Old lamps for new, even for fanatical excitements.
He gained surface, but lost solidity; heat, in lieu of health;
And still with swelling words and thoughts he scorned his ancient coldness:
But his strength was shorn as Samson's; he walked he knew not whither;
Doubt was on his daily path; and duties showed not certain.
Until, in an hour of enthusiasm, stung with secret fears,
He pinned the safety of his soul on some false prophet's sleeve.
And then, that sure word failed; and with it failed his faith;
It failed, and fell; O deep and dreadful was his fall in faith.
He could not stop, with reason's rein, his coursers on the slope,
And so they dashed him down the cliff of hardened unbelief.
With overreaching grasp he had strained for visionary treasures,
But a fiend had cheated his presumption, and hurled him to despair;
So he lay in his blood, the victim of a credulous false faith,
And many nights, and night-like days, he dwelt in outer darkness,
But, within a while, his variable mind caught a new impression,
A new impression of the good old stamp, that sealed him when a child:
He was softened, and abjured his infidelity; he was wiser, and despised
his credulity:
And turned again to simple faith more simply than before.
Experience had declared too well his mind was built of water,
And so renouncing strength in self, he fixed his faith in God.
It is not for me to stipulate for creeds; Bible, Church, and Reason,
These three shall lead the mind, if any can, to truth.
But I must stipulate for faith; both God and man demand it :
Trust is great in either world, if any would be well.
Verily, the skeptical propensity is an universal foe;
Sneering Pyrrho never found, nor cared to find, a friend:
How could he trust another? and himself, whom would he not deceive? His proper gains were all his aim, and interests clash with kindness.
So, the Bedouin goeth armed, an enemy to all,
The spear is stuck beside his couch, the dagger hid beneath his pillow.
For society, void of mutual trust, of credit, and of faith,
Would fall asunder as a waterspout, snapped from the cloud's attraction.
Faith may rise into miracles of might, as some few wise have shown: Faith may sink into credulities of weakness, as the mass of fools have witnessed.
Therefore, in the first, saints and martyrs have fulfilled their mission,
Conquering dangers, courting deaths, and triumphing in all.
Therefore, in the last, the magician and the witch, victims of their own
Have gained the bitter wages of impracticable sins.
They believed in allegiance with Satan; they worked in that belief,
And thereby earned the loss and harm of guilt that might not be,
For, faith hath two hands; with the one it addeth virtue to indifferents; Yea, it sanctified a Judith and a Jael, for what otherwise were treachery and murder:
With the other hand it heapeth crime even on impossibles or simples,
And many a wizard well deserved the faggot for his faith:
He trusted in his intercourse with evil, he sacrificed heartily to fiends,
He withered up with curses to the limit of his will, and was vile, because
he thought himself a villain.
A great mind is ready to believe, for he hungereth to feed on facts,
And the gnawing stomach of his ignorance craveth unceasing to be filled:
A little mind is boastful and incredulous, for he fancieth all knowledge is
his own,
So will he cavil at a truth; how should it be true, and he not know it ?—
There is an easy scheme, to solve all riddles by the sensual,
And thus, despising mysteries, to feel the more sufficient:
For it comforteth the foul hard heart, to reject the pure unseen,
And relieveth the dull soft head, to hinder one from gazing upon vacancy.
True wisdom, labouring to expound, heareth others readily;
False wisdom, sturdy to deny, closeth up her mind to argument.
The sum of certainties is found so small, their field so wide an universe,
That many things may truly be, which man hath not conceived:
The characters revealed of God are a strong mind's sole assurance
That any strangeness may not stand a sober theme for faith.
Ignorance being light denied, this ought to show the stronger in its view,
But ignorance is commonly a double negative, both of light and morals:
So, adding vanity to blindness, for ease it taketh refuge in a doubt,
And aching soon with ceaseless doubt, it finisheth the strife by misbe-
lieving.
Faith, by its very nature, shall embrace both credence and obedience:
Yea, the word for both is one, and cannot be divided. (22)
For, work void of faith, wherein can it be counted for a duty?
And faith not seen in work,-whereby can the doctrine be discovered?
Faith in religion is an instrument; a handle, and the hand to turn it;
Less a condition than a mean, and more an operation than a virtue.
A moral sickness, like to sin, must have a moral cure;
And faith alone can heal the mind, whose malady is sense.
Ye are told of God's deep love; they that believe will love him;
They that love him, will obey; and obedience hath its blessing.
Ye are taught of the soul's great price: they that believe will prize it,
And, prizing soul, will cherish well the hopes that make it happy.
Effects spring from feelings and feelings grow of faith :
If a man conceive himself insulted, will not his anger smite?
Thus, let a soul believe his state, his danger, destiny, redemption,
Will he not feel eager to be safe, like him that kept the prison at Philippi?
A mother had an only son, and sent him out to sea :
She was a widow, and in penury; and he must seek his fortunes.
