A Song of Faith

Day will return with a fresher boon;God will remember the world!Night will come with a newer moon;God will remember the world!

Evil is only the slave of Good;Sorrow the servant of Joy;And the soul is mad that refuses foodOf the meanest in God's employ.

The fountain of joy is fed by tears,And love is lit by the breath of sighs;The deepest griefs and the wildest fearsHave holiest ministries.

Strong grows the oak in the sweeping storm;Safely the flower sleeps under the snow;And the farmer's hearth is never warmTill the cold wind starts to blow.

Day will return with a fresher boon;God will remember the world!Night will come with a newer moon;God will remember the world!

Ruth, touch the cradle. Boys, you must be still!The baby cannot sleep in such a noise.Nay, Grace, stir not; she'll soothe him soon enough,And tell him more sweet stuff in half an hourThan you can dream, in dreaming half a year.

What is the little one thinking about?Very wonderful things, no doubt.Unwritten history!Unfathomed mystery!Yet he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks,And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks,As if his head were as full of kinksAnd curious riddles as any sphinx!Warped by colic, and wet by tears,Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears,Our little nephew will lose two years;And he'll never knowWhere the summers go;--He need not laugh, for he'll find it so!

Who can tell what a baby thinks?Who can follow the gossamer linksBy which the manikin feels his wayOut from the shore of the great unknown,Blind, and wailing, and alone,Into the light of day?--Out from the shore of the unknown sea,Tossing in pitiful agony,--Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls,Specked with the barks of little souls--Barks that were launched on the other side,And slipped from Heaven on an ebbing tide!What does he think of his mother's eyes?What does he think of his mother's hair?What of the cradle-roof that fliesForward and backward through the air?What does he thinks of his mother's breast--Bare and beautiful, smooth and white,Seeking it ever with fresh delight--Cup of his life and couch of his rest?What does he think when her quick embracePresses his hand and buries his faceDeep where the heart-throbs sink and swellWith a tenderness she can never tell,Though she murmur the wordsOf all the birds--Words she has learned to murmur well?Now he thinks he'll go to sleep!I can see the shadow creepOver his eyes, in soft eclipse,Over his brow, and over his lips,Out to his little finger-tips!Softly sinking, down he goes!Down he goes! Down he goes!

See! He is hushed in sweet repose!

Behold a miracle! Music transformedTo morphine, and the drowsy god invokedBy the poor prattle of a maiden's tongue!A moment more, and we should all have goneDown into dreamland with the babe! Ah, well!There is no end of wonders.

Ruth.None, indeed!When lazy poets who have gorged themselves,And cannot keep awake, make the attemptTo shift the burden of their drowsiness,And charge a girl with what they owe to greed.

At your old tricks again! No sleep inducedBy song of yours, or any other bird's,Can linger long when you begin to talk.Grace, box your sister's ears for me, and saveThe trouble of my rising.

Sister mine.Now give the proof of your obedienceTo your imperious lord! Strike, if you dare!I'll wake your baby if you lift your hand.Ha! king; ha! poet; who is master now--Baby or husband? Pr'ythee, tell me that.Were I a man,--thank Heaven I am not!--And had a wife who cared not for my willMore than your wife for yours, I'd hang myself,Or wear an [***]. See! she kisses me!

And answers to my will, though well she knowsI'll spare to her so terrible a task,And take the awful burden on myself;Which I will do, in future, if she please!

Now have you conquered! Look! I am your slave.Denounce me, scourge me, anything but kiss;For life is sweet, and I alone am leftTo comfort an old man.

Israel.Ruth, that will do!Remember I'm a Justice of the Peace,And bide no quarrels; and if you and DavidPersist in strife, I'll place you under bondsFor good behavior, or condemn you bothTo solitary durance for the night.

Father, you fail to understand the case,And do me wrong. David has threatened meWith an assault that proves intent to kill;And here's my sister Grace, his wedded wife,Who'll take her oath, that just a year agoHe entered into bonds to keep the peaceToward me and womankind.

