Faith.

'STRONG SON OF GOD.'

TRONG Son of God, immortal Love,

STRO

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which Thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood Thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see ;
And yet we trust it comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster.

We are fools and slight;

We mock Thee when we do not fear; But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

'WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS.'

T fortifies my soul to know

IT

That, though I perish, Truth is so;
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall

That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

THE WILL OF GOD.

WORSHIP thee, sweet will of God!
And all thy ways adore,

And every day I live I seem
To love thee more and more.

Thou wert the end, the blessed rule
Of our Saviour's toils and tears;
Thou wert the passion of his heart
Those three and thirty years.

And He hath breathed into

A special love of thee,
A love to lose my will in his,
And by that loss be free.

my soul

I love to kiss each print where thou
Hast set thine unseen feet:
I cannot fear thee, blessed Will!
Thine empire is so sweet.

When obstacles and trials seem
Like prison walls to be,

I do the little I can do,
And leave the rest to thee.

I have no cares, O blessed Will!
For all my cares are thine;
I live in triumph, Lord! for Thou
Hast made thy triumphs mine.

Man's weakness waiting upon God
Its end can never miss,

For men on earth no work can do
More angel-like than this.

Ride on, ride on, triumphantly,
Thou glorious Will! ride on ;
Faith's pilgrim sons behind thee take
The road that thou hast gone.

He always wins who sides with God,
To him no chance is lost;
God's will is sweetest to him when
It triumphs at his cost.

Ill that He blesses is our good,
And unblest good is ill;

And all is right that seems most wrong,

If it be his sweet will.

FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER.

THE FLOWER.

HOW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in

spring;

To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away

Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greenness? It was gone Quite underground, as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown ; Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amiss

This or that is:

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither! Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Off'ring at heaven, growing and groaning thither; Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-shower,

My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent as if heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline :

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,

When Thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown.