"What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." Acts, x. 15.
BEHOLD men's judgments! Common and unclean
We call whatever with our pride doth jar,
Though from one God and Father all things are.
Behold men's judgments! The deep truth unseen,
Rash we decide what mere externals mean.
Know'st thou, while thy proud eye is closed afar,
In what mean worm God may illume a star?
Know'st thou where His great Spirit dwells serene?
Thou dost not. What thy pride may worthless deem,
Ay, tainted with pollution, may become,
Raised from the dust, the fairest, loveliest home
Where radiant Deity can shrine its beam;
May be redeemed from Nature's common blot,
Ay, though perhaps thy very self be not!
"His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him."
Genesis, xvi. 12.
Он, woe for those, and pity more than woe,
Who in the gulf of men's opinion sink! —
Every man's hand against them, as they think,
What marvel their own hand, nor slack nor slow,
Should against every man remorseless go?
Oh, could one snatch them from the dreary brink
Of the true hell to feel themselves no link
In God's great scheme that were a joy to know.
Ye who can find no shelter, homeless poor !
Ye wicked, who were never taught to pray !
Ay, even ye who from the better way
Turn wilful (therefore to be pitied more)!
Sure ye are men, for you still Christ did die,
And Hope were your divinest remedy!
"But thou saidst, There is no hope." Jeremiah, ii. 25.
WITHOUT a hope is no activity,
No motive that exalts to bettering,
No life. There is no other breeze to fling
One ripple over Being's stagnant sea!
If life be precious, then should hope too be!
And if to make a soul with conscious wing
Of thought and will, a heart where love may cling,
Be Heaven's first work, then Man's first villainy
Must be to murder hope! Yet 'tis a crime
Acted in awful silence every day
When we from sin or sorrow turn away,
Or tell our bosoms 'tis no longer time
For penitence. Yet hear this truth, o'erawed, there is no hope, expunges God!
"The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." St. James's Epistle, i. 20.
MAN, though thou makest this world dark and rude,
By blotting out sweet hope, life's vital part,
Thou canst not reach the river's bounteous heart,
That pulses in the mountain solitude!
With life, hope, love, Heaven is not less imbued
Because thou play'st the churl with niggard art,
Hiding th' Almighty! He to view will start
When least thou deem'st His mercy will intrude.
No measure art thou of th' Eternal Mind!
Yet sad it is we should let any die
Despairing, or blaspheming ! — Oh, be kind
As Christ! His new law bars that
Death-doomed. Didst thou observe His generous rule, Then were each prison-house a noble school!
"And he taught daily in the temple." St. Luke, xix. 47.
THOUGH the free circuit of the silent air
Oft saw the worship of the Son of God,
Some rock His pulpit; yet His steps, too, trod
The temple's pavement. Daily His repair
Was to the shrine where dwelt God's honour fair;
And there He taught; and, from that dread abode
Driving unhallowed things with scourge and rod,
Called it His Father's House a House of Prayer.
Accept both lessons, Man! God's love is free,
Is universal as pervading Heaven;
Yet be fair temples to His worship given,
The best our hands can offer.
Who turn His gifts unto the Giver's praise,
His smile hath prompted and will bless your ways.
"None that trust in him shall be desolate." Psalm xxxiv. 22.
DISTRUST is that which makes the curse of life.
Oh, if we trusted God, what ills were spared!
The feeling of the outcast makes us hard,
And fierce. and places in our hand the knife!
Did man trust man, what desolating strife
Of fiery thought we back from us should ward!
Sweet Faith would be our fortress and our guard
From every anguish with which souls are rife.
And so the Book of God makes all sin light
Weighed with distrust—the giant ill of man:
Our happiness commanding-under ban
Placing whatever dims the soul with blight;
It whispers still unto our troubled sense,
Heaven would'st thou know? Heaven's charm is con
"There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts, iv. 12.
NATURE's defect, the ground-work of our woe,
Shadowed in all religions grandly forth,
We find from the rude Sagas of the north,
To the high visions bright with India's glow.
This, then, as knowledge which ourselves do know Too sadly this is not the boon to earth
Which makes the Bible so divinely worth,
Or Thou didst come, O Saviour, to bestow!
'Tis the dear love, that, pointing the disease,
Doth also whisper of the remedy ;
'Tis the high gift of all that best agrees
With our soiled nature and its sovereign cry,
Forgiveness-restoration means to rise
Out of ourselves. And these Christ's Word alone supplies.
"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." St. Mark, ii. 27.
I LOVE thee, Day of God! If rather not
We christen thee, with Christ, the Day of Man!
And thee as offspring of our nature scan,
The very need and yearning of our lot
That, once in seven days, our toil forgot,
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