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THE BROAD CREED.

THE BROAD CREED.

TRUTH is one;

And in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity.

No scroll of creed its fullness warps,
We trace it not by school-boy maps,
Free as the sun and air it is
Of latitude and boundaries.
In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,
Are messages of good to man;
The angels to our Aryan sires
Talked by the earliest household fires.

Nor doth it lessen what he taught,
Or make the gospel Jesus brought
Less precious, that His lips retold
Some portion of that truth of old;
Denying not the proven seers,
The tested wisdom of the years;
Confirming with his own impress
The common law of righteousness.

We search the world for truth; we cull

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THE BROAD CREED.

The good, the pure, the beautiful
From graven stone and written scroll,
From all old flower-fields of the soul;
And, weary seekers of the best,

We come back laden from the quest,
To find that all the sages said

Is in the book our mothers read.

And all our treasure of old thought
In His harmonious fullness wrought,
Who gathers in a sheaf complete

The scattered blades of God's own wheat,
The common growth that maketh good
His all-embracing Fatherhood.

Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice;

Where love its arms has opened wide,
Or

r man for man has calmly died,

I see the same white wings outspread
That hovered o'er the Master's head!
I trace His presence in the blind
Pathetic gropings of my kind-
In prayers for sin and sorrow wrung,
In cradle hymns of life they sung,
Each in its measure, but a part
Of the unmeasured Over Heart:

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THE BROAD CREED.

And with a stronger faith confess
The greater that it owns the less.

Nor fear I aught that science brings
From searching through material things;
Content to let its glasses prove,

Not by the letter's oldness move

The myriad worlds on worlds that course spaces of the universe;

The

Since everywhere the spirit walks
The garden of the heart and talks
With man, as under Eden's trees,
In all its varied languages.

Why mourn above some hopeless flaw
In the stone tables of the law,
When Scripture every day afresh
Is traced on tables of the flesh?
By inward sense, by outward signs,
God's presence still the heart divines!
Through deepest joy of Him we learn,
In sorest grief to Him we turn,
And reason stoops its pride to share
The child-like instinct of a prayer.

J. G. WHITTIER.

INSPIRATION.

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INSPIRATION.

LIFE of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God, unspent and free,
Flowing in the prophet's word
And the people's liberty!

Never was to chosen race

That unstinted tide confined;

Thine is every time and place,

Fountain sweet of heart and mind!

Secret of the morning stars,

Motion of the oldest hours,
Pledge through elemental wars
Of the coming spirit's powers!

Rolling planet, flaming sun,

Stand in nobler man complete;

Prescient laws thine errands run,

Frame the shrine for Godhead meet.

Homeward led, the wondering eye

Upward yearned in joy or awe,

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INSPIRATION.

Found the love that waited nigh,
Guidance of thy guardian law.

In the touch of earth it thrilled;

Down from mystic skies it burned;
Right obeyed and passion stilled
Its eternal gladness earned.

Breathing in the thinker's creed,
Pulsing in the hero's blood,

Nerving simplest thought and deed,
Freshening time with truth and good,

Consecrating art and song,

Holy book and pilgrim track,
Hurling floods of tyrant wrong

From the sacred limits back.

Life of Ages, richly poured,

Love of God, unspent and free,

Flow still in the prophet's word

And the people's liberty!

SAMUEL JOHNSON...