Becoming man, reversing human fall,
And raising up the first, true life in all;
Healing our nature's deadly wound within,
And quenching wrath, or death, or Hell, or sin.
For all such words describe one evil thing,
Or want of good; that has one only spring.
The love of God, in Christ, which form'd at first
A blessed Adam, and redeem'd a curst
By his own act-Good only was design'd
For Adam, and, in him, for all mankind.

He fell from good, misusing his free will,
Into this world, this life of good and ill:
From whence, the willing to be sav'd revive
Thro' faith and penitence, in Christ alive;
A second death succeeds, if they refuse; [choose.
For choosing creatures must have what they

Not bare existence, when we go from hence,
Is immortality, in scripture sense;
For thus, alike immortal, are confest
The good, the bad; the ruin'd, and the blest;
Whose inbred tempers hint the reason, why
They live for ever, or for ever die.

God's likeness, light and spirit in the soul,
Make, as at first, its blest immortal whole;
'Tis death to want them; vain is all dispute;
The gospel only reaches to the root:
All the inspir'd have understood it thus;
Immortal life is that of Christ in us.

Born of this holy, Virgin seed divine, To a new life within this mortal shrine, The faithful breathe a spirit from above, And make of self a sacrifice to love: By Christ redeem'd they rise from Adam's fall, From Earth to Heav'n, where God is all in all.

PETER'S DENIAL OF HIS MASTER. "THO' all forsake thee, master, yet not I; I'll go to prison with thee, or to die," Said Peter-yet how soon did he deny!

A striking proof, that, even to good will, The help of grace is necessary still, To save a soul from falling into ill.

His master told him how the case would be, But Peter could not see himself, not be; 'Till grace withdrew, that he might come to see,

Peter, so valiant on a selfish plan, Quite frighted by a servant maid, began To curse, and swear, and did not know the man.

'Twas thus that Satan sifted him like wheat, And made him think his courage was so great; While Jesus pray'd that he might see the cheat.

High-minded in himself he fell-how low, The cock instructed him, foretold to crow: His real self then Peter came to know.

He that would die with him, tho' all forsook,

RELIGION.

EXPLAIN religion by a thousand schemes,

Still God and self will be the two extremes;
In him the one true good of it is found;
In self, of all idolatry, the ground:
False worship, paid at all its various shrines,
One same departure from his love defines.

By love to him blest angels kept their state;
Which the apostate lost by cursed hate;
Setting up self in the Almighty's room,
It sunk them down into its dreadful gloom:
On separation from his love, the source
Of all felicity was lost of course.

By love to him, the first created man
Was highly blest; 'till selfishness began,
Tho' serpentine delusion, to arise,

And tempt above God's wisdom to be wise;
When he had chosen to prefer his own,
The naked, miserable self was known.

Hence we inherit such a life as this,
Dead, of itself, to paradisic bliss:
Hence all our hopes, of a diviner birth
Depend on Christ, and his descent on Earth;
Subduing self, as Adam should have done,
And loving God thro' his beloved Son.

The Mediator betwixt God and men, Who brings their nature back to him again, Sav'd from all sinful self, or deadly wrath, Or hellish evil, by the pow'r of faith Working by love, of which it is the strength; And must attain the full true life at length.

And learn'd humility by love's rebuke.

Lesson for us is plain from Peter's case, That real virtue is the work of grace, And of its height humility the base.

ON THE CAUSE, CONSEQUENCE, AND
CURE OF SPIRITUAL PRIDE.
SUPPOSE an heater burning in the fire
To be alive, to will, and to desire;
To reason, feel, and have, upon the whole,
What we will call an understanding soul;
Conscious of pow'rful heat within its mould,
And colour bright above the burnish'd gold.

[heart,

Suppose that pride should catch this heater's
And from the tire persuade it to depart;
To show itself, and make it to be known,
That it can raise a splendour of its own;
An own rich colour, an own potent heat,
Without dependence on the fire, complete.

It leaves, in prospect of so fine a show,
The fiery bosom where it learnt to glow;
Cools by degrees, till all its golden hue
Is vanish'd, and its pow'r of heating too;
Its own, once hidden, nature domineers,
And the dark, cold, self-iron lump appears.

