Another, as with Heaven and earth and hell;
Ours, as He loves to order a chance soul
Chosen out of the world, from first to last.
And all along it is the heart of man
Emblemed, created and creative mind.
It is a statued mind and naked heart
Which is struck out. Other bards draw men dressed
In manners, customs, forms, appearances,
Laws, places, times, and countless accidents
Of peace or polity: to him these are not;
He makes no mention, takes no compt of them:—
But shows, however great his doubts, sins, trials,
Whatever earthborn pleasures soil man’s soul,
What power soever he may gain of evil,
That still, till death, time is; that God’s great Heaven
Stands open day and night to man and spirit;
For all are of the race of God, and have
In themselves good. The life-writ of a heart,
Whose firmest prop and highest meaning was
The hope of serving God as poet-priest,
And the belief that He would not put back
Love-offerings, though brought to Him by hands
Unclean and earthy, e’en as fallen man’s
Must be; and most of all, the thankful show
Of His high power and goodness in redeeming
And blessing souls that love Him, spite of sin
And their old earthy strain—these are the aims,
The doctrines, truths, and staple of the story.
What theme sublimer than soul being, saved?
’Tis the bard’s aim to show the mind-made world
Without, within; how the soul stands with God,
And the unseen realities about us.
It is a view of life spiritual
And earthly. Let all look upon it, then,
In the same light it was drawn and colored in;
In faith, in that the writer too hath faith,
Albeit an effect, and not a cause.
Faith is a higher faculty than reason,
Though of the brightest power of revelation;
As the snow-headed mountain rises o’er
The lightning, and applies itself to Heaven.
We know in day-time there are stars about us,
Just as at night, and name them what and where
By sight of science; so by faith we know,
Although we may not see them till our night,
That spirits are about us, and believe,
That, to a spirit’s eye, all Heaven may be
As full of angels as a beam of light
Of motes. As spiritual, it shows all
Classes of life, perhaps, above our kind,
Known to tradition, reason, or God’s word,
Whose bright foundations are the heights of Heaven.
As earthly, it embodies most the life
Of youth, its powers, its aims, its deeds, its failings;
And, as a sketch of world-life, it begins
And ends, and rightly, in Heaven and with God;
While Heaven is also in the midst thereof.
God, or all good, the evil of the world,
And man, wherein are both, are each displayed.
The mortal is the model of all men.
The foibles, follies, trials, sufferings—
And manifest and manifold are they—
Of a young, hot, unworld-schooled heart that has
Had its own way in life, and wherein all
May see some likeness of their own—’tis these
Attract, unite, and, sunlike, concentrate
The ever-moving system of our feelings.
The hero is the world-man, in whose heart
One passion stands for all, the most indulged.
The scenes wherein he plays his part are life,
A sphere whose centre is co-heavenly
With its divine original and end.
Like life, too, as a whole, the story hath
A moral, and each scene one, as in life—
One universal and peculiar truth—
Shining upon it like the quiet moon,
Illustrating the obscure unequal earth;—
And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes
Irregular and rough and unconnected,
Like to the stones at Stonehenge—though convolved,
And in primeval mystery—still an use,
A meaning, and a purpose may be marked
Among them of a temple reared to God:—
The meaning alway dwelling in the word,
In secret sanctity, like a golden toy
Mid Beauty’s orbed bosom. Scenes of earth
And Heaven are mixed, as flesh and soul in man.
Now, the religion of the book is this,
Followed out from the book God writ of old.
All creatures being faulty by their nature,
And by God made all liable to sin,
God only could atone—and unto none
Except Himself—for universal sin.
It is thus that God did sacrifice to God,
Himself unto Himself, in the great way
Of Triune mystery. His death, as man,
Was real as our own; and as, except
In the destruction of all life, there could
Be no atonement for its sin, while life
Doth necessarily result from God,
As thought and outward action from ourselves,
So the atonement must be to and by Him;
Which makes it justice equally with love;
For all His powers and attributes are equal,
And must make one in any act of His;
And every act of God is infinite.
He acts through all in all: the truth we know,
He doth Himself inbreathe; the ill we do,
He hath atoned for; and the scriptures show
That God doth suffer for the sins of those
Whom He hath made, that are liable to sin.
In all of us He hath His agony;
We are the cross, and death of God, and grave.
Him love then all the more, and worship Him
Who lived and died, and rose from death for us,
And is and reigns forever God in all.
Let each man think himself an act of God,
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God;
And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds,
To show the most of Heaven he hath in him.
Many who read the word of life, much doubt
Whether salvation be of grace or faith,
Election, or repentance, or good works,
Or God’s high will: reconcile all of them.
Each of the persons of the Triune God
Hath had His dispensation, hath it now;
The Father by His prophets, and the Son
In His own days, by His own deeds; and now
The Spirit, by the ministry of Christ;
And thus, by law, by gospel, and by grace,
The scheme of God’s salvation is complete.
Salvation, then, is God-like, threefold; so
That under one or other, all may come;
By will of God alone, by faith in Christ,
And by repentance, and good works, and grace.
So there is one salvation of the Father,
One of the Son, another of the Spirit;
Each, the salvation of the Three in One.
The mortal in this lay is saved of will,
In manner as this hymn unfolds, which hath
Just warranty for every word from God’s.
O God! Thou wondrous One in Three,
As mortals must Thee deem;
Thou only canst be said to be,
We but at best to seem.
For Thou dost save,
