His favour is my life, his lips pronounce me dead!

And as his awful dictates bid,

Earth is my mother, or my grave.

THE INFINITE.

SOME seraph, lend your heavenly tongue,

Or harp of golden string,
That I may raise a lofty song

To our Eternal King.

Thy names, how infinite they be!
Great Everlasting One!
Boundless thy might and majesty,
And unconfin'd thy throne.

Thy glories shine of wondrous size,
And wondrous large thy grace;
Immortal day breaks from thine eyes,
And Gabriel veils his face.

Thine essence is a vast abyss,

Which angels cannot sound,

An ocean of infinities

Where all our thoughts are drown'd.

The mysteries of creation lie

Beneath enlighten'd minds,

Thoughts can ascend above the sky,
And fly before the winds.

Reason may grasp the massy hills,
And stretch from pole to pole;
But half thy name our spirit fills,
And overloads our soul.

In vain our haughty reason swells,
For nothing's found in thee
But boundless inconceivables,
And vast eternity.

CONFESSION AND PARDON.

ALAS, my aching heart!

Here the keen torment lies;

It racks my waking hours with smart, And frights my slumb'ring eyes.

Guilt will be hid no more,

My griefs take vent apace,

The crimes that blot my conscience o'er

Flush crimson in my face.

My sorrows, like a flood,
Impatient of restraint,

Into thy bosom, O my God,
Pour out a long complaint.

This impious heart of mine,
Could once defy the Lord,
Could rush with violence on to sin
In presence of thy sword.

How often have I stood

F. A rebel to the skies,

The calls, the tenders of a God,

And mercy's loudest cries!

He offers all his grace,

And all his heaven to me;

Offers! but 'tis to senseless brass,
That cannot feel nor see.

JESUS the Saviour stands

To court me from above,

And looks and spreads his wounded hands, And shows the prints of love.

But I, a senseless fool,

How long have I withstood

The blessings purchas'd with his soul,

And paid for all in blood?

The heav'nly Dove came down
And tender'd me his wings

To mount me upwards to a crown,
And bright immortal things.

Lord, I'm asham'd to say
That I refus'd thy Dove,

And sent thy Spirit grieved away,
To his own realms of love.

Lord, 'tis against thy face

My sins like arrows rise,

And yet, and yet (O matchless grace!)

Thy thunder silent lies.

O shall I never feel

The meltings of thy love?

Am I of such hell-harden'd steel

That mercy cannot move?

Now for one powerful glance,
Dear Saviour, from thy face!
This rebel-heart no more withstands,
But sinks beneath thy grace.

O'ercome by dying love I fall,

Here at thy cross I lie;

And throw my flesh, my soul, my all,

And weep, and love, and die.

"Rise," says the Prince of Mercy, "rise,"
With joy and pity in his eyes,

"Rise, and behold my wounded veins,
Here flows the blood to wash thy stains.

"See my great Father reconciled:"
He said. And lo, the Father, smil'd;
The joyful cherubs clapp'd their wings,
And sounded grace on all their strings.

YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS, OLD MEN AND BABES, PRAISE YE THE LORD.

Psalm exlviii, 12.

SONS of Adam, bold and young,

In the wild mazes of whose veins

A flood of fiery vigour reigns,

And wields your active limbs with hardy sinews strung; Fall prostrate at th' eternal throne

Whence your precarious pow'rs depend;

Nor swell as if your lives were all your own,

But choose your Maker for your friend;

His favour is your life, his arm is your support,

His hand can stretch your days, or cut your minutes short.

Virgins, who roll your artful eyes,
And shoot delicious danger thence;
Swift the lovely lightning flies,

And melts our reason down to sense;
Boast not of those withering charms
That must yield their youthful grace
To age and wrinkles, earth and worms:
But love the Author of your smiling face;

That heav'nly Bridegroom claims your blooming hours; O make it your perpetual care

To please that Everlasting Fair;

His beauties are the sun, and but the shade is yours.

Infants, whose different destinies

Are wove with threads of different size;
But from the same spring-tide of tears,
Commence your hopes, and joys, and fears,
(A tedious train ;) and date your following years:
Break your first silence in his praise

Who wrought your wondrous frame:
With sounds of tenderest accents raise
Young honours to his name;
And consecrate your early days
To know the pow'r supreme.

Ye heads of venerable age,

Just marching off the mortal stage,
Fathers, whose vital threads are spun

As long as e'er the glass of life would run,

Adore the hand that led your way

Through flow'ry fields, a fair long summer's day; Gasp out your soul in praises to the Sovereign pow'r That set your west so distant from your dawning hour.