How often in the wintry nights, when waves and winds were howling,
Her heart was torn with sickening dread, and bled to see her boy.
And on one sunny morn, when all around was comfort,
News came that, weeks agone, the vessel had been wrecked;
Yea, wrecked, and he was dead! they had seen him perish in his agony:
Oh then, what agony was like to hers,—for she believed the tale?
She was bowed and broken down with sorrow, and uncomforted in prayer;
Many nights she mourned, and pined, and had no hope but death.
But on a day, while sorely she was weeping, a stranger broke upon her loneliness,
He had news to tell, that weather-beaten man, and must not be denied:
And what were the wonder-working words that made this mourner joyous,
That swept her heaviness away, and filled her world with praise?
Her son was saved,—is alive,—-is near !-O did she stop to question?
No, rushing in the force of faith, she met him at the door!
ALL is vanity which is not honesty ;-thus is it graven on the tomb ;— And there is no wisdom but in piety;-so the dead man preacheth:
For, in a simple village church, among those classic shades
Which sylvan Evelyn loved to rear, (his praise and my delight,)
These, the words of truth, are writ upon his sepulchre
Who learnt much lore, and knew all trees from the cedar to the hyssop on the wall.
A just conjunction, godliness and honesty, ministering to both worlds,
Well wed, and ill to be divided, a pair that God hath joined together.
I touch not now the vulgar thought, as of tricks and cheateries in trade;
I speak of honest purpose, character, speech and action:
For an honest man hath special need of charity, and prudence,
Of a deep and humbling self-acquaintance, and of blessed commerce with his God,
So that the keennesses of truth may be freed from asperities of censure,
And the just but vacillating mind be not made the pendulum of arguments:
For a false reason, shrewdly put, can often not be answered on the instant,
And prudence looketh unto faith, content to wait solutions:
Yea, it looketh, yea, it waiteth, still holding honesty in leash,
Lest, as a hot young hound, it track not game, but vermin.
Many a man of honest heart, but ignorant of self and God,
Hath followed the marsh-fires of pestilence, esteeming them the lights of
He heard a cause, which he had not skill to solve, and so received it gladly,
And that cause brought its consequence of harm to an unstable soul.
Prudence for a man's own sake, never should be separate from honesty
And charity, for other's good and his, must still be joined therewith:
For the harshly chiding tongue hath neither pleasuring nor profit,
And the cold unsympathizing heart never gained a good.
Sin is a sore, and folly is a fever; touch them tenderly for healing;
The bad chirurgeon's awkward knife harmeth spite of honesty.
Still, a rough diamond is better than the polished paste,—
That courteous, flattering fool, who spake of vice as virtue :
And honesty, even by itself, though making many adversaries,
Whom prudence might have set aside, or charity have softened,
Evermore will prosper at the last, and gain a man great honour
By giving others many goods, to his own cost and hindrance.
Freedom is father of the honest, and sturdy Independence is his brother: These three, with heart and hand, dwell together in unity.
The blunt yeoman, stout and true, will speak unto princes unabashed:
His mind is loyal, just and free, a crystal in its plain integrity;
What should make such an one ashamed? where courtiers kneel, he
I will indeed bow before the king, but knees were knit for God.
And many such there be, of a high and noble conscience,
Honourable, generous, and kind, though blessed with little light:
What should he barter for his freedom? some petty gain of gold?
Free of speech, and free in act, magnates honour him for boldness:
Long may he flourish in his peace, and a stalwart race around him,
Rooted in the soil like oaks, and hardy as the pine upon the mountains!
Yet, there be others, that will truckle to a lie, selling honesty for interest:
And do they gain ?—they gain but loss; a little cash, with scorn.
Behold, the sorrowful change wrought upon a fallen nature:
He hath lost his own esteem, and other men's respect;
For the buoyancy of upright faith, he is clothed in the heaviness of cringing;
For plain truth where none could err, he hath chosen tortuous paths;
In lieu of his majesty of countenance-the timorous glances of servility :
Instead of Freedom's honest pride,-the spirit of a slave.
Nevertheless, there is somewhat to be pleaded, even for a necessary guile,
Whilst the world, and all that is therein, lieth deep in evil.
Who can be altogether honest,—a champion never out of mail,
Ready to break a lance for truth with every crowding error?
Who can be altogether honest,-dragging out the secrecies of life,
And risking to be lashed and loathed for each unkind disclosure?
Who can be altogether honest,-living in perpetual contentions,
And prying out the petty cheats that swell the social scheme?
For he must speak his instant mind,—a mind corrupt and sinful,
Exhibiting to other men's disgust its undisguised deformities;
He must utter all the hatred of his heart, and add to it the venom of his
Shall he feel, and hide his feelings? that were the meanness of a hypo
Still, O man, such hypocrisy is better than this bold honesty to sin:
Kill the feeling, or conceal it: let shame at least do the work of charity.
O charity, thou livest not in warnings, meddling among men,
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