Absolution.
“Then shall the Priest (or the Bishop, being present) stand up,
and turning himself to the People, pronounce this absolution.”
—Rubric.
Will God indeed my forfeit-soul forgive?”—
Eternity would one dread echo be,
Except the Lord, with Whom all spirits live,
Waft from His Throne an answer back to thee
Pale questioner!—o'erwhelm'd with dismal awe
When guilt is darken'd by the light of law.
Such was the problem, whose perturbing gloom
Shaded the heart of many a moral sage,
When through his doubt there yawn'd a distant tomb
And conscience shudder'd with a dread presage:—
Hereafter wore the blackness of despair
And threaten'd nought but retribution there.
Oft in some boundless dream when sacred Thought
Seem'd to unfold her wings and soar to God,
Mounting with more than mortal wisdom fraught,
As though divine Imagination trod
Pathways of glory lined by Angel-bands
Who bore it upward with sustaining hands,—
Back to the grave when guilt again return'd
How must those ethic bards of Greece and Rome
For some Revealer in that hour have yearn'd,
The way to open whence the pardons come,—
Which now the channels of The Church impart
With perfect clearness to each contrite heart.
Sublime of privilege!—if grateful love
Would reason less and learn to worship more;
Looking through man to Him, Whose heart above
Shrines in its depths an everlasting store
Of comforts, promised through His Priests below
To all who see Him while their mercies flow.
Christ in His Church an omnipresence is,
By realising faith divinely known;
And none deny the sacramental bliss
Of sharing there what sight can never own,—
But intellectual Cains, whose creedless mind
Murders the truth, to make their conscience blind.
Children of God, elect of grace, draw nigh,
Not in the orphanhood of guilt remain;
Fix on yon mercy-seat your lifted eye
And lo, the Lord! in Whom compassions reign;
That true Absolver, o'er whose face benign
God though He is, love marks its human line.
Go, and rehearse heaven's pardon, thou,
And like a Nathan at God's altar stand
Priest of the Lord!—by absolution now
Bid the rich graces of the Cross expand,
That lapsèd souls by sinful earth depraved,
From guilt unbound, no more may be enslaved.
Here is Heaven's balm to heal the wounded mind,
When truth and tenderness together blend;
While, (fraught with mercies which release mankind),
Fresh from Christ's heart those righteous pardons wend,—
Where peace and pureness are alike divine
And God and Man both savingly combine.
