First Sunday after the Epiphany.
“Mercifully receive the prayers of Thy people which call upon Thee.”
—Collect for the Day.
E'en to the inmost centre of the soul
Burning with shame, let men confess the whole
Of that vast debt to Law they owe;
And, while Emanuel welcomes prayer,
Be ours a Litany, inspired with—“spare,
And soothe our agonising woe.”
Low in the dust, we thus Thy Name adore:
Thy ruin'd penitents to grace restore,
And bring them back to heaven and Thee;
So may the soul hereafter live, and shine
In law's obedience, and with love divine
Embrace reveal'd eternity.
How blest are they, whose filial hearts and true,
By Christ atoned, their sinful madness rue:
And to the Priest Eternal bring
Burdens of guilt, or shame, or gloomy crime,
That darken hope, and agonize all time
With pangs which the remorseful wring.
Here doth the Church man's cheating world oppose,
And teach equality to friends and foes,
By proving,—all apostate are:
Wealth, rank, and splendor, whose seductive lies
The vain re-echo, and the vicious prize,
Vanish, in one confession-prayer!
And lift we, too, this lauding hymn of love
To Him, the Priest of priesthood throned above,—
That not with us, as once of old,
The Priest alone within God's awful Shrine,
Presenteth prayer in secresy divine
Which none but Heaven and he behold.
Not in the bondage of dread Law are we!
But, in the fullness of the Gospel, free
Around a throne of Grace to stand;
And with the Priest our pleading voice to blend,
Finding in God our Father and our Friend,
With lowly heart, and lifted hand.
Sion, not Sinai, is the Mount where man
Enters within the veil of Mercy's plan;
And there, oh Lord! thy Church is found:
Sackcloth'd with grief, or, clothed with saintly zeal,
Charter'd by heaven-born right, Herself
to feel
Of Truth the pillar, and the ground.