Transfer this feign'd, imaginary pride,
To that which really does, too oft, betide;
When human souls, endu'd with grace divine,
Become ambitious, of themselves, to shine;

And, proud of qualities which grace bestows,
Forsake its bosom for self-shining shows.

And thence conceive the natural effects
Of pride, in either single men, or sects;
That for variety of selfish strife
Forsake the one, true cause of all true life;
The heav'nly spirit-fire of love, within
Whose sacred bosom all their gifts begin.

From which, if reason, learning, wit, or parts,
Tempt their ambition to withdraw their hearts,
There must ensue, whatever they may mean,
The disappearance of the glowing scene;
From the most gifted vanishing of course,
When disunited from its real source.

As only fire can possibly restore
The heater's force, to what it was before;
So that of love alone consumes the dross
Of wrathful nature, and repairs its loss;
It will again unite with all desire,
That casts itself into the holy fire.

THE BEGGAR AND THE DIVINE. IN some good books one reads of a divine, Whose memorable case deserves a line; Who, to serve God the best, and shortest way, Pray'd, for eight years together, ev'ry day, That in the midst of doctrines and of rules, However taught and practis'd by the schools, He would be pleas'd to bring him to a man Prepar'd to teach him the compendious plan. He was himself a doctor, and well read In all the points to which divines were bred; Nevertheless, he thought, that what concern'd The most illiterate, as well as learn'd, To know and practise, must be something still More independent on such kind of skill: True Christian worship had, within its root, Some simpler secret, clear of all dispute; Which, by a living proof that he might know, He pray'd for some practitioner to show.

One day, possess'd with an intense concern About the lesson which he sought to learn, He heard a voice that sounded in his ears"Thou has been praying for a man eight years; Go to the porch of youder church, and find A man prepar'd according to thy mind."

Away he went to the appointed ground; When, at the entrance of the church, he found A poor old beggar, with his feet full sore, And not worth two-pence all the clothes he wore, Surpris'd to see an object so forlorn

My friend," said he, "I wish thee a good morn." "Thank thee," reply'd the beggar, "but a bad I do'nt remember that I ever had."

Sure he mistakes, the doctor thought, the phrase"Good fortune, friend, befall thee all thy days!" "Me," said the beggar, " many days befall, But none of them unfortunate at all""God bless thee, answer plainly, I request?""Why, plainly then, I never was unblest"— "Never? Thou speakest in a mystic strain, Which more at large I wish thee to explain.""With all my heart-Thou first didst condescend

"To wish me kindly a good morning, friend;

And I reply'd, that I remember'd not
A bad one ever to have been my lot:
For, let the morning turn out how it will,
I praise my God for ev'ry new one still:
If I am pinch'd with hunger, or with cold,
It does not make me to let go my hold;
Still I praise God-hail, rain, or snow, I take
This blessed cordial, which has pow'r to make
The foulest morning, to my thinking, fair;
For cold and hunger yield to praise and pray't.
Men pity me as wretched, or despise;
But whilst I hold this noble exercise,
It cheers my heart to such a due degree,
That ev'ry morning is still good to me.

"Thou didst, moreover, wish me lucky days,
And I, by reason of continual praise,
Said that I had none else; for come what wou'd
On any day, I knew it must be good
Because God sent it; sweet or bitter, joy
Or grief, by this angelical employ,

Of praising him, my heart was at its rest,
And took whatever happen'd for the best;
So that my own experience might say,
It never knew of an unlucky day.

[1 said

"Then didst thou pray God bless thee'-and 'I never was unblest:' for being led By the good spirit of imparted grace To praise his name, and ever to embrace His righteous will, regarding that alone, With total resignation of my own,

I never could, in such a state as this,
Complain for want of happiness or bliss;
Resolv'd, in all things, that the will divine,
The source of all true blessing, should be mine,”

The doctor, learning from the beggar's case
Such wond'rous instance of the pow'r of grace,
Propos'd a question, with intent to try
The happy mendicant's direct reply-
"What wouldst thou say," said he, "should God
To cast thee down to the infernal pit?" [think it
"He cast me down? He send me into Hell?
No-He loves me, and I love him too well:
But put the case he should, I have two arms
That will defend me from all hellish harms,
The one, humility, the other, love;
These I would throw below him, and above;
One under his humanity I'd place,
His deity the other should embrace;
With both together so to hold him fast,
That he should go wherever be would cast,
And then, whatever thou shalt call the sphere,
Hell, if thou wilt, 'tis Heav'n if he be there."

