LI

HE

CHRIST OUR GOD

E, who on earth as man was known,
And bore our sins and pains,

Now, seated on the eternal Throne,
The God of Glory reigns.

His hands the wheels of Nature guide
With an unerring skill,

And countless worlds, extended wide,
Obey His sovereign will.

While harps unnumbered sound His praise

In yonder world above,
His saints on earth admire His ways

And glory in His love.

His righteousness, to faith revealed,
Wrought out for guilty worms,
Affords a hiding-place and shield
From enemies and storms.

This land through which His pilgrims go,

Is desolate and dry;

But streams of grace from Him o'erflow, Their thirst to satisfy.

When troubles, like a burning sun,

Beat heavy on their head,

To this Almighty Rock they run,

And find a pleasing shade.

How glorious He! how happy they
In such a glorious Friend!

Whose love secures them all the way,

And crowns them at the end.

LII

J. Newton

W

THE MEDIATOR

HERE high the heavenly temple stands,
The house of God not made with hands,

A great High Priest our nature wears,
The Saviour of mankind appears.

He who for man in mercy stood,

And poured on earth His precious blood,
Pursues in heaven His plan of grace,
The guardian God of human race.

Though now ascended up on high,
He bends on earth a brother's eye,
Partaker of the human name,
He knows the frailty of our frame.

Our fellow-sufferer yet retains
A fellow-feeling for our pains;
And still remembers in the skies,
His tears, and agonies, and cries.

In every pang that rends the heart
The Man of Sorrows had a part;

He sympathises in our grief,

And to the sufferer sends relief.

With boldness, therefore, at the throne,
Let us make all our sorrows known,
And ask the aids of heavenly power,
To help us in the evil hour.

III

THE WRITTEN WORD

LIII

THE BIBLE

IM as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

DIM as of moon

Is reason to the soul: and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here: so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere,
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight;
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

John Dryden

LIV

THE GOSPELS

ND so the Word had breath, and wrought

AND so had and wrous

In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.

Which he may read that binds the sheaf,
Or builds the house, or digs the grave,

And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.

A. Tennyson

LV

THE SECOND DAY OF CREATION

HIS world I deem

THIS

But a beautiful dream

Of shadows that are not what they seem,

Where visions rise,

Giving dim surmise

Of the things that shall meet our waking eyes.

Arm of the Lord!

Creating Word!

Whose glory the silent skies record
Where stands Thy name

In scrolls of flame

On the firmament's high-shadowing frame.

I gaze o'erhead,

Where Thy hand hath spread

For the waters of Heaven that crystal bed,

And stored the dew

In its deeps of blue,

Which the fires of the sun come tempered through.

Soft they shine

Through that pure shrine,

As beneath the veil of Thy flesh divine,

Beams forth the light

That were else too bright

For the feebleness of a sinner's sight.

Where time and space are the warp and woof,