24 'Twas thou that call'd me forth from nought, "Twas thou didst bid me be; That gave a world for my support; 25 'Twas thou that suffer'd in my stead; When sin and death enslav'd my soul; 26 When sorrows or temptations come, Or giv'st me strength to stand my ground; 27 All these thy general bounties, Lord, Of these, with all thy sons in Christ, 28 A long detail of debts, untold, 29 of debts too many, and too great, 30 Thro' dangers countless as the sands 31 When in the midst of woes and fears Thy providential pity lent A kind indulgent ear. 32 When prosp'rous fortune smooth'd her face, And spread her dang'rous wiles, With her seducing smiles; 33 'Twas then thy wisdom interfer'd, And loudly cry'd, 'beware! Behold the sting of sin, and death, That lurks beneath her snare.' 34 Of all the Christian vineyard, I On which superior brightness breaks, 35 Here double portions of thy light, Beam on the soul, awake its powers, 36 I neither stand aloft, expos'd Nor does my tortur'd spirit groan 37 I neither dread the dang'rous storms Nor feel the pressures that are felt, 38 For I my own wants I have enough, I've peace of mind, and in this world, 39 If counter to these comforts past Beneath thy chast'ning rod I'll bend, 40 If grief shou'd force a rueful groan, And make it mount in praise. 41 And when the gloomy hour of death 42 Die to this world, with all its fear, SENILIA. DEDICATION. TO THE READERS OF NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, REVIEWS, AND NOVELS. MY DEAR ATHENIANS, As you busy yourselves about nothing else, but to tell or hear some new thing;' as you are now almost the only readers among us; as your palates are too delicate for long concatenations of reasoning; as your digestion is not strong enough for more than two folio leaves of reading at a time; and as even of these you generally snap up but a morsel here and there; I here address to you a book, of no great size, consisting of things, more new to you than those of a weekly paper, or a novel, too concise to tire, too various, and, I hope, too spirited, not to entertain you a little. Every particular may be read by itself, as in your newspaper or magazine, without tempting you to the perusal of that which precedes or follows, for here all connexion of paragraphs, one with another, is industriously avoided. Open the book where you will, you shall find a scrap, not too long for a detention of more than from two to five or six minutes, excepting at numbers ten and twenty-two, not intended for your inspection, unless you are somewhat of a philosophical turn, or occasionally feel an appetite for a little hard and dry meat. Here nothing is racked a single line beyond its own natural length, so that your greatest compliment to the writer will be, to wish that on any one subject he had dwelt but half a minute longer. Having formerly published some little things, which he called his Juvenilia,' he calls these his 'Senilia,' written for your use, in his seventy-ninth year, hoping that either title might apologize for their numerous defects. His |