GOD IN CREATION, IN HISTORY AND IN GOVERNMENT.
Almighty God! Who art alone first cause,
Of all that Nature works through changeless laws,
Maker and author of whate’er we see
That lives Thy life amid eternity.
Look back ere time was, and the face of earth,
Lifeless and still, was solitude and dearth;
No lovely valleys and no hills sublime;
No rocks or waters marked the hours of time.
Yet look again; behold the grass-clad hills,
Dew-spangled, multitudinous with rills,
Yet lifeless still: no reason and no sight,
That in these many glories know delight.
Yet look again; field-beasts and birds of sky
Range woods and glades mere hunger to supply;
And time rolls onward, rocks grow old and gray,
And Nature’s face is wrinkled with decay.
Yet look again; Creation’s fullness past,
And one supreme is born. Man comes at last;
Man, who to man is what God is to earth;
God’s image in the soul; in form her birth.
Yet look again; Man reaches to his prime,
Like God, creating through fixed laws and time,
Must he not, too, through each gradation go,
Reaching to higher passes from the low?
Is not our life breathed forth from God’s own breath?
Once having lived, can we in truth know death?
Each soul from birth until the final sleep,
Must on God’s own fixed lines its travel keep.
Then, wherefore, with loud prayer and unctuous face,
To brother say: “Ye run a foolish race
To the abyss.” For how shall any know
Whither God’s ministry shall make us go?
Doubt ye the power that governs everything
That lovely earth from chaos forth did bring?
Canst mark the line where ceases God’s command
From work that’s done by man’s own shaping hand?
Forever, no! For man is but effect
Of causes which the Father doth direct;
Each act and thought and movement of his soul
Hath source in God, the Infinite and Whole.
From earthly things man must his body feed;
But doth not soul from Heaven its nurture need?
His earthly frame bound earthward by fixed laws,
Doth not the soul yearn for a heavenly cause?
Brothers to brothers linked, and each to all,
Live we one life on this terrestrial ball;
One life of those who live and those who die,
Of those whom sight knows and whom memory.
Those elder brothers on that farther shore,
Risen higher than we in wisdom and in lore,
Send messages of knowledge and of love;
But know we well that these come from above!
For angels’ wisdom to the earth descends,
And each fresh hour some bright, fresh wisdom sends;
Each day some wonder of new lore displayed,
Each year man’s mind with triumph new arrayed.
Can mouldering relics, or can fossiled creeds,
Provide the quickening age her mighty needs?
Can codes, half dead, framed in days long gone by,
The soul’s new wants, so manifold, supply?
New palaces of Science, Faith and Truth,
Tower o’er the humble dwellings of our youth.
Shall rule and State, then, in their old ways stand,
Denying Progress her supreme demand?
Yet stand they do, and with contemptuous pride,
Fling Reason, Progress, Hope and Faith aside.
Shall the soul’s mighty yearnings thus have end?
As well with words think God’s own plans to bend.
Decrees are sealed in Heaven’s own chancery,
Proclaiming universal liberty.
Rulers and Kings who will not hear the call,
In one dread hour shall thunder-stricken fall.
So moves the growing world with march sublime,
Setting new music to the beats of Time;
Old things decay, and new things ceaseless spring,
And God’s own face is seen in everything.