University of Virginia Library

But, day advances: hark! from tower and spire
Pointing the soul, like principles, to heaven
And happiness, the many-voicèd bells
Peal their high summons, which invite the world
To meet her Maker, in His temple shrined
Waiting due worship. Oh! ethereal Day
Beyond the grossness of the belial-sense
Rightly to value, what a blighted scene,
Yea, what a prison-vault of petty cares,
Polluted dreams, and soul-degrading joys
Would earth, if sabbathless, at once become!
For since like angels, men should feel and act
By God approved, if glory such desire,
How priceless is the sabbath! when we hail
The soul of six days in the seventh divine.

To let th' eternal o'er the temp'ral cast
A shading awe, which bids this world away;
Low earth to heaven by aspiration's wing
To lift; by symbols and by signs to charm
Cold nature, and imagination feed
With rites which nourish for ennobling growth
Our being; then, by combination due
Of epochs high, traditions pure, and faith
Unblemish'd, from a gospel-fountain drawn,—
Here is the function which a Sabbath fills.
With these conjoin appliances devout
Of praise, confession, penitence, and prayer,
Bathing the conscience in the crimson Blood
Of Christ, and who can such a day blaspheme,
Thus propertied with those divinest powers
That to the secret roots of all which makes
A people holy, or an empire wise,
Send a live influence from Religion's heart?

'Tis chiefly through such institute sublime
Sanction'd by God, and by Himself first kept,
The soul's position in the truth appears
E'en as it is before omniscient Heaven.
Now are we taught by rites, and facts reveal'd,
Or by appeals, whose virtue is Thy pang,
Emmanuel! through a hidden grace applied,
A truth which humbles, yet with holy might
The heart attempers till it loves the law
Celestial; e'en this truth, the base of all
In moral code or creed religious found,—
That God made man, but man himself unmade;
And now is fallen from supernal heights
Of being, into cursed and carnal depths
Apostate, helpless, hopeless, and impure,
And, having nothing but a guilt,—his own!
Oh Verity! beyond our solving minds
To master, but by all things sign'd and seal'd;
Since nature providence and grace combine
Their witness, and authenticate the Fall:
Explaining much, itself is unexplain'd;
Remains a myst'ry, but all myst'ries lights
With radiance, pure as reason's eye approves.
Deny it,—what a libel on the Love
Almighty, does this blasted Earth become!
So much of grandeur in our grief abides,
So much of glory in our gloom appears,
And in the soil of each corrupted soul
So oft the foot-prints of departed God
Leave shining impress of their primal track,
That, if not fallen, but in form of mind
Man in his perfect God-created mould
Be yet apparent,—what a satire, then,
On Power Creative seems our anarch state!
Or rather, by such contradiction judged,
Incarnate angels, base and yet sublime,
Would men be christen'd, if no beam from heaven
Lighten'd the gloom of this chaotic world.

And therefore, glory to this Day benign!
For now, eternity and time will meet,
The heavenly on the earthly state shall dawn,
And Man, who in the mass and multitude
Of work-day powers, and worldly movements, makes
Too often but an item unobserved,
Here in the Temple, where a church becomes
A shrine of morals to regen'rate hearts,
Himself shall realise as full-orb'd Man!
Single and one, within him hiding depths
Of solemn, vast, and individual life
Beyond all utt'rance! life which few discern
Or ponder, yet beyond all speech august,
Since there alone our secresy of strength
And power of unpartaken being dwell.
For what is Action, but the spirit's garb,
The form and pressure of a Life unseen?
And that, more awful than the outer-sense
Can shape, or recognise by teaching words.
But life exterior, with its painted shows,
And all its multiplex array of scenes
By conduct acted or experience tried,
Is like the ripple marked on ocean's face,—
Hiding an unregarded deep below
And tempting gazers to discern no more.

Then, lift your heads, ye Everlasting Doors!
And be ye open, O Eternal Gates!
That in the chariot of descending grace
Borne by His Spirit down to hearts which pray,
The King of Glory with His train of truths
Begirt, may come, and find due welcome there.
England! be grateful; for a scene that fills
The soul with thoughts, whose dialect is tears,
Around us opens with expansive range.
Uncounted steeples now to heaven uplift
Their chimes, and swell the wafting air with tones
Which rise and fall, like undulating waves
In volumed cadence heaved upon the shore:
And touching are they!—for the tombs of Time
Open amid them, as they peal, or pause;
While buried hopes, and forms, and feelings dead
Quicken beneath their resurrection-tones
Mysterious. But far more than gazing sense
On earth can witness, will those gather'd souls
Who meet for worship with commingled awe,
The God Incarnate,—to the Angels bright
This morn discover, when the piercing truth
Enters their spirit with irradiant power,
And bares the bosom of the soul to light!
For hearts to them, are like transparent hives,
Whose hidden workings are conspicuous made
And watch'd for ever. Yes, the sabbath gives
Wisdom to Angels, while they bend to see
How nature struggles, as the Spirit acts,
Revives our graces, or a sin rebukes;
Or, drags the guilty to that secret bar,
That stern tribunal where dread conscience reigns,
And self by self is summon'd!—'Tis a day
When such bright Angels watch the soul redeem'd
Who love to think, where infidels would sneer,
And learn divinity by reading man.