their salvation with fear and trembling. Every evangelical act is thus included, and the sacrament of baptism itself regarded as deeply Spiritual,-not a bare and valueless ceremony, but a glorious investiture from GOD.

If for making this sublime truth of the ever-blessed Gospel the very hypothesis of my Poem, I have been a sufferer with the Church herself, I confess I am not ashamed; but I add, that I am deeply sorry. To convince, and not to enjoy the aristocracy of being right, must be the burning desire and effort of all, who, to the fearfully responsible name of Christian, wear the almost synonymous prefix of Catholic. I trust, therefore, that these explanations will be received as kindly, as they are honestly, and earnestly offered.

To the charge of presumption which has been preferred against my choice of divine philosophy for my rhymes, I can only answer, that I am a soldier of CHRIST, and as such, must sing, if I sing at all, with Tyrtæus, and not with Anacreon. If there is a period in our young life, when Poetry, for its own sake is absorbingly dear, and our days are fervently devoted to the worship of external and imaginative beauty, it must be before we have exhausted our arithmetic in estimating the worth of the Undying Soul within us, and concluded, over the unfinished reckoning, that the

glory of the world, and the Prince that offers it, are too poor to bargain with us for that. But when the fatherly chastisement of our God has scourged us from our idolatry, into a sublime adoration of His own inconceivable nature,—into a hope, through JESUS CHRIST, of dwelling with Him in the eternal years of high and noble happiness, which he has in store for the heirs of Immortality, I know of no return more filial, or more natural, than a consecration to his service, of whatever may have been gathered before, for a meaner shrine, or vowed to a GOD unknown. It is a time of battle and of conflict; the foes of the Redeemer wage a fierce war against Him, and false friends have torn his very body. Is this a time

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

We are called to a severer work. The trumpet, not the lute the war-song, not the love-lay, are the only music that can be endured in our camp. When Athanasion was written, I was a divinity student at Chelsea, beginning to realize something of what it was to be even a cadet in CHRIST's army. I was called to deliver a Poem before a Christian College, and in a Christian Church. I should have been unworthy of the diocese in which I was a candidate for Orders, and of the beloved school of the Prophets where I was

learning the Church's story and her wants, had I chosen the occasion and the place for a mere twaddle about literature-the beautiful, and the sublime. Since then, I have been recommended to my Bishop as one who had neither written nor taught any-thing contrary to sound doctrine; and, so recommended, I have been solemnly ordained to the lowly order of a deacon in the Church of GOD. I do not see that I have yet any release from devoting every energy to my Master's work; and while I trust, in the language of the Ordinal, that I shall be "so modest, humble, and constant, with a ready will to obey all Spiritual discipline, that, having always the testimony of a good conscience, and continuing ever stable and strong in CHRIST, I may so well behave myself in this inferior office as to be found worthy of a higher ministry," I yet moreover pray, that, like the first deacons, St. Stephen Protomartyr, and St. Philip Evangelist, I may have always an answer for the Synagogue of the Libertines, or be ready to run after the chariot of any modern Indich, who, with the Scriptures in his hand; is driving away from Jerusalem, and understands not what he reads. Is it not "using the office of a deacon well," to purchase to ourselves great boldness in the faith, besides a good degree?

Suffice it only to add, that Faith and Love are the

principles, from and to which the Poem is humbly addressed. I send it forth anew, in search of earnest minds, that, like mine own, are endeavouring, though feebly, to get free from the cheerless, sensual, clogging, debasing, heathenizing influences, which stick, like bird-lime, to every wing that would rise into purer and more heavenly atmosphere, from the dull earth, and contaminated air of what one has named in our behalf-THE AGE OF UNBELIEF.

St. Ann's Rectory, Morrisania,

April, 1842.

ATHANASION.

Φωναντα συνετοίσιν.

I.

How holy is the spot,

Where haunting Silence, through the wide domain,

Breathes, more than voices from the Sybil's grot, Avaunt ye souls profane :

Where, up yon lengthen'd aisle afar,

A sentence once, oracular,

With pacing footstep and responsive strain,
Hath call'd sweet Peace to reign,

And throned a stillness here,

That bids us speak in fear,

And nothing speak in vain.

II.

Nor ye, that gather'd now

From Learning's homes, would hear your Idol's praise,

My numbers disallow,

B