Thus was a great divine, whom some have To be the justly fam'd Taulerus, taught [thought The holy art, for which he us'd to pray, That to serve God the most compendious way, Was to hold fast a loving, humble mind, Still praising him, and to his will resign'd.

FRAGMENT OF AN HYMN,

ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

O goodness of God! more exceedingly great Than thought can conceive, or than words can reWhatsoever we fix our conceptions upon [peat; It has some kind of bounds, but thy goodness has

none:

It is the order, the eternal law,
The true free grace, that never can withdraw;
Observance of it will, of course, be blest,
And opposition to it self-distrest;

To them, who love its gracious author, all
Will work for good, according to St. Paul.

An easy key to each abstruser text,
That modern disputants have so perplext;
With arbitrary fancies on each side,

From God's pure love, or man's freewill deny'd; Which, in the breast of saints, and sinners too, May both be found self-evidently true.

ON THE DISINTERESTED LOVE OF GOD.

THE love of God with genuine ray
Inflam'd the breast of good Cambray;
And banish'd from the prelate's mind
All thoughts of interested kind:
He saw, and writers of his class,
(Of too neglected worth alas!)
Disinterested love to be
The gospel's very A B C.

When our redeeming Lord began
To practice it himself, as man;
And, for the joy then set before
His loving view, such evils bore;
Endur'd the cross, despis'd the shame-
Had he an interested aim?
Surely the least examination
Shows, that the joy was our salvation.

For us he suffer'd, to make known
The love that seeketh not its own;
Suffer'd, what nothing but so pure
A love could possibly endure:
No less a sacrifice than this

Could bring poor sinners back to bliss;
Or execute the saving plan

Of reuniting God and man.

This love was Abra'm's shield and guard;
Was his exceeding great reward;
This love the patriarchal eye,
And that of Moses could descry;
In this disinterested sense

They sought reward, or recompense,
City, or country, Heav'n above,
The seat of purity and love.

This the high calling, this the prize,
The mark of Paul's so steady eyes;
For, with the self-forgetting Paul,
Pure love of God in Christ was all:
The text of the beloved John
Has all, that words can say in one;
For God is love--compendious whole
Of all the blessings of a soul.

What helps to this a soul may want,
Pure love is ready still to grant;
But with a view to wean it still
From selfish, mercenary will:
Of all reward, all punishment,
This is the end, in God's intent,
To form, in offsprings of his own,
The bliss of loving his alone.

Sole rule of all affection due Both to ourselves, and others too; Meaning of ev'ry scripture text, By interested love perplext: Promise, or precept, gospel call, Or legal love, fulfils them all; From base arising up to spire, Superior both to fear and hire.

Love of disinterested kind, The man who thinks it too refin'd May, by ambiguous language, still Persist in metaphysic skill; Even the justly fam'd Cambray, In such a case, could only pray, That love itself would only dart Some feeling proof into his heart.

I

ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

LOVE my God, and freely too,
With the same love that he imparts;
That he, to whom all love is due,
Engraves upon pure loving hearts.

I love, but this celestial fire,
Ye starry pow'rs! ye do not raise:
No wages, no reward's desire,
Is in the purely shining blaze.

Me, nor the hopes of heav'nly bliss,
Or paradisic scenes excite;

Nor terrours of the dark abyss, Of death's eternal den, affright.

No bought, and paid-for love be mine, I will have no demands to make; Disinterested, and divine

Alone, that fear shall never shake.

Thou, my Redeemer, from above, Suffering to such immense degree,

Thy heart has kindled mine to love, That burns for nothing but for thee.

Thy scourge, thy thorns, thy cross, thy wounds, Are ev'ry one of them a source,

From whence the nourishment abounds Of endless Love's unfading force.

These sacred fires, with holy breath, Raise in my mind the gen'rous strife; While, by the ensigns of thy death Known, I adore the Lord of life.

Extinguish all celestial light, The fire of love will not go out;

The flames of Hell extinguish quite, Love will pursue its wonted rout.

