Forgive the thought, that everlasting ill
To any can be part of Thy design;
Finite, imperfect, erring, guilty,- still

All souls, great God, are Thine, -and mercy Thine.

The soul, its own inquisitor, respects

No other claim save that Thy words enshrine;

In its serene profundity reflects

No power beyond and over it save Thine.

And Poesy her voice accordant lends

When highest rapture wings her flight divine,

Notes of immortal cheer forever blends

With those proclaiming, Lord, all souls are Thine.

"All souls are Mine"! Who shrinks to yield his breath, Whose child-like faith can on those words recline? Come with thy scourges, Fate! Come, Anguish, Death,Since God himself hath said; "All souls are Mine ” !

Testimony of the Parts.

Chauncey Hare Townshend.

SERMONS IN SONNETS.

1.

"The times of restitution of all things." Acts, iii. 21.

GIVE evil but an end—and all is clear!

Make it eternal-all things are obscured!
And all that we have thought, felt, wept, endured,
Worthless. We feel that ev'n if our own tear
Were wiped away for ever, no true cheer
Could to our yearning bosoms be secured
While we believed that sorrow clung uncured
To any being we on earth held dear.

Oh, much doth life the sweet solution want
Of all made blest in far futurity!

Heaven needs it too. Our bosoms yearn and pant
Rather indeed our God to justify

Than our own selves. Oh, why then drop the key That tunes discordant worlds to harmony?

II.

"Speak good of his name." Psalm c. 4.

Он no, great God! We feel Thou canst not be
Spectator or upholder of distress,

So long, indeed, as it is objectless.

No! it Thou look'st on sorrow,

'tis to see

Its benefit and end. If before Thee

One hopeless ill could spread the smallest shroud,

Oh, would'st Thou not dissolve it as a cloud

In the mere fervors of Thy radiancy?

'Tis so!

And Thou Thy dearest Son didst send

That message of a boundless love to make;
Not as a mockery

more the heart to rend,

If all were offered what but few could take !

Not as a thing of words but as a meed,
Which, like Thyself, is Truth and Love indeed.

III.

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not witn him also freely give us all things?" Romans, viii. 32.

Он, not Thyself, great God, to satisfy
(Who in Thyself dost hold a full content),
Was Thy dear Son unto our being lent
To walk on earth, to suffer, and to die!
But 'twas to still the heart's own piercing cry
For Expiation. 'Twas divinely meant

To show which way Thy tender mercy went