Till he awake again, of course. I trustI have sufficient gallantry to grantA nap between encounters, to a foeWith odds against him.

Peace, my daughter, peace!You've had your full revenge, and we have hadEnough of laughter since the day began.We must not squander all these precious hoursIn jest and merriment; for when the sunShall rise to-morrow, we shall separate,Not knowing we shall ever meet again.Meetings like this are rare this side of Heaven,And seem to me the best mementoes leftOf Eden's hours.

Most certainly the best,And quite the rarest, but, unluckily,The weakest, as we know; for sin and painAnd evils multiform, that swarm the earth,And poison all our joys and all our hearts,Remind us most of Eden's forfeit bliss.

And getting wildWithin. Now, Grace, I--all of us--protestAgainst a scene to-night. Look! You have drivenOne to the window blushing, and your lord,With lowering brow, is making stern essayTo stare the fire-dogs out of countenance.These honest brothers, with their honest wives,Grow glum and solemn, too, as if they fearedAt the next gust to see the windows burst,Or a riven poplar crashing through the roof.And think of me!--a simple-hearted maidWho learned from Cowper only yesterday(Or a schoolmaster, with a handsome face,And a strange passion for the text), the fact,That wedded bliss alone survives the fall.I'm shocked; I'm frightened; and I'll never wedUnless I--change my mind!

Your pardon, father, for the jest!But I have never patience with the illsThat make intrusion on my happy hours.I know the world is full of evil things,And shudder with the consciousness. I knowThat care has iron crowns for many brows;That Calvaries are everywhere, whereonVirtue is crucified, and nails and spearsDraw guiltless blood; that sorrow sits and drinksAt sweetest hearts, till all their life is dry;That gentle spirits on the rack of painGrow faint or fierce, and pray and curse by turns;That Hell's temptations, clad in Heavenly guiseAnd armed with might, lie evermore in waitAlong life's path, giving assault to all--Fatal to most; that Death stalks through the earth,Choosing his victims, sparing none at last;That in each shadow of a pleasant treeA grief sits sadly sobbing to its leaves;And that beside each fearful soul there walksThe dim, gaunt phantom of uncertainty,Bidding it look before, where none may see,And all must go; but I forget it all--I thrust it from me always when I may;Else I should faint with fear, or drown myselfIn pity. God forgive me! but I've thoughtA thousand times that if I had His power.Or He my love, we'd have a different worldFrom this we live in.

So you have told me often. You have saidThat God is just, and I have looked aroundTo seek the proof in human lot, in vain.The rain falls kindly on the just man's fields,But on the unjust man's more kindly still;And I have never known the winter's blast,Or the quick lightning, or the pestilence,Make nice discriminations when let slipFrom God's right hand.

'Tis a great mystery;Yet God is just, and,--blessed be His name!--Is loving too. I know that I am weak,And that the pathway of His ProvidenceIs on the hills where I may never climb.Therefore my reason yields her hand to Faith,And follows meekly where the angel leads.I see the rich man have his portion here,And Lazarus, in glorified repose,Sleep like a jewel on the breast of FaithIn Heaven's broad light. I see that whom God lovesHe chastens sorely, but I ask not why.I only know that God is just and good:All else is mystery. Why evil livesWithin His universe, I may not know.I know it lives, and taints the vital air;And that in ways inscrutable to me--Yet compromising not His soundless loveAnd boundless power--it lives against His will.

I am not satisfied. If evil liveAgainst God's will, evil is king of all,And they do well who worship Lucifer.I am not satisfied. My reason spurnsSuch prostitution to absurdities.I know that you are happy; but I shrinkFrom your blind faith with loathing and with fear.And feel that I must win it, if I win,With the surrender, not of will alone,But of the noblest faculty that GodHas crowned me with.

