Her terror-stricken ear rejoicing raise
Unto the gospel's music. Bring again
Thy scattered people who so long have borne
A fearful punishment, so long wrung out
The bitter dregs of pale astonishment
Into the wine-cup of the wondering earth.
And oh, to us, who from our being's dawn
Lisp out salvation's lessons, yet do stray
Like erring sheep, to us thy spirit give,

That we may keep thy law and find thy fold,

Ere in the desolate city of the dead

We make our tenement, while earth doth blot

Our history from the record of mankind.

LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.

But, present still, though now unseen,
When brightly shines the prosperous day,
Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen,
To temper the deceitful ray.
And oh, when stoops on Judah's path
In shade and storm the frequent night,
Be thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath,
A burning and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel's streams,
The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn;
No censer round our altar beams,
And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn.
But thou hast said, The blood of goat,
The flesh of rams, I will not prize,
A contrite heart, a humble thought,
Are mine accepted sacrifice.”

1920.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

241

BETHLEHEM AND GOLGOTHA.

"Er ist in Bethlehem geboren."

The city of Shiraz, already referred to on page 158, lies in a Persian valley of surpassing loveliness, at an elevation of forty-five hundred feet above the sea. For five centuries it was a centre of science, art, and literature, and was noted for the splendor of its buildings, as well as for the beauty of its groves, vineyards, and gardens of roses. The Caaba (AlKaaba, square house) is a stone building in the mosque of Mecca, enclosing a black stone of an irregular oval shape, about seven inches in diameter, which, before the time of Mohammed, received idolatrous worship from the Arabians, and is still their most sacred object of veneration. Many thousands of pilgrims visit it every year. Every true Mohammedan fee's bound to see this stone once if possible.

IN Bethlehem the Lord of glory,
Who brought us life, first drew his breath;
On Golgotha, oh, bloody story!—
By suffering broke the power of death.
From Western shores, all danger scorning,
I travelled through the lands of morning;
And greater spots I nowhere saw,
Than Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Where are the seven works of wonder

The ancient world beheld with pride?
They all have fallen, sinking under

The splendor of the Crucified!
I saw them, as I wandered spying,
Amid their ruins crumbled, lying;
None stand in quiet gloria
Like Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Away, ye pyramids, whose bases

Lie shrouded in Egyptian gloom! Eternal graves! no resting-places,

Where hope immortal gilds the tomb. Ye sphinxes, vain was your endeavor To solve life's riddle, dark forever,

Until the answer came with awe
From Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Fair paradise, where ever blowing
The roses of Shiraz expand!
Ye stately palms of India, growing
Along her scented ocean-strand !
I see, amid your loveliest bowers,
Death stalking in the sunniest hours.

Look up! To you life comes from far.
From Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Thou Caaba, half the world, benighted.
Is stumbling o'er thee, as of old ;
Now, by thy crescent faintly lighted,
The coming day of doom behold:
The moon before the sun decreases,
A sign shall shiver thee to pieces;
The Hero's sign, " Victoria!"
Shout Bethlehem and Golgotha.

O Thou who, in a manger lying,

Wert willing to be born a child,
And on the cross, in anguish dying,
The world to God hast reconciled!
To pride, how mean thy lowly manger!
How infamous thy cross! yet stranger!
Humility became the law

At Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Proud kings, to worship One descended

From humble shepherds, thither came; And nations to the cross have wended,

As pilgrims, to adore his name. By war's fierce tempest rudely battered, The world, but not the cross, was shattered, When East and West it struggling saw Round Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Oh, let us not with mailed legions,

But with the spirit, take the field, To win again those holy regions,

As Christ compelled the world to yield!
Let rays of light, on all sides streaming,
Dart onward, like apostles gleaming,

Till all mankind their light shall draw
From Bethlehem and Golgotha!

With staff and hat, the scallop wearing,

The far-off East I journeyed through; And homeward, now, a pilgrim bearing

This message, I have come to you:
Go not with hat and staff to wander
Beside God's grave and cradle yonder;
Look inward, and behold with awe
His Bethlehem and Golgotha.

O heart! what profits all thy kneeling,
Where once he laid his infant head,
To view with an enraptured feeling
His grave, long empty of its dead?
To have him born in thee with power,
To die to earth and sin each hour,
And live to him, this only, ah!
Is Bethlehem and Golgotha.

Translated from the German of RÜCKERT, by
THOMAS C. PORTER, 1868.

PAUL.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, author and clergyman, was born in a.em, Mass, Oct. 10, 1822, and graduated at Harvard College in 1842. He compiled a book of hymns with the Rev. Samuel Longfellow in 1846, and has published elabo rate works on the religions of India (1872 and China (1879). THE Will Divine that woke a waiting time, With desert cry and Calvary's cross sublime, Had equal need on thee its power to prove, Thou soul of passionate zeal and tenderest love!

O slave devout of burdening Hebrew school,
Proud to fulfil each time-exalted rule,
How broke the illusion of thy swelling wrath
On that meek front of calm, enduring faith!

Then flashed it on thy spirit mightily
That thou hadst spurned a love that died for
thee!

And all the pride went down in whelming flood

Of boundless shame and boundless gratitude.

What large atonement that great conscience pays!

For every wounding slight, a psalm of praise; Unending worship shall the debt consume; For hours of rage, a life of martyrdom.

Yet in such morning glow, such vital day, What chilling sense of claim or debt can stay? O wondrous power of noble love, to free From binding Law to glorious Liberty!

Dream not that one hath drained the exhaustless sea;

Full pours the tide in widening stream for thee;

Lift for new liberties that conquering sign; Shatter the severing walls with touch divine! SAMUEL JOHNSON.

THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL.

