vision or the
quickening of our pulses, in our studies or our meditations upon the
deepest questions of life! How many there are, whose faces we never
saw, but who by some luminous word, some strain vibrant with
tenderness, some flash of insight, have endeared themselves to us
forever! They are the friends of our spirits, ministers to us of the holiest
things. They have clothed for us the highest truth in forms of beauty;
they have made it winsome and real and dear and memorable. Is there
anything better than this, that one man can do for another?
Washington Gladden
[Footnote A: "The Great Poets and their Theology."]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:
"RELIGION AND POETRY."
By
Washington Gladden
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE:
THE DIVINE
ELEMENT--(God, Christ, the Holy Spirit)
PRAYER AND
ASPIRATION
FAITH: HOPE: LOVE: SERVICE
SABBATH:
WORSHIP: CREED
SELECTIONS FROM "PARADISE
LOST"
HUMAN EXPERIENCE
DEATH: IMMORTALITY:
HEAVEN
SELECTIONS FROM "THE DIVINE COMEDY"
INDEX: AUTHORS AND TITLES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
JOHN MILTON
Photogravure from an engraving.
THE CHILD JESUS IN THE TEMPLE
_One of Heinrich Hoffmann's wonderful scenes in the life of Christ: the
earnest, wise-faced Boy, and the eager or doubtful but thoughtful
Scribes and Doctors of the Law, are graphically depicted._
ISAAC WATTS
From a contemporary engraving.
THE HOLY NIGHT
"It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly
wrapt in the rude manger lies."
From photogravure after a painting by Martin Feuerstein.
CHARLES WESLEY
From a contemporary engraving.
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
"Knocking, knocking, ever knocking?
Who is there?
'Tis a pilgrim,
strange and kingly,
Never such was seen before."
From photo-carbon print after the painting by Holman Hunt.
SIR GALAHAD
"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure."
From photogravure after the painting by George Frederick Watts.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
From a photogravure after life-photograph.
DINA M. MULOCK CRAIK
From a life-photograph by Elliott and Fry, London.
THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN
"Two went to pray? O, rather say,
One went to brag, the other to pray;
One nearer to God's altar trod,
The other to the altar's God."
From engraving by Brend'amour, after a design by Alexander Bida.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
_After a photograph from the fresco by His friend Giotto, discovered
under the whitewash on a watt of the Bargello palace; now in the
Museo Nazionale, Florence, Italy_.
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE
I.
THE DIVINE ELEMENT.
SONG.
FROM "PIPPA PASSES."
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's
on the thorn;
God's in His heaven--
All's right with the world.
ROBERT BROWNING.
A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF SAINT AUGUSTINE.
Long pored Saint Austin o'er the sacred page,
And doubt and
darkness overspread his mind;
On God's mysterious being thought the
Sage,
The Triple Person in one Godhead joined.
The more he
thought, the harder did he find
To solve the various doubts which fast
arose;
And as a ship, caught by imperious wind,
Tosses where
chance its shattered body throws,
So tossed his troubled soul, and
nowhere found repose.
Heated and feverish, then he closed his tome,
And went to wander by
the ocean-side,
Where the cool breeze at evening loved to come,
Murmuring responsive to the murmuring tide;
And as Augustine o'er
its margent wide
Strayed, deeply pondering the puzzling theme,
A
little child before him he espied:
In earnest labor did the urchin seem,
Working with heart intent close by the sounding stream.
He looked, and saw the child a hole had scooped,
Shallow and narrow
in the shining sand,
O'er which at work the laboring infant stooped,
Still pouring water in with busy hand.
The saint addressed the child in
accents bland:
"Fair boy," quoth he, "I pray what toil is thine?
Let
me its end and purpose understand."
The boy replied: "An easy task
is mine,
To sweep into this hole all the wide ocean's brine."
"O foolish boy!" the saint exclaimed, "to hope
That the broad ocean
in that hole should lie!"
"O foolish saint!" exclaimed the boy; "thy
scope
Is still more hopeless than the toil I ply,
Who think'st to
comprehend God's nature high
In the small compass of thine human
wit!
Sooner, Augustine, sooner far, shall I
Confine the ocean in this
tiny pit,
Than finite minds conceive God's nature infinite!"
ANONYMOUS.
MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE.
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, Are the
people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God? Westward
across the ocean, and Northward across the snow, Do they all stand
gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm Like the wild
bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; In the air
men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say,
"Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?"
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings, As they bow
to a mystic
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