That with thy patient Spirit strove

Upon the Red-sea strand.

O Father of long-suffering grace,

Thou who hast sworn to stay Pleading with sinners face to face Through all their devious

way,

How shall we speak to Thee, O Lord,

Or how in silence lie?
Look on us, and we are abhorr'd,

Turn from us, and we die.

Thy guardian fire, thy guiding cloud,

Still let them gild our wall, Nor be our foes and thine allow'd

To see us faint and fall.

Too oft, within this camp of thine,

Rebellious murmurs rise ;
Sin cannot bear to see thee shine

So awful to her eyes.

Fain would our lawless hearts escape,

And with the heathen be,

To worship every monstrous shape

In fancied darkness free.

Vain thought, that shall not be at all !

Refuse we or obey,
Our ears have heard th’ Almighty's call,

We cannot be as they.

We cannot hope the heathen's doom,

To whom God's Son is given,
Whose eyes have seen beyond the tomb,

Who have the key of Heaven.

Weak tremblers on the edge of woe,

Yet shrinking from true bliss,
Our rest must be 56 no rest below,"

And let our prayer be this :

“ LORD, wave again thy chastening rod,

“ Till every idol throne
“ Crumble to dust, and Thou, O God,

Reign in our hearts alone.

6 Ezekiel xx. 32. That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.

R

“ Bring all our wandering fancies home,

“ For Thou hast every spell, 66 And ’mid the heathen where they roam,

“ Thou knowest, LORD, too well.

“ Thou know'st our service sad and hard,

66 Thou know'st us fond and frail ;66 Win us to be belov’d and spar'd

6. When all the world shall fail.

“ So when at last our weary days

“ Are well-nigh wasted here, “ And we can trace thy wondrous ways

« In distance calm and clear,

" When in thy love and Israel's sin

“ We read our story true, “ We may not, all too late, begin

66 To wish our hopes were new :

Long lov’d, long tried, long spar'd as they,

66 Unlike in this alone, “ That, by thy grace, our hearts shall stay

For evermore thine own."

NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER

TRINITY.

Then Nebuchadnezzar the King was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire ? They answered and said unto the King, True, O King. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. Daniel iii. 25.

WHEN Persecution's torrent blaze

Wraps the unshrinking Martyr's head ;
When fade all earthly flowers and bays,

When summer friends are gone and fled,
Is he alone in that dark hour,
Who owns the Lord of love and power ?

Or waves there not around his brow

A wand no human arm may wield,
Fraught with a spell no angels know,

His steps to guide, his soul to shield ?

Thou, Saviour, art his charmed bower,
His magic ring, his rock, his tower.

And when the wicked ones behold

Thy favourites walking in thy light, Just as, in fancied triumph bold,

They deem’d them lost in deadly night, Amaz’d they cry, “ What spell is this, “ Which turns their sufferings all to bliss ?

66

“ How are they free whom we had bound,

Upright, whom in the gulf we cast ? “ What wondrous helper have they found

“ To screen them from the scorching blast? “ Three were they—who hath made them four ? 66 And sure a form divine he wore,

6. Even like the Son of God.” So cried

The Tyrant, when in one fierce flame
The martyrs liv’d, the murderers died :

Yet knew he not what angel came
To make the rushing fire-flood seem
Like summer breeze by woodland stream '.