The Sanctuary :: :: University of Virginia Library

And didst thou choose the better part
Accepted Mary, meek and mild,
When seated near the Saviour's heart
And learning like a little child?—
Such attitude the loving soul
Must ever take in things divine
If faith would hear that whisper roll,
“Lo, I am His, and He is mine:”
Since Christ is Wisdom, and His counsel, truth,—
Guardian of age and guide of perill'd youth.

But, next to Him, the Church would hail
Those mirrors which reflect the Lord,—
Apostles, in whose type prevail
All which their grace and gifts afford
Of prowess, purity, and zeal,
And heaven-toned virtue, calm and high,
Whose radiant altitudes reveal
How near they rose, to reach the sky!—
Not as Apostles, but, as sainted men
Why may we not behold their like again?

And, what a teaching mass we find
Of character before us set,
Whose truths and tempers yield mankind
Wisdom,—the wise are learning yet!
Highway and hedge, the lane, the street,
Judèan wilds, the temple-court,
Or busy mart where rivals meet
And thronging hosts for gain resort,—
Each may afford to Faith's perusing eyes
Warnings the lesson'd heart will love to prize.

244

But on this day the Church may see
A mortal paraclete in love,
Whose breast o'erflow'd with deity
Illapsing from Himself above:—
By sympathetic depth of heart
His nature and his name express
Oh Truth! how magical thou art
When mighty by pure gentleness,
Like him who laid his lands by purchase down
In sign of homage to the Saviour's crown.

Love was his charm; but never yet
Perfection, save in Christ, appears;
And this mild Levite wakes regret
When we recall his recreant fears:—
By weak compliance once he fell
And compromised his Master's cause
By shielding (though He knew him well)
The Saint who broke those sacred laws
Which bind us, when our Creeds for succour call,
In Christ to see our everlasting All.

Let not our hearts like Eli love,
Who in the parent sank his God,
And rather than a Vice reprove
Endur'd the way bad children trod.
Blandness becomes a treason-crime
And soft affections serpents are,—
Except beyond the bounds of time
By faith we live; and learn by prayer
To guard the conscience from seductive wiles
When meek-tongued compromise the man beguiles.

Such lesson, Lord, a land requires,
By prayer and principle unbraced;
Where faintly burn our altar-fires
And weak confessors stand disgraced,
While pagan culture, polish'd mien
And languor with its loveless eye

245

Forget what martyr'd souls have been
When friends and foes were scowling nigh:—
Heroes we want, whose never-shaking nerve
A universe might fail from God to swerve!

Serene, contemplative and pure
Like John of Patmos may we prove,
Whom death nor dungeon could allure
To break the spell of holy love.
Eternity through time he saw,
And God in man by grace beheld;
And therefore, with rebuking awe
The traitor and his treason quell'd,
Causing the world this creed of Heaven to know,—
The Friend of sinners was of sin the Foe.

Luke x. 42.

Barnabas, i.e. “The son of consolation.”

“Full of the Holy Ghost,” Acts xi. 24.

Acts xv. 37, 38.