O Pilgrim, vain each toilsome step. There is no charm in soil or shrine, To wash the guilt away. Out of eleven stanzas. 243. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1809-1861. (Handbook, page 640.) In learning, power, and imagination, the first of English poetesses. Her Casa Guidi Windows is a narrative poem on the Italian Revolution of 1848; Aurora Leigh is a story in blank verse discussing nature and art. Her smaller pieces, however, are the most popular. In them she shows great skill in word-painting and great delicacy of fancy. Cowper's Grave. It is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying, It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying; Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish, Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing; O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging; O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling. And now what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory; And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted. He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, Nor ever shall he be in praise by wise or good forsaken; Sonnet.-From the Portuguese. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I love thee to the level of every day's In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith; With my lost saints-I love thee with the breath, A Lady's Yes. 'Yes,' I answered you last night; 'No,' this morning, sir, I say; Colours seen by candle light, Will not look the same by day... Yet the sin is on us both Time to dance is not to wooWooer light makes fickle troth, Scorn of me recoils on you! Learn to win a lady's faith Nobly, as the thing is high; With a loyal gaiety. Lead her from the festive boards, By your truth she shall be true, Ever true as wives of yore, O pusillanimous heart be comforted— Books are men of higher stature, And the only men who speak aloud for future times to hear. 244. Thomas Erskine, 1828. The Gospel conducive to Goodness. What is the Gospel? It is nothing and can be nothing else, than a manifestation of God in relation to sinners. If our hearts were attracted to any thing else than God, even though it were a pardon, we should still be out of our place in the spiritual system. For God is the centre of that system, and nothing but God. The pardon of the Gospel, then, is just a manifestation of the character of God in relation to sinners. And that character is holy compassion. In relation to his sinless and happy creatures, his character is holy complacency; but, in relation to those who are sinful, and weak, and miserable, it is holy compassion. This is at least the prominent feature in the manifestation, but it contains all. It is God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. This pardon, then, is an unchangeable thing, like God himself. Man neither makes it, nor merits it. God reveals it, or rather reveals himself in it. God, manifest in the flesh, becomes the representative of sinners. He takes upon himself their nature and the consequences of their rebellion; that he might show himself just, even when justifying the ungodly; and that he might show himself gracious, even when punishing sin. His sufferings and death give the solemn and appalling measure of the divine condemnation of sin, and of the divine compassion for the sinner. When the Spirit of God reveals this to the heart, all selfpleasing thoughts of personal merit are extinguished. What have we done to him, or for him who hath done this for us? We have paid him by preferring the least of his gifts before himselfby turning a deaf ear to his condescending invitations of fatherly kindness, and by offering him the base and reluctant service of our hands, and ceremonial of our tongues, as an adequate return for his heart's love. If we know this love, we shall feel annihilated by it—we have nothing to give in return, which is not despicable when considered as a payment. But he asks no payment. He asks but the love of the spirit which he hath made,— as that in which he delights,—and as that in which the good and the happiness of the creature consist. He hath dearly earned our gratitude and our confidence,-and these feelings, when wrought into the heart, put us in our proper place towards God,—affectionate dependence. Affectionate dependence on the Creator is the spiritual health of the creature-as averseness and independence are the spiritual disease of the creature. Men are very apt to consider sin as consisting merely in this or that particular action. The old philosophers taught that virtue is the mean between two extremes,-thus, the virtue of generosity is the mean between prodigality and avarice,-courage is the mean between rashness and timidity, and so of the rest. On this system, the difference between virtue and vice lies merely in the degree, not in the kind. But the Word of God teaches another sort of morals. According to it, sin consists in the absence of the love of God from the heart, as the dominant principle. So sin is not so much an action as a manner of existence. It is not necessary to go to the expense of an action in order to sin,-the habitual state of most minds-of all minds indeed naturally— even in their most quiet form,-is sin,—that is to say, the love of God is not dominant in them. The centripetal force constitutes an element in every line which the planet moves in its orbit. Were the influence of this force to be suspended, we should not think of reckoning the number of aberrations which the planet might make in its ungoverned career, we should say that its whole manner of being, severed from the solar influence, was a continued and radical aberration. In like manner, the soul ought to feel the love of God as a growing element along the whole course of its existence,—every movement of thought, and feeling, and desire, ought to contain it, as an essential part of its nature. And when this principle is awanting, we need not count the moral aberrations which the spirit makes; its whole existence is an aberration, it is an outlaw from the spiritual system of the universe, it has lost its gravitation. In such a state of things it is evident that a pardon which did not bring back the wanderer, and restore his lost gravitation, would be of no use to him,-until his gravitation is recovered, he is a blot on the creation. Love to God is the gravitation of the soul, and it is restored by the operation of the Spirit, who takes of the things of Christ and shows them to the soul. Faith is the receiving of the Spirit's instruction. A faith which does not restore spiritual gravitation is useless; and that only is true gravitation which keeps the soul in its orbit. The movement of the soul along the path of duty, under the influence of holy love to God, constitutes what are called good works. Good works are works which proceed from good principles. The external form of an action cannot alone determine whether it be a good work or not. Its usefulness to others may be determined by its external form, but its moral worth depends on the moral spring from which it flows. Good works, then, are properly healthy works, or works of a healthy mind. Healthy bodily actions can only proceed from healthy bodily principles: and healthy spiritual actions can proceed only from healthy spiritual principles. A man who has lost his health, does not recover it again by the performance of healthy bodily actions, for of these his bad health renders him incapable, and in that incapacity, indeed, his bad health consists; but by the use of some remedial system, and, as health returns, its proper and natural actions return along with it. His health is not produced by these actions, but it is followed by them, and strengthened by them. The enjoyment of the body consists in these healthful actions; they are the spontaneous language of health. They constitute the music, as it were, which results from the organs being well tuned. It is the same thing with the actions of the soul. Spiritual health is not acquired by good actions, it is followed by them, and strengthened by them. They are also music, sweet music. And oh, were these spirits of ours, with their thousand strings, but rightly tuned, what a swell of high and lovely song would issue from them!-a song of holy joy and praise, commencing even here, and still rising upwards, until it mixed with the full harmony of that choir which surrounds the throne of God. Good works, then, are not undervalued by those who hold the doctrine of unconditional pardon in its highest sense. On the contrary, they have a more elevated place in their system than in the system of those who regard them as the price paid for pardon. For, according to the unconditional system, good works are the perfection and expression of holy principles, the very end and object of all religion, the very substance of happiness, the very element of heaven. Whereas, on the conditional system, they are only the way to happiness, or rather the price paid for it. There is surely more honour paid to them, in making them the end than the means, the building than the scaffolding,—and in attributing to them an intrinsic than a conventional value. From The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel. In three essays. |