Gifts of Genius Part 11

Thou who look'st with pitying eye From Thy radiant home on high, On the spirit tempest-tost, Wretched, weary, wandering, lost-- Ever ready help to give, And entreating, "_Look and live!_"

By that love, exceeding thought, Which from Heaven the Saviour brought, By that mercy which could dare Death to save us from despair, Lowly bending at Thy feet, We adore, implore, entreat, Lifting heart and voice to Thee-- _Miserere Domine_!

With the vain and giddy throng, FATHER! we have wandered long; Eager from Thy paths to stray, Chosen the forbidden way; Heedless of the light within, Hurried on from sin to sin, And with scoffers madly trod On the mercy of our G.o.d!

Now to where Thine altars burn, FATHER! sorrowing we return.

Though forgotten, Thou hast not To be merciful forgot; Hear us! for we cry to Thee-- _Miserere Domine_!

From the burden of our grief Who, but Thou, can give relief?

Who can pour Salvation's light On the darkness of our night?

Bowed our load of sin beneath, Who can s.n.a.t.c.h our souls from death?

Vain the help of man!--in dust Vainly do we put our trust!

Smitten by Thy chastening rod, Hear us, save us, SON OF G.o.d!

From the perils of our path, From the terrors of thy wrath, Save us, when we look to thee-- _Miserere Domine_!

Where the pastures greenly grow, Where the waters gently flow, And beneath the sheltering ROCK With the shepherd rests the flock.

Oh, let us be gathered there Richly of Thy love to share; With the people of Thy choice Live and labor and rejoice, Till the toils of life are done, Till the fight is fought and won, And the crown, with heavenly glow, Sparkles on the victor's brow!

Hear the prayer we lift to Thee-- _Miserere Domine_!

THE

KINGDOMS OF NATURE PRAISING G.o.d:

A SHORT ESSAY ON THE 148TH PSALM.

BY REV. C.A. BARTOL.

Surrounded as we are with the art and handicraft of man--almost everything we see bearing the mark of his finger, the house and the street, the market and exchange, every instrument and utensil--it is well, occasionally, to look forth from this little world of custom and convenience we ourselves have constructed, into that which bears the impress of the Almighty's hand--is still as it was left from His forming strength, and brings us into immediate communion with His Infinite mind.

Let us, at least, listen to the notes of David's lyre on the creative Majesty.

After an invocation to the heavenly host, the Psalmist calls first on the forms of inanimate and inorganic existence. These things, of which he enumerates a few, praise the power of G.o.d. The crags and headlands, jarred and worn by the billows they breast; the granite peaks, bald and grey, under light and tempest, with the silent host of rocky boulders, swept, we know not by what convulsions, from their native seat, stand up as the first rank in the choir of the Maker's wors.h.i.+p; and infidelity and atheism are hushed and abashed by their lofty praise.

Organized, but still unconscious existence takes the next station in this universal chorus. The solemn grove lifting its green top into the heavens, beside that motionless army of ancient stones, adds a sweeter note than they can give to the great harmony. It is a note, speaking not alone of the Creator's power, but of His wisdom too. Here is life and growth. Here are adaptations and stages of progress. From the minutest germination, from the slenderest stem, from the smallest trembling leaf to the hugest trunks and the highest overshadowing branches, this vegetable organization, verdant, pale, crimson, in changeable colors, runs; stopping short only with Alpine summits or polar posts, swiftly and softly clothing again the rents and gashes in the ground made by the stroke of labor or the wheels of war--blooming into the golden and ruddy harvest on the stalk and the bough, even overpa.s.sing the salt sh.o.r.e, to line the dismal and unvisited caves of the deep with peculiar varieties of growth; and forth into our hands from the foaming brine delicate and strangely beautiful leaves and slight ramifications of matchless tints and proportions.

But the Psalmist summons a third order of beings to contribute its melodious share to this hallelujah; and that is the living and conscious, though irrational tribes. This sings not of power and wisdom alone, but more complex and rich in adoration, sings of goodness also. G.o.d has not made the world for a dead spectacle and mere picture for His own eye. How full and crowded with life, and happy life, His creation is! Go forth from inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall come to your ear: the chirp of the insects--the rustle of wings--the crackling of the leaves, as the blithesome airy creatures pa.s.s--the short, thick warble of the bird by your side, or its varied tune, clearer than viol or organ, from the thicket beyond--while, from time to time, the deep low of cattle reverberates from afar. Or if you are where the still and speechless creatures inhabit, open your eye to gaze and examine, and it shall be filled with the visible, as the ear with the vocal signs of living enjoyment. Walking at the edge of the ebbing tide, you tread on life at every step--sh.e.l.ly tribe on tribe of fish pressing together, while in the clear water, other tribes noiselessly swim and glide away. Every vital motion speaks of pleasure, whether in that restless current below, or in the air above, as the feathered songster pa.s.ses, darting up and down his element, delight gus.h.i.+ng from his throat at every buoyant spring--silence and sound, with double demonstration, declaring to the Creator's praise the great and limitless boon of life.

But there is one accent more, that of love, without which the hymn is not complete; and there is another human order of Being to speak that accent.

Man includes in himself all the preceding orders of Being, with all the notes of their praise: the material clod, for is he not made of dust; the plant, for he has an outward growth and circulation--the animal, for he has instinct and feeling; while reason and conscience and spiritual affection he has peculiarly and alone; so that Power, Wisdom, Goodness and Love, all concentrated in him, complete the ground of his praise.

