spreads these witnesses through all parts of the world. The adherence to their religion makes their testimony unquestionable. Had the whole body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the coming and history of our blessed Saviour, forged by Christians, and have looked upon them, with the prophecies of the Sibyls, as made many years after the events they pretended to foretel.-O. Though in the paths of death I tread, HYMNS. IV. Though in a bare and rugged way, 469 When all thy mercies, O my God, O how shall words with equal warmth That glows within my ravish'd heart? Thy Providence my life sustain’d, To all my weak complaints and cries Ere yet my feeble thoughts had learn'd Thine arm unseen convey'd me safe, ΙΟ 20 Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths, And through the pleasing snares of vice, When worn with sickness, oft hast thou Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss Ten thousand thousand precious gifts Nor is the least a cheerful heart, Through every period of my life And after death in distant worlds When nature fails, and day and night My ever grateful heart, O Lord, Through all eternity to thee A joyful song I'll raise; No. 465. The Confirmation of Faith. Qua ratione queas traducere leniter ævum: The Supreme Being has made the best arguments for his own 30 existence in the formation of the heavens and earth; and these " HYMNS. 471 are arguments which a man of sense cannot forbear attending to, who is out of the noise and hurry of human affairs. Aristotle says, that should a man live under ground, and there converse with works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the works of such a being as we define God to be. The psalmist has very beautiful strokes of poetry to this purpose in that exalted strain, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firma10 ment sheweth his handy-work. One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Their sound is gone out into all the lands: and their words unto the ends of the world.' As such a bold and sublime manner of thinking furnished very noble matter for an ode, the reader may see it wrought into the following one. |