Where the worth to thine impotent heart, of that stirred Bethesda, The soul to be reconciled in love, the mind to be glorified in light, And if indeed for us all the costly ransom hath been paid, Bethink thee, could less than Deity have owned so vast a treasure? Could a man contend with God, and stand against the bosses of His buckler, Rendering the balance for guilt, atonement to the uttermost? Thou art subtle to thine own thinking, but wisdom judgeth thee a fool, Resolving thou wilt not bow the knee to a Being thou canst not com prehend: The mind that could compass perfection were itself perfection's equal; And reason refuseth its homage to a God who can be fully understood. THOU that despisest mystery, yet canst expound nothing, Wherefore rejectest thou the fact that solveth the enigma of all things? OF THINKING. REFLECTION is a flower of the nund, giving out wholesome fragrance, And if thou leanest on thyself, thou rejectedst the guidance of thy betters, For, though new ideas flow from new springs, and enrich the treasury of knowledge, Yet listen often, ere thou think much; and look around thee ere thou judgest. Memory, the daughter of Attention, is the teeming mother of Wisdom, And safer is he that storeth knowledge, than he that would make it for himself. IMAGINATION is not thought, neither is fancy reflection: Thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle; Reflection sternly considereth, nor is sparing to condemn evil, But fancy lightly laugheth, in the sun-clad garden of amusement. For the shy game of the fowler the quickest shot is the surest; But with slow care and measured aim the gunner pointeth his cannon: So for all less occasions, the surface-thought is best, But to be master of the great take thou heavier metal. It is a good thing, and a wholesome, to search out bosom sins, But to be the hero of selfish imaginings, is the subtle poison of pride: prayer, Or thinking will be an idle pleasure, and retrospect yield no fruit. And let a watchful spirit mingle with the glance of recollection : Also, in examining thine heart, in sounding the fountain of thine actions, Be more careful of the evil than of the good: and humble thyself in thy sin. THE root of all wholesome thought is knowledge of thyself, For thus only canst thou learn the character of God toward thee. Or the properties of matter and mind, but the arbitrary fiats of Jehovah ? Or the wisdom of God sit down at the feet of innate necessity? CANST thou measure Omnipotence, canst thou conceive Ubiquity, comet? To Him all things are equal, for all things are necessary. The smith is weary at his forge, and weldeth the metal carelessly, And the anchor breaketh in its bed; and the vessel foundereth with her crew: A word of anger is muttered, engendering the midnight murder: The sun bursteth from a cloud, and maddeneth the toiling husbandman. Shall these things be, and God not know it? Shall he know, and not be in them? shall he see, and not be among them? And how can they be otherwise than as he knoweth ? Truly, the Lord is in all things; verily, he worketh in all. Think thus, and thy thoughts are firm, ascribing each circumstance to Him; Yet know surely, and believe the truth, that God willeth not evil: For adversities are blessings in disguise, and wickedness the Lord abhorreth; That he is in all things is an axiom, and that he is righteous in all: In works of art, think justly: what praise canst thou render unto man? And could he frame it so subtly as to give it a will and freedom, Otherwise, thou art senseless as the pagan, that adoreth his own handi work; Ye, while thou boastest of thy wisdom, thy mind is as the mind of the savage, For he boweth down to his idols, and thou art a worshipper of self, THE keystone of thy mind, to give thy thoughts solidity, To bind them as in an arch, to fix them as a world in its sphere, Is to learn from the book of the Lord, to drink from the well of his wisdom. Who can condense the sun, or analyse the fulness of the Bible, So that its ideas be gathered, and the harvest of its wisdom be brought in? To the humble disciple it is bread, but a stone to the proud and unbelieving : A scorner shall find nothing but the husks, where with to feed his hunger, But for the soul of the simple, it is plenty of full-ripe wheat. The Scripture abideth the same in the sober majesty of truth; And the differing aspects of its teaching proceed from diversity in minds. Religion taketh by the hand the humble pupil of repentance, COME hither, child of meditation, upon whose high fair forehead Hast thou nought to tell us of thine airy joys,— When borne on sinewy pinions, strong as the western condor, The soul, after soaring for a while round the cloud-capped Andes of reflection, Glad in its conscious immortality, leaveth a world behind, To dare at one bold flight the broad Atlantic to another? No dread of thine own energies, still active, day and night, Or vivid horrors, sharp and clear, madden thy tense fibres? In half-shaped visions of sleep hast thou not feared thy flittings, Lest reason, like a raking hawk, return not to thy call; Nor waked to work-day life with throbbing head and heart, |