*

CV.

HEATHENISM.

MID Balak's magic fires

The Spirit spake clear as in Israel;

With prayers untrue and covetous desires

Did God vouchsafe to dwell;

Who summoned dreams, His earlier word to bring
To holy Job's vexed friends, and Gerar's guileless king.

If such o'erflowing grace

From Aaron's vest e'en on the Sibyl ran,

Why should we fear the Son now lacks His place,
Where roams unchristened man?

As tho', when faith is keen, He cannot make

Bread of the very stones, or thirst with ashes slake.

d.

CVI.

JUDAISM.

O piteous race!

Fearful to look upon;

Once standing in high place,

Heaven's eldest son.

O aged blind

Unvenerable! as thou flittest by,

I liken thee to him in pagan song,

In thy gaunt majesty,

The vagrant King, of haughty-purposed mind,
Whom prayer nor plague could bend ;*

Wronged, at the cost of him who did the wrong,
Accursed himself, but in his cursing strong,
And honoured in his end.

O Abraham! sire
Shamed in thy progeny;

Who to thy faith aspire,

Thy Hope deny.

Well wast thou given

From out the heathen an adopted heir,

Raised strangely from the dead, when sin had slain
Thy former-cherished care.

* Vide the Edipus Coloneus of Sophocles.

O holy men, ye first-wrought gems of heaven!
Polluted in your kin,

Come to our fonts, your lustre to regain!

O Holiest Lord!

but thou canst take no stain

Of blood, or taint of sin.

Twice in their day

Proffer of precious cost

Was made, Heaven's hand to stay

Ere all was lost.

The first prevail'd;

Moses was outcast from the promised home

For his own sin, yet taken at his prayer

To change his people's doom.

Close on their eve, one other asked and failed;
When fervent Paul was fain

The accursed tree, as CHRIST had borne, to bear,
No hopeful answer came,-a Price more rare

Already shed in vain.

d.

CVII.

SUPERSTITION.

O LORD, and Christ, Thy Churches of the south

So shudder, when they see

The two-edged sword sharp-issuing from Thy mouth,

As to fall back from Thee,

And seek to charms of man, or saints above,

To aid them against Thee, Thou Fount of grace and love!

In

But I before thine awful eyes will go

And firmly fix me there,

my full shame; not bent my doom to know,

Not fainting with despair;

Not fearing less than they, but deeming sure,

If e'en Thy name shall fail, naught my base heart can

cure.

d.

CVIII.

SCHISM.

Oн, rail not at our brethren of the North,

Albeit Samaria finds her likeness there;

A self-formed Priesthood, and the Church cast forth
To the chill mountain air.

What though their fathers sinned, and lost the grace Which seals the Holy Apostolic Line?

Christ's love overflows the bounds His Prophets trace In His revealed design.

Israel had Seers; to them the Word is nigh:

Shall not that Word run forth, and gladness give

To many a Shunamite, till in His eye

The full Seven thousand live?

d.