O blind and stubborn child!My light, my joy, my burden and my grief!How would I lead you to the wells of peace,And see you dip your fevered palms and drink!Gladly to purchase this would I lay downThe precious remnant of my life, and sleep,Wrapped in the faith you spurn, till the archangelSounds the last trump. But God's good will be done!I leave you with Him.

Father, talk not thus!Oh, do not blame me! I would do it all,If but to bless you with a single joy;But I am helpless.

To quench my reason? Can I ask the boon?My lips would blister with the blasphemy.I cannot take your faith; and that is whyI would forget that I am in a worldWhere evil lives, and why I guard my joysWith such a jealous care.

There, Ruth, sit down!'Tis the old question, with the old reply.You fly along the path, with bleeding feet,Where many feet have flown and bled before;And he who seeks to guide you to the goalHas (let me say it, father) stopped far short,And taken refuge at a wayside inn,Whose haunted halls and mazy passagesReceive no light, save through the riddled roof,Pierced thick by pilgrim staves, that Faith may lieUpon its back, and only gaze on Heaven.I would not banish evil if I could;Nor would I be so deep in love with joyAs to seek for it in forgetfulness,Through faith or fear.

Teach me the better way,And every expiration from my lipsShall be a grateful blessing on your head;And in the coming world I'll seek the sideOf no more gracious angel than the manWho gives me brotherhood by leading meHome with himself to heaven.

I mark the burden well, and love it, too,Because I love the girl and love her Lord,And seek to vindicate His love to herAnd waken hers for Him. Be this my plea:God is almighty--all-benevolent;And naught exists save by His loving will.Evil, or what we reckon such, exists,And not against His will; else the SupremeIs subject, and we have in place of GodA phantom nothing, with a phantom name.Therefore I care not whether He ordainThat evil live, or whether He permit;Therefore I ask not why, in either case,As if He meant to curse me, but I askWhat He would have this evil do for me?What is its mission? what its ministry?What golden fruit lies hidden in its husk?How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will,Chasten my passions, purify my love,And make me in some goodly sense like HimWho bore the cross of evil while He lived,Who hung and bled upon it when He died,And now, in glory, wears the victor's crown?

If evil, then, have privilege and partIn the economy of holiness,Why came the Christ to save us from its power,And bring us restoration of the blissLost in the lapse of Eden?

David.And would youOr Ruth 'have restoration of that bliss,And welcome transplantation to the stateAssociate with it?

Would I? Would I not!Oh, I have dreamed of it a thousand times,Sleeping and waking, since the torch of thoughtFlashed into flame at Revelation's touch,And filled my spirit with its quenchless fire.Most envious dreams of innocence and joyHave haunted me,--dreams that were born in sin,Yet swathed in stainless snow. I've dreamed, and dreamed,Of wondrous trees, crowned with perennial green,Whose soft still shadows gleamed with golden lampsOf pensile fruitage, or were flushed with lifeRadiant and tuneful when broad flocks of birdsSwept in and out like sheets of living flame.I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass,And bordered with the strange intelligenceOf myriad loving eyes among the flowers,That watched me with a curious, calm delight,As rows of wayside cherubim may watchA new soul, walking into Paradise.I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supineLay rocking on the ocean like a god,And threw his weary arms far up the sky,And with vermilion-tinted fingers toyedWith the long tresses of the evening star.I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all--Dreams that were music, perfume, vision, bliss,--Blent and sublimed, till I have stood inwrappedIn the thick essence of an atmosphereThat made me tremble to unclose my eyesLest I should look on God. And I have dreamedOf sinless men and maids, mated in heaven,Ere yet their souls had sought for beauteous formsTo give them human sense and residence,Moving through all this realm of choice delightsFor ever and for aye; with hands and heartsImmaculate as light; without a thoughtOf evil, and without a name for fear.Oh, when I wake from happy dreams like these,To the old consciousness that I must die,To the old presence of a guilty heart,To the old fear that haunts me night and day,Why should I not deplore the graceless fallThat makes me what I am, and shuts me outFrom a condition and societyAs much above a sinful maiden's dreamsAs Eden blest surpasses Eden curst?

