Who bade to time, adieu,
When its brief race was run :
Who hail'd, with stedfast view,
Eternity begun.
Sleep, true disciple! for thy rest,
The rest of piety shall be
Soft as his dreams, who on the breast
Of Jesus lean’d once peacefully.
Haste Ceylonese! and bring
Your tribute to tbe dead;
Your choicest chaplets fling
Upon the Martyr's bed!
Ten thousand talents once I ow'd,
And nothing had to pay !
But Jesus freed me from the load,
And wash'd my debt away.
Yet since the Lord forgave my sio,
And blotted out my score,
Much more indebted I have been
Than e'er I was before.
My guilt is cancel'd quite, I know,
And satisfaction made ;
But the vast debt of love I owe
Can never be repaid.
The love I owe for sin forgiven,
For power to believe,
For present peace, and promis'd heaven,
No angel can conceive.
That love of thine, thou sinner's Friend!
Witness thy bleeding heart !
THE HAPPY MAN.
He is the happy man, whose life e'en now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come ;
Who, doom'd to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleas’d with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace the
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith, (fruit
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home,
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illustrious in her view :
And occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has prov'd them vain,
He cannot skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies; and such he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore, in contemplation is his bliss,
Whose pow'r is such, that whom she lifts from
earth
She makes familiar with a heaven unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be reveal'd.
THE PERFECTIONS AND PROVIDENCE OF GOD.
Let us, with a joyful mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind;
For bis mercies shall endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Let us sound his name abroad,
For of gods he is the God :
Who by wisdom did create
The heavens high, and all their state;
Did the solid eartb ordain
How to rise above the main;
Who, by his commanding right,
Fill'd the new-made world with light :
Caus’d the golden-tressed sun,
All the day his course to run ;
And the moon to shine by night,
Mid her spangled sisters bright.
All his creatures God doth feed,
His full hand supplies their need ;
Let us therefore warble forth
His high majesty and worth.
He his mansion bath on high,
'Bove the reach of mortal eye :
And his mercies shall endure
Ever faithful, ever sure.
Revolving years confirm thy pow'r,
And time receding ev'ry hour,
Declares thy promise sure.
Beauty, and wealth, and power decay,
Like empty visions pass away-
Thou only dost endure.
Thy word, thy record, speaks of thee
As from and to eternity
Unalt'rably the same;
The first great cause of all-and last,
As does the present so the past,
Thy endless years proclaim.
The seasons in succession roll,
While order reigns throughout the whole
In pleasing harmony.
The laws thyself bath fix'd must stand,
Until revers'd by thy command;
And nature's self shall die.
Summer and winter, day and night,
Seed time and (O regaling sight!)
Harvest with golden train,
Untir'd by thy appointed will
Shall come, and as their course they fill,
Thy changeless pow'r maintain.
The heavenly bodies moving round,
Proclaim a Sov'reign cause profound,
And wisdom without space ;
Here order loudly speaks the skill
Of him, whose wise unchanging will,
Assigns to each its place.
All-all in beav'n, in earth, in air,
Confirm at once, while they declare
Th' eternal truth abroad,
That He who made them all is He,
Who was, who is, who still must be,
Unchangeable and God.
Here then we take our stand-and here,
Uprais'd beyond corroding fear,
Our anchor hope retain ;
Nature may heave her last deep groan,
But 'mid her drear expiring moan,
The promises remain.
Stamp'd with inviolable truth,
To hoary age from lisping youth,
On these unmoy'd we cast
Our souls. The word that's giv'n
Shall lead-or bear direct to heaven,
And land them safe at last.
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