University of Virginia Library

VII.

Good: and the next thing is,—look round
For evidence enough! 'Tis found,
No doubt: as is your sort of mind,
So is your sort of search: you'll find
What you desire, and that's to be
A Christian. What says history?
How comforting a point it were
To find some mummy-scrap declare
There lived a Moses! Better still,
Prove Jonah's whale translatable
Into some quicksand of the seas,
Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please,
That faith might flap her wings and crow
From such an eminence! Or, no—
The human heart's best; you prefer
Making that prove the minister
To truth; you probe its wants and needs,
And hopes and fears, then try what creeds
Meet these most aptly,—resolute
That faith plucks such substantial fruit
Wherever these two correspond,
She little needs to look beyond,
And puzzle out who Orpheus was,
Or Dionysius Zagrias.
You'll find sufficient, as I say,
To satisfy you either way;
You wanted to believe; your pains
Are crowned—you do: and what remains?
“Renounce the world!”—Ah, were it done
By merely cutting one by one
Your limbs off, with your wise head last,
How easy were it!—how soon past,
If once in the believing mood!
“Such is man's usual gratitude,
“Such thanks to God do we return,
“For not exacting that we spurn
“A single gift of life, forego
“One real gain,—only taste them so
“With gravity and temperance,
“That those mild virtues may enhance
“Such pleasures, rather than abstract—
“Last spice of which, will be the fact
“Of love discerned in every gift;
“While, when the scene of life shall shift,
“And the gay heart be taught to ache,
“As sorrows and privations take
“The place of joy,—the thing that seems
“Mere misery, under human schemes,
“Becomes, regarded by the light
“Of love, as very near, or quite
“As good a gift as joy before.
“So plain is it that, all the more
“A dispensation's merciful,
“More pettishly we try and cull
“Briers, thistles, from our private plot,
“To mar God's ground where thorns are not!”