‘Thou passest out of the world, as a hand passes out of a bason, or a body out of a bath, where the water may be fouler for thy having washed in it, else the water retains no impression of thy hand or body; so the world may be the worse for thy having liv’d in it, else the world retains no marks of thy having been there.’ (Donne, A Sermon Preached at Whitehall. 29 February 1627)
What do we live for? What lasting impressions do we leave throughout our lives? Is it worth carrying-on and trying to develop ourselves? These are the questions that every one of us have asked. And these are the questions that Donne’s sermon tries to answer. Based on the reading from Acts 7.60 the preacher ponders on the meaning and purpose of life. For him, ‘every man is bound to be something, to take some calling upon him (…), every man is bound to do seriously and scedulously, and sincerely the duties of that calling’ and to perform those duties in a best possible way, ‘every man shall do well to propose to himself some person, some pattern, some example whom he will follow and imitate in that calling.’
Firstly, then, to live our lives in full we have to have a passion for something. Secondly, whether it is writing, music, poetry, dance, acting, accountancy, law, medicine, we have to be dedicated to it. Donne preaches: ‘He that stands in a place and does not the duty of that place, is but a statue in that place; and but a statue without an inscription; Posterity shall not know him, nor read who he was.(…) The person must actuate it self, dilate, extend and propagate it self according to the dimensions of the place, by filling it in the execution of the duties of it.’ Thirdly, one to leave a lasting legacy must, according to Donne, aspire to be somebody, ‘be like somebody, propose some good example in thy calling and profession to imitate.’
To follow Donne’s guidance and to live a happy life which, as Horace famously wrote, exegi monumentum aere perennius, one must do what he loves, and do it with all his best abilities so others may follow his example. As the preacher quotes: ‘dulcis somnus operanti, The sleepe of a labouring man is sweete. To him that laboureth in his calling, even this sleepe of Death is welcome.’
Donne, John, A Sermon Preached at Whitehall. 29 February 1627. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/JohnDonne&CISOPTR=3245&REC=5
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