May the affections, reason, will,
Wait upon Him to fulfil

His behests, and early pay
Homage to His natal day.

Archbishop Trench

XXXVI

THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST

Y cool Siloam's shady rill

B How sweet the lily grows;

How sweet the breath beneath the hill
Of Sharon's dewy rose:

Lo such the child whose early feet

The paths of peace have trod ;

Whose secret heart with influence sweet

Is lifted up to God.

By cool Siloam's shady rill

The lily must decay;

The rose that blooms beneath the hill

Must shortly fade away;

And soon, too soon, the wintry hour

Of man's maturer age

Will shake the soul with sorrow's power,
And stormy passion's rage.

O Thou whose infant feet were found
Within Thy Father's shrine,

Whose years with changeless virtue crowned
Were all alike Divine:

Dependent on Thy bounteous breath,
We seek Thy grace alone

In childhood, manhood,, age, and death,

To keep us still Thine own.

Bishop Heber

XXXVII

GLORIES OF THE MESSIAH

ISE, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise,

RExalt thy towery head, and lift thy eyes!

See a long race thy spacious courts adorn ;
See future sons and daughters, yet unborn,
In crowding ranks on every side arise,
Demanding life, impatient for the skies!
See barbarous nations at thy gate attend,
Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings,
And heaped with products of Sabean springs !
For thee, Idume's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See Heaven its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day.
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze

O'erflow thy courts: the Light Himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!

The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fixed His word, His saving power remains;
Thy realm forever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns.
A. Pope

E

XXXVIII

CHRIST BETRAYED

IGHTEEN hundred years agone

Was that deed of darkness done -

Was that sacred thorn-crowned head

To a shameful death betrayed,
And Iscariot's traitor name
Blazoned in eternal shame.
Thou, disciple of our time,
Follower of the faith sublime,
Who with high and holy scorn
Of that traitorous deed dost burn,
Though the years may nevermore
To our earth that form restore,
The Christ-spirit ever lives
Ever in thy heart He strives.
When pale misery mutely calls,
When thy brother tempted falls,
When thy gentle words may chain
Hate, and anger, and disdain,
Or Thy loving smile impart
Courage to some sinking heart :
When within Thy troubled breast
Good and evil thoughts contest,
Though unconscious thou mayst be,
The Christ-spirit strives with thee.

When He trod the holy land With His small disciple band, And the fated hour had come For that august martyrdom —

When the man, the human love,
And the God within Him strove
As in Gethsemane He wept,
They, the faithless watchers, slept:
While for them He wept and prayed,
One denied, and one betrayed!

If to-day thou turn'st aside,
In thy luxury and pride,
Wrapped within thyself, and blind
To the sorrows of thy kind,

Thou a faithless watch dost keep, —
Thou art one of those who sleep :
Or, if waking, thou dost see
Nothing of divinity

In our fallen struggling race,
If in them thou see'st no trace
Of a glory dimmed, not gone,
Of a future to be won,
Of a future, hopeful, high,
Thou, like Peter, dost deny :
But, if seeing, thou believest,
If the Evangel thou receivest,
Yet, if thou art bound to sin,
False to the ideal within,
Slave of ease, or slave of gold,
Thou the Son of God hast sold.

A. C. Lynch

XXXIX

L

THE DEATH OF CHRIST

ORD Jesu, when we stand afar

And gaze upon Thy Holy Cross,
In love of Thee and scorn of self,
O, may we count the world as loss !

When we behold Thy bleeding wounds,
And the rough way that Thou hast trod,
Make us to hate the load of sin

That lay so heavy on our God.

O holy Lord! uplifted high

With outstretched arms, in mortal woe,
Embracing in Thy wondrous love
The sinful world that lies below:

Give us an ever-living faith

To gaze beyond the things we see ; And in the mystery of Thy Death Draw us and all men unto Thee!

William Walsham Howe