As toil'd he there with apostolic truth,
Redeem'd her Aged, and reform'd her Youth,
For praise to honour with a pow'rless line
A heart so deep, a spirit so divine?
He lived; he died; in life and death the same,
A Christian martyr,—whose majestic fame
In beacon glory o'er the world shall blaze,
And lighten empires with celestial rays!
While Virtue throbs, or human hearts admire
A poet's feeling with a prophet's fire;
While pure Religion hath a shrine to own,
Or Man can worship at his Maker's throne!
HUMAN NATURE OF OUR SAVIOUR.
O THOU! apparell'd in a robe of true
Mortality; meek sharer of our low
Estate, in all except compliant sin;
To Thee a comprehending worship pays
Perennial sacrifice of life and soul,
By love enkindled : Thou hast lived, and breathed;
Our wants and woes partaken; all that charms
Or sanctifies, to thine unspotted truth
May plead for sanction; virtue but reflects
Thine image; wisdom is a voice attuned
To consonance with Thine; and all that yields
To thought a pureness, or to life a peace,
From Thee descends; whose spirit-ruling sway,
Invisible as thought, around us brings
A balm almighty for affliction's hour!
HUMAN REASON BENDING TO THE
GROSSEST SUPERSTITION.
THE past survey,-and what hath Reason done?
Passion and Doubt her waning light withstood,
And stubborn ages, as they swept along,
But mock'd her impotence with blind misrule,
Of creed or crime begot.-Man look'd abroad,
And on his spirit rush'd one vast belief!
From life and matter, from the sun and moon,
And the deep waters did a power appeal,
Attesting God, and teaching his domain :
But how to worship, how his law obey,
In vain would philosophic Reason find,
In pensive shade, or academic bower.—
The world was deified! terrestrial gods,
In all that apprehending sense believed,
A mystic reign for adoration held.
Thus, Neptune on his ocean-car appear'd,
Apollo gloried in the realm of light,
And Dian, with her starry nymphs begirt,
The virgin moon inspired.--There breathed no wind,
There waved no grove, no fountain-music play'd,
No river in his march of waters joy'd,-
But Superstition lent a listening ear
To hail her fancied god: each city claim'd
Presiding deities, and built her fanes
For monsters imaged out of monstrous thought,
Where dark pollution fed her secret fires.
At length, Idolatry the mind subdued,
From tombs evoked the undeserving dead,
Or, round the statues of her living great
In sycophantic homage knelt, and pray'd!
HATRED OF OUR SAVIOUR BY THE EVIL ONE,
YET HIS ALMIGHTY POWER ADMIRED.
I HATE Him, and His everlasting cause,
The Church, upon the rock of ages rear'd,
His word, His truth, and Heaven-directing sway;
And soul by soul, and heart by heart, through light
And gloom, by land and isle, through life and death,
'Mid all the legions of innumerous Powers
That on His ministry attend, and war
For holiness-my hate shall dare Him still; Though Truth may vanquish, and the thousand thrones
Of Darkness tremble with their last despair!
Too deep the vengeance of atoning blood
On me shall come, for him to be forgot !
I hate Him for the ruin'd world he saved;
And yet His glorious pilgrimage confess.
Sublime of martyrs! in that dread career
What wonders hallow His remember'd way!
The blind awaken'd to the bliss of light,
The deaf and lame, the dying and the dead,
All yielding up infirmity to Him,
And putting on young attributes of life.-
Vain mortals, read and tremble! Once the Sea,
That god and glory of the elements,
Obeyed His fiat, when a tempest rose,
Till the huge waves, like living mountains leapt
In the wild majesty of midnight storm,
Mocking the haggard lightnings as they streak'd
The waters, in the fury of their flash!
Each billow was a tempest; and the ship
Groan'd like a mariner at his last gasp;
Up rose He in almightiness! and bade
The whirlwinds into silence, and rebuked
The ocean, calming at his fearful glance!
And then His Passion, that tremendous scene When nature wrestled with her God! And last, The tragedy that made this Earth to quake !— Men wonder if to angry overflow
The dark floods rise, if hurricanes be heard,
Or if the throbbing of an earthquake thrill
Their walls—the sun in blackness, and the gloom,
The midnight awfulness o'er Calvary's mount
That brooded, coward Fancy should have seen!
Have heard the cloven rock-piles as they burst,
The tombs unlock, and mark'd the solemn dead
In pallid stillness gliding through the town,
Like moon-clouds sailing o'er a midnight sky!
Is rank with hypocrites!—a coward race
Of such ignoble vileness, that they shame
Temptation, though they track her hell-ward path.
The mantles which adorn your hypocrite.
Behold him now, a most insinuous man,
Smoother than waters sleeping in the sun,
To common gazers ;-now, a courteous shape,
All delicately civil; full of words
Well rounded into compliments, that serve
Alike to sweeten the sour face of friends,
And mask a falsehood from a dreaded foe;
Or else, benevolently mad, with purse
In hand; Misfortune, dip thy finger there;
Neglected Want! for you it opens wide:
And oh ye soft-lipp'd dealers in applause,
Resound the dews of Mercy as they fall,
To crown him famous, Charity's own child;
And why?-she pays a penalty for sin,
And bribes the conscience, while it gilds a name.
Then mark the hypocrite, of pious mould,
For ever putting on unearthly moods,
And looking lectures with his awful eyes;
A sun-like centre of religious zeal;
pure, he would be better than the best!-
True virtue is a heavenliness of mind,
That, in the mercy of a mild reproof,
Sheds healing sympathy o'er human woe.
But he is cold, uncharitably good;
Dealing the thunderbolts of sacred wrath
With apostolic vengeance.
HEROD'S MURDER OF THE INFANTS.
THEN passion, like a kindled hurricane
Burst from the tyrant with terrific sway!
And then was havoc, dark as hell desired;
Oh! then were shrieks maternal, sounds that came
From riven souls; then childless Rachel wept;
In Rama was the voice of mourning heard,
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