THE midday sun, with fiercest glare,
Broods o'er the hazy, twinkling air;

Along the level sand

The palm-tree's shade unwavering lies,
Just as thy towers, Damascus, rise
To greet yon wearied band.
The leader of that martial crew
Seems bent some mighty deed to do,
So steadily he speeds,

With lips firm closed and fixed eye,
Like warrior when the fight is nigh,
Nor talk nor landscape heeds.

What sudden blaze is round him poured,
As though all Heaven's refulgent hoard
In one rich glory shone?
One moment, and to earth he falls:
What voice his inmost heart appalls?

Voice heard by him alone.

For to the rest both words and form Seem lost in lightning and in storm, While Saul, in wakeful trance,

Sees deep within that dazzling field
His persecuted Lord revealed

With keen yet pitying glance:
And hears the meek upbraiding call
As gently on his spirit fall,

As if the Almighty Son
Were prisoner yet in this dark earth,
Nor had proclaimed his royal birth,

Nor his great power begun.

"Ah! wherefore persecut'st thou me?" He heard and saw, and sought to free

His strained eye from the sight:
But Heaven's high magic bound it there,
Still gazing, though untaught to bear

The insufferable light.

"Who art thou, Lord?" he falters forth : -
So shall Sin ask of heaven and earth
At the last awful day

"When did we see thee suffering nigh,
And passed thee with unheeding eye?
Great God of judgment, say!

Ah! little dream our listless eyes
What glorious presence they despise
While, in our noon of life,
To power or fame we rudely press.
Christ is at hand, to scorn or bless,
Christ suffers in our strife.

And though heaven's gates long since have

closed,

And our dear Lord in bliss reposed,

High above mortal ken,

To every ear in every land (Though meek ears only understand) He speaks as he did then.

"Ah! wherefore persecute ye me? 'Tis hard, ye so in love should be your own endless woe.

With

Know, though at God's right hand I live,
I feel each wound ye reckless give
To the least saint below.

"I in your care my brethren left,
Not willing ye should be bereft
Of waiting on your Lord.
The meanest offering ye can make
A drop of water for love's sake,

In heaven, be sure, is stored."

Oh, by those gentle tones and dear, When thou hast stayed our wild career,

Thou only hope of souls, Ne'er let us cast one look behind, But in the thought of Jesus find What every thought controls.

As to thy last Apostle's heart
Thy lightning glance did then impart
Zeal's never-dying fire,

So teach us on thy shrine to lay
Our hearts, and let them day by day
Intenser blaze and higher.

243

ST. JOHN, wandering over the face of the Earth.
THE Ages come and go,

The Centuries pass as Years ;
My hair is white as the snow,

My feet are weary and slow,
The earth is wet with my tears!
The kingdoms crumble, and fall
Apart, like a ruined wall,

Or a bank that is undermined
By a river's ceaseless flow,
And leave no trace behind!
The world itself is old;

The portals of Time unfold
On hinges of iron, that grate

And groan with the rust and the weight,

Like the hinges of a gate

That hath fallen to decay;
But the evil doth not cease;
There is war instead of peace,
Instead of love there is hate;
And still I must wander and wait,
Still I must watch and pray,
Not forgetting in whose sight,
A thousand years in their flight
Are as a single day.

The life of man is a gleam
Of light, that comes and goes
Like the course of the Holy Stream,
The cityless river, that flows
From fountains no one knows,
Through the Lake of Galilee,

Through forests and level lands, Over rocks, and shallows, and sands Of a wilderness wild and vast,

Till it findeth its rest at last

In the desolate Dead Sea !
But alas! alas for me,
Not yet this rest shall be !

What, then doth Charity fail?
Is Faith of no avail?

Is Hope blown out like a light
By a gust of wind in the night?
The clashing of creeds, and the strife
Of the many beliefs, that in vain
Perplex man's heart and brain,
Are nought but the rustle of leaves,
When the breath of God upheaves
The boughs of the Tree of Life,
And they subside again!
And I remember still

The words, and from whom they came,
Not he that repeateth the name,
But he that doeth the will!

ST. JOHN.

"Verbum Dei, Deo natum."

From one of the loftiest Latin poems of the Middle Ages, by an unknown poet, probably trained in the school of Adam of St. Victor.

THE Word of God, the Eternal Son,
With God, the Uncreated, One,

Came down to earth from heaven;
To see him, handle him, and show
His heavenly life to men below,

To holy John was given.
Among those four primeval streams
Whose living fount in Eden gleams,

John's record true is known;
To all the world he poureth forth
The nectar pure of priceless worth

That flows from out the throne.

Beyond the heavens he soared, nor failed,
With all the spirit's gaze unveiled,

To see our true Sun's grace;
Not as through mists and visions dim.
Beneath the wings of Seraphim

He looked and saw God's face.

He heard where songs and harps resound.
And four and twenty elders round

Sing hymns of praise and joy;
The impress of the One in Three,
With print so clear that all may see,
He stamped on earth's alloy.

As eagle winging loftiest flight
Where never seer's or prophet's sight
Had pierced the ethereal vast,
Pure beyond human purity,
He scanned, with still undazzled eye,
The future and the past.

The Bridegroom, clad in garments red,
Seen, yet with might unfathomed,

Home to his palace hies;
Ezekiel's eagle to his bride
He sends, and will no longer hide
Heaven's deepest mysteries.

O loved one, bear, if thou canst tell
Of him whom thou didst love so well,
Glad tidings to the Bride;

Tell of the angel's food they taste,
Who with the Bridegroom's presence graced
Are resting at his side.

Tell of the soul's true bread unpriced,
Christ's supper, on the breast of Christ

In wondrous rapture ta'en;
That we may sing before the throne
His praises, whom as Lord we own,
The Lamb we worship slain.

Translated by EDWARD H. PLUMPTRE.