That with thy patient Spirit strove O Father of long-suffering grace, How shall we speak to Thee, O LORD, Or how in silence lie? Look on us, and we are abhorr'd, Turn from us, and we die. Thy guardian fire, thy guiding cloud, Still let them gild our wall, or be our foes and thine allow'd To see us faint and fall. Too oft, within this camp of thine, Rebellious murmurs rise; Sin cannot bear to see thee shine So awful to her eyes. Fain would our lawless hearts escape, And with the heathen be, To worship every monstrous shape In fancied darkness free b. Vain thought, that shall not be at all! Refuse we or obey, Our ears have heard th' Almighty's call, We cannot be as they. We cannot hope the heathen's doom, Weak tremblers on the edge of woe, "LORD, wave again thy chastening rod, "Till every idol throne "Crumble to dust, and Thou, O God, "Reign in our hearts alone. b Ezekiel xx. 32. That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone. "Bring all our wandering fancies home, "For Thou hast every spell, "And 'mid the heathen where they roam, "Thou knowest, LORD, too well. "Thou know'st our service sad and hard, "Thou know'st us fond and frail ; "Win us to be belov'd and spar'd "When all the world shall fail. "So when at last our weary days "When in thy love and Israel's sin "We read our story true, "We may not, all too late, begin "To wish our hopes were new: "Long lov'd, long tried, long spar'd as they, "Unlike in this alone, "That, by thy grace, our hearts shall stay "For evermore thine own." LXIX. NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Then Nebuchadnezzar the King was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the King, True, O King. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. Daniel iii. 25. WHEN Persecution's torrent blaze Wraps the unshrinking Martyr's head; Is he alone in that dark hour, Who owns the Lord of love and power? Or waves there not around his brow A wand no human arm may wield, His steps to guide, his soul to shield ? Thou, Saviour, art his charmed bower, His magic ring, his rock, his tower. And when the wicked ones behold Thy favourites walking in thy light, They deem'd them lost in deadly night, "How are they free whom we had bound, "To screen them from the scorching blast? "Even like the Son of God." So cried The Tyrant, when in one fierce flame To make the rushing fire-flood seem Like summer breeze by woodland stream. b Song of the Three Children, ver. 27. "As it had been a moist whistling wind.” |