So you would be another Eve, and so--Fall with the first temptation, like herself!God seeks for virtue; you for innocence.You'll find it in the cradle--nowhere else--Save in your dreams, among the grown-up babesThat dwelt in Eden--powerless, pulpy soulsThat showed a dimple for each touch of sin.God seeks for virtue, and, that it may live,It must resist, and that which it resistsMust live. Believe me, God has other thoughtThan restoration of our fallen raceTo its primeval innocence and bliss.If Jesus Christ--as we are taught--was slainFrom the foundation of the world, it wasBecause our evil lived in essence then--Coeval with the great, mysterious fact.And He was slain that we might be transformed,--Not into Adam's sweet similitude--But the more glorious image of Himself,A resolution of our destinyAs high transcending Eden's life and lotAs He surpasses Eden's fallen lord.

You're very bold, my brother, very bold.Did I not know you for an earnest man,When sacred themes move you to utterance,I'd chide you for those most irreverent wordsWhich make essential to the Christian schemeThat which the scheme was made to kill, or cure.

Yet they do save some very awkward words,That limp to make apology for God,And, while they justify Him, half confessThe adverse verdict of appearances.I am ashamed that in this Christian ageThe pious throng still hug the fallacyThat this dear world of ours was not ordainedThe theater of evil; for no lawDeclared of God from all eternityCan live a moment save by lease of pain.Law cannot live, e'en in God's inmost thought,Save by the side of evil. What were lawBut a weak jest without its penalty?Never a law was born that did not flyForth from the bosom of OmnipotenceMatched, wing-and-wing, with evil and with good,Avenger and rewarder--both of God.

I face your thought and give it audience;But I cannot embrace it till it comeWith some of truth's credentials in its hands--The fruits of gracious ministries.

Does heWho, driven to labor by the threatening weeds,And forced to give his acres light and airAnd traps for dew and reservoirs for rain,Till, in the smoky light of harvest time,The ragged husks reveal the golden corn,Ask truth's credentials of the weeds? Does heWho prunes the orchard boughs, or tills the field,Or fells the forests, or pursues their prey,Until the gnarly muscles of his limbsAnd the free blood that thrills in all his veinsBetray the health that toil alone secures,Ask truth's credentials at the hand of toil?Do you ask truth's credentials of the stormWhich, while we entertain communion here,Makes better music for our huddling heartsThan choirs of stars can sing in fairest nights?Yet weeds are evils--evils toil and storm.We may suspect the fair, smooth face of good;But evil, that assails us undisguised,Bears evermore God's warrant in its hands.

I fear these silver sophistries of yours.If my poor judgment gives them honest weight,Far less than thirty will betray your Lord.You call that evil which is good, and goodThat which is evil. You apologizeFor that which God must hate, and justifyThe life and perpetuity of thatWhich sets itself against His holiness,And sends its discords through the universe.

I sorrow if I shock you, for I seekTo comfort and inspire. I see aroundA silent company of doubtful souls;But I may challenge any one of themTo quote the meanest blessing of its life,And prove that evil did not make the gift,Or bear it from the giver to its hands.The great salvation wrought by Jesus Christ--That sank an Adam to reveal a God--Had never come, but at the call of sin.No risen Lord could eat the feast of loveHere on the earth, or yonder in the sky,Had He not lain within the sepulcher.'Tis not the lightly laden heart of manThat loves the best the hand that blesses all;But that which, groaning with its weight of sin,Meets with the mercy that forgiveth much.God never fails in an experiment,Nor tries experiment upon a raceBut to educe its highest style of life,And sublimate its issues. Thus to meEvil is not a mystery, but a meansSelected from the infinite resourceTo make the most of me.

