more vicious, the other more miserable. But how can that be? Is not he most miserable that is most vicious? Yes, that is true. But they that prize not what they have are dead; their senses are laid asleep, and when they come to hell they wake, and then they begin to feel their misery. He that is most odious is most miserable, and he that is most perverse is most odious.

They are deep instructions that are taken out of hell, and heavenly documents that are taken from above. Upon earth we learn nothing but vanity. Where people dream, and loiter, and wander, and disquiet themselves in vain, to make show, but do not profit because they prize not the blessings they have received. To prize what we have is a deep and heavenly instruction. It will make us righteous and serious, wise and holy, divine and blessed. It will make us escape hell and attain heaven, for it will make us careful to please him from whom we have received all, that we may live in heaven.

Source: Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, ed. Bertram Dobell (London: Bertram Dobell, 1908), 32–34.