The triumph of faith or, Christ's unchangeable love.

Rom. 8:33ff.

Who shall the Lord's elect condemn?
'Tis God that justifies their souls;
And mercy, like a mighty stream,
O'er all their sins divinely rolls.

Who shall adjudge the saints to hell?
'Tis Christ that suffered in their stead;
And, the salvation to fulfil,
Behold him rising from the dead!

He lives! he lives and sits above,
For ever interceding there:
Who shall divide us from his love?
Or what should tempt us to despair?

The love of Christ shed abroad in the heart.

Eph. 3:16ff.

Come, dearest Lord, descend and dwell
By faith and love in every breast;
Then shall we know, and taste, and feel
The joys that cannot be expressed.

Come, fill our hearts with inward strength,
Make our enlarged souls possess,
And learn the height, and breadth, and length
Of thine unmeasurable grace.

Now to the God whose power can do
More than our thoughts or wishes know,
Be everlasting honors done
By all the church, through Christ his Son.

Love and charity.

1 Cor. 13:2-7, 13.

Let Pharisees of high esteem
Their faith and zeal declare,
All their religion is a dream,
If love be wanting there.

Love suffers long with patient eye,
Nor is provoked in haste;
She lets the present injury die,
And long forgets the past.

[Malice and rage, those fires of hell,
She quenches with her tongue;
Hopes and believes, and thinks no ill,
Though she endure the wrong.]

[She nor desires nor seeks to know
The scandals of the time;

Love to God and our neighbor.

Matt. 22:37-40.

Thus saith the first, the great command,
"Let all thy inward powers unite
To love thy Maker and thy God
With utmost vigor and delight.

"Then shall thy neighbor next in place
Share thine affections and esteem,
And let thy kindness to thyself
Measure and rule thy love to him."

This is the sense that Moses spoke,
This did the prophets preach and prove;
For want of this the law is broke,
And the whole law's fulfilled by love.

But O! how base our passions are!

Christ unseen and beloved.

1 Pet. 1:5.

Now with our mortal eyes
Have we beheld the Lord;
Yet we rejoice to hear his name,
And love him in his word.

On earth we want the sight
Of our Redeemer's face;
Yet, Lord, our inmost thoughts delight
To dwell upon thy grace.

And when we taste thy love,
Our joys divinely grow
Unspeakable, like those above,
And heav'n begins below.

HAIL, sacred Feast, to weary mortals given,
Pledge of God's love! O Christ, we here adore
Thee, the slain Lamb, and Thee, the Bread from heaven—
Our life and peace, our joy for evermore.
Feed us, dear Lord, Thine own great love supplying
5
Our lack of faith, our need of every grace;
Dwell in us richly, till, on Thee relying,
We reach our home and see Thee face to face.

"Heaven bless the babe!" they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
Grant I may not bear a child.)
"Little does she guess to-day
What the world may be!" they say.
(Snow, drift deep and cover
Till the spring my murdered lover.)

Sweet, bide with me and let my love
Be an enduring tether;
Oh, wanton not from spot to spot,
But let us dwell together.

You've come each morn to sip the sweets
With which you found me dripping,
Yet never knew it was not dew
But tears that you were sipping.

You gambol over honey meads
Where siren bees are humming;
But mine the fate to watch and wait
For my beloved's coming.

The sunshine that delights you now
Shall fade to darkness gloomy;
You should not fear if, biding here,
You nestled closer to me.

The moist and quiet morn was scarcely breaking,
When Ariadne in her bower was waking;
Her eyelids still were closing, and she heard
But indistinctly yet a little bird,
That in the leaves o’erhead, waiting the sun,
Seemed answering another distant one.
She waked, but stirred not, only just to please
Her pillow-nestling cheek; while the full seas,
The birds, the leaves, the lulling love o’ernight
The happy thought of the returning light,
The sweet, self-willed content, conspired to keep
Her senses lingering in the feel of sleep;

A strange kind of madness has charmed my world.
My hopes aflame they now shiver and shake;
I have waited too long for my love to return -
That I have gone to sleep in a foolish way.