Be there no hope if it persistPersist it will, nor ever cease;

No punishment if 'tis dismist
What caus'd it not will not decrease.

Should'st thou give nothing for its pains,
It claims not any thing as due;
Should'st thou condemn me, it remains
Unchang'd by any selfish view.

Let Heav'n be darken'd if it will, Let Hell with all its vengeance roar; My God alone remaining, still I'll love him, as I did before.

ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD WRATH,

AS APPLIED TO GOD IN SCRIPTURE.

THAT God is love-is in the scripture said;
That he is wrath-is no where to be read;
From which, by literal expression free,
"Fury" (he saith himself)" is not in me:"
If scripture, therefore, must direct our faith,
Love must be he, or in him; and not wrath.

And yet the wrath of God. in scripture phrase,
Is oft express'd, and many diff'rent ways:
His anger, fury, vengeance, are the terms,
Which the plain letter of the text affirms;
And plain, from two of the apostle's quire,
That God is love-and a consuming fire.

If we consult the reasons that appear, To make the seeming difficulty clear, We must acknowledge, when we look above, That God, as God, is overflowing love: And wilful sinners, when we look below, Make (what is call'd) the wrath of God to flow. "Wrath," as St. Paul saith, "is the treasur'd Of an impenitently harden'd heart:" When love reveals its own eternal life, Then wrath and anguish fall on evil strife; Then lovely justice, in itself all bright, Is burning fire to such as hate the light.

[part

If wrath and justice be indeed the same,
No wrath in God-is liable to blame;
If not; if righteous judges may, and must,
Be free themselves from wrath, if they be just,
Such kind of blaming may, with equal sense,
Lay on a judge the criminal's offence.

God, in himself unchangeable, in fine, Is one, eternal light of love divine; "In him there is no darkness," saith St. John, In him no wrath-the meaning is all one: 'Tis our own darkness, wrath, sin, death, and Hell, Not to love him, who first lov'd us so well.

strange

That, when scripture assures us so plainly, that he,
His will, grace, or gift, is so perfectly free,
Any word should be strain'd to inculcate a thought
Of a wrath in his mind, or a change to be wrought.

'All wrath is the product of creaturely sin;
In immutable love it could never begin;
Nor, indeed, in a creature, 'till opposite will [ill,
To the love of its God had brought forth such an
To the love that was pleas'd to communicate bliss
In such endless degrees, thro' all Nature's abyss;
Nor could wrath have been known, had not man
left the state,

In which Nature's God was pleas'd man to create.

He saw, when this world in its purity stood, Every thing he had made, and "behold! it was good;"

And the man, its one ruler, before his sad fall,
As the image of God, had the goodness of all:
When he fell, and awakened wrath, evil, and curse
In himself and the world, was God become worse?
Who so lov'd the world stili, that, when wrath
was begun,

To redeem the lost creature, he gave his own son

Freely gave him; not mov'd or incited thereto By a previous appeasing, or payment of due To his wrath, or his vengeance, or any such cause As should satisfy him for the breach of his laws: This language the Jew Nicodemus might use; But our Saviour's to him had more excellent views; "God so lov'd the world," (are his words,)" that

he gave

His only-begotten" in order to save.

Love's prior, unpurchas'd, unpaid-for intent Was the cause, why the only-begotten was sent, That thro' him we might live; and the cause why

he came,

Was to manifest love, ever one and the same;
Full conquest of wrath ever striving to make,
And blotting transgressions out for its own sake;
Wanting no satisfaction itself, but to give
Itself, that the world might receive it, and live-

Might believe on the son, and receive a new birth From the love, that in Christ was incarnate on Earth;

When a virgin brought forth, without help of a man,
The restorer of God's true, original plan;
The one quencher of wrath, the atoner of sin,
And the "bringer of justice and righteousness in;"
The renewer, in man, of a pow'r, and a will
To satisfy justice-that is, to fulfil.

There is nothing that justice and righteousness
hath

More opposite to it, than anger and wrath;
As repugnant to all that is equal and right,
As falshood to truth, or as darkness to light.
Of God, in himself, what the scripture affirms
Is truth, light, and love-plain significant terms;
In his deity, therefore, there cannot befall
Any falshood, or darkness, or hatred at all.