Thank God for light!These truths are slowly dawning on my soul,And take position in the firmamentThat spans my thought, like stars that know their place.Dear Lord! what visions crowd before my eyes--Visions drawn forth from memory's mysteriesBy the sweet shining of these holy lights!I see a girl, once lightest in the dance,And maddest with the gayety of life,Grow pale and pulseless, wasting day by day,While death lies idly dreaming in her breast,Blighting her breath, and poisoning her blood.I see her frantic with a fearful thoughtThat haunts and horrifies her shrinking soul,And bursts in sighs and sobs and feverish prayers;And now, at last, the awful struggle ends,A sweet smile sits upon her angel face,And peace, with downy bosom, nestles closeWhere her worn heart throbs faintly; closer stillAs the death shadows gather; closer still,As, on white wings, the outward-going soulFlies to a home it never would have sought,Had a great evil failed to point the way.I see a youth whom God has crowned with power,And cursed with poverty. With bravest heartHe struggles with his lot, through toilsome years,--Kept to his task by daily want of bread,And kept to virtue by his daily task,--Till, gaining manhood in the manly strife,--The fire that fills him smitten from a flint--The strength that arms him wrested from a fiend--He stands, at last, a master of himself,And, in that grace, a master of his kind.

Familiar visions these, but ever fullOf inspiration and significance.Now that your eyes are opened and you see,Your heart should take swift cognizance, and feel.How do these visions move you?

Like the handOf a strong angel on my shoulder laid,Touching the secret of the spirit's wings.My heart grows brave. I'm ready now to work--To work with God, and suffer with His Christ;Adopt His measures, and abide His means.If, in the law that spans the universe(The law its maker may not disobey),Virtue may only grow from innocenceThrough a great struggle with opposing ill;If I must win my way to perfectnessIn the sad path of suffering, like HimThe over-flowing river of whose lifeTouches the flood-mark of humanityOn the white pillars of the heavenly throne,Then welcome evil! Welcome sickness, toil,Sorrow and pain, the fear and fact of death.

The fact of sin--so much;--it must needs beOffenses come; if woe to him by whom,Then with good reason; but the fact of sinUnlocked the door to highest destiny,That Christ might enter in and lead the way.God loves not sin, nor I; but in the throngOf evils that assail us, there are noneThat yield their strength to Virtue's struggling armWith such munificent reward of powerAs great temptations. We may win by toilEndurance; saintly fortitude by pain;By sickness, patience; faith and trust by fear;But the great stimulus that spurs to life,And crowds to generous developmentEach chastened power and passion of the soul,Is the temptation of the soul to sin,Resisted, and re-conquered, evermore.

I am content; and now that I have caughtBright glimpses of the outlines of your scheme,As of a landscape, graded to the sky,And seen through trees while passing, I desireNo vision further till I make surveyIn some good time when I may come alone,And drink its beauty and its blessedness.I've been forgetful in my earnestness,And wearied everyone with talk. These boysAre restive grown, or nodding in their chairs,And older heads are set, as if for sleep.I beg their pardon for my theft of time,And will offend no more.

Ruth, is it rightTo leave a brother in such a plight as this--Either to imitate your courtesy,Or by your act to be adjudged a boor?

Let it pass!I see the spell of thoughtfulness is gone,Or going swiftly. I will not complain;But ere these lads are fastened to their games,And thoughts arise discordant with our theme,Let us with gratitude approach the throneAnd worship God. I wish once more to leadYour hearts in prayer, and follow with my ownThe leading of your song of thankfulness.Then will I lease and leave you for the nightTo such divertisement as suits the time,And meets your humor.

David, let us seeWhether your memory prove as true as mine.Do you recall the promise made by youThis night one year ago,--to write a hymnFor this occasion?

I recall, and keep.Here are the copies, written fairly out.Here,--father, Mary, Ruth, and all the rest;There's one for each. Now what shall be the tune?

The old One Hundredth--noblest tune of tunes!Old tunes are precious to me as old pathsIn which I wandered when a happy boy.In truth, they are the old paths of my soul,Oft trod, well worn, familiar, up to God.