Yet, as we look out upon this mighty sum of things in the external universe, the level earth stretching off to some ascending ridge in the horizon's blue distance--the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves. When he reflects on his condition--his brief date, his speedy doom--how inconsiderable his existence appears! Or when he regards himself as not a compound of matter merely, but as a living soul, how easy it seems, as his contemplation runs out absorbed into the wondrous glory of the world, for all the vital energy which is for a moment insulated in his frame, when his frame dissolves, to pa.s.s into the general substance from which it came, the thinking creature ending as it began! But a voice from heaven cries to him and says, "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he hath known my name; with long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

This love of G.o.d makes the society of all human affection. "G.o.d made the country, and man made the town," is an oft quoted line; and not seldom it is implied that the open or thinly-peopled landscape is somehow a better and holier place for the soul than the thronged city. But let it not be forgotten that man himself is G.o.d's work and His highest work on earth.

Would we sing our psalm now or hereafter with the sweetest relish, we must go forth from any little circle we may have drawn around us, of private ease and personal comfort, in friendly intercourse to hear the cry of the unfortunate, the sighing of the prisoner, the sob of the mourner, the groan of the sick, the appeal of the injured and oppressed. By our aid, consolation and succor, we must gather their voices into the chorus, before, with perfect satisfaction, we can mingle in it our own.

Upon a Sabbath day, I walked amid all those charms and fascinations, in which nature can bind us as in a spell. I pa.s.sed through green aisles of woods, that were ever-shadowed and made fragrant with every various vegetable growth of this temperate northern clime; while the morning beam of the sun in heaven fell brightly aslant the leaves and branches; and the birds, that my lonely step startled from their perch or nest, flew from glen to glen, making with their song, save the murmur of the breeze in the boughs, the only sound I could hear. At length, the high-arched avenues of this immense forest-cathedral let me out upon the broad, open sh.o.r.e, where I saw and heard wave after wave break on the rocks, with s.h.i.+fting splendor and that mellow thundering music which so saddens while it delights. Solitude, verily, was stretched out asleep in the sun upon the length of sandy beach and beetling promontory; and I sat and gazed now over the boundless waters, now into the devouring abysses opened by the bending crests of the billows, and anon into the gloomy depths of the forest or the serene and measureless openings of the sky. What grandeur in every line transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations in ages past, already swallowed up! Peering around in this pensive mood, in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste. And there my soul alighted and found rest. Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft, reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the universe I was; the common Christian consciousness reinforced my own, and dark queries and agitating uncertainties subsided from my spirit, as the deluge from the dove that Noah sent out to pluck the green branch of promise. From the illimitable reaches of the huge, but dimly responding creation around, the slight, frail temple for G.o.d's praise drew me to its welcome and peaceful embrace. As I approached it, the tolling of the bell struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft accord of the tossing billows. Stroke after stroke, distinctly falling, seemed to bring to me the echoes of a million holy telegraphic towers all over the surface of the globe; and when I came to stand under the eaves of the small sanctuary, the measured turning, in the belfry, of the wheel, by revolutions such as I had seen long years ago in my childhood, filled my eyes with gracious tokens, that were not drawn from me by the sublime circling of the sun and moon, then moving east and west in their spheres.

The final tone of praise in the great ascription to G.o.d is, in its fullness, supplied by a revelation greater than blessed the times of David. A new and sweeter string is strung upon the lyre his royal fingers so n.o.bly swept, and the voice of thanksgiving is more highly raised for an "unspeakable gift." The kingdoms of nature are the chords on the harp we may sound to the Creator of all. There has been of late much discussion as to the place nature should hold among religious influences and appeals, some super-eminently exalting her, and others putting her in contrast and almost opposition with all spirit, beauty and truth. This is no place, nor has the present writer inclination, here, to take part in the grand debate, infinitely interesting as it is, on either side. He would only catch, or repeat and prolong the strain of an old and sacred ode--he would contribute a meditation. He would run the matchless ancient verse into a few particulars of fresh and modern ill.u.s.tration, content if he can make no melody of his own, to recall for some, perhaps not enough heeding it, the Hebrew music that has lingered so long on the ear of the world.

TRANSLATIONS.

BY THE REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS

I.

TO G.o.d'S CARE I COMMIT MYSELF!

(FROM THE GERMAN OF ARNDT.)

Again is hushed the busy day, And all to sleep is gone away; The deer hath sought his mossy bed, The bird hath hid his little head.

And man to his still chamber goes To rest from all his cares and woes.

Yet steps he first before his door, To look into the night once more, With love-thanks and love-greeting, there, For rest his spirit to prepare, To see the high stars s.h.i.+ne abroad And drink once more the breath of G.o.d.

Mild Father of the world, whose love Keeps watch o'er all things from above, To Thee my stammering prayer would rise; Bend down from yonder starry skies; And from Thy sparkling, sun-strewed way, Oh teach thy feeble child to pray!

All day Thou hadst me in Thy sight; So guard me, Father, through this night; And by thy dear benignity From Satan's malice shelter me; For what of evil may befall The body, is the least of all.

Oh send from realms of purity The dearest angel in to me, As a peace-herald let him come, And watchman, to my house and home, That all desires and thoughts of mine, Around thy heaven may climb and twine.

Then day shall part exultingly, Then night a word of love shall be, Then morn an angel-smile shall wear Whose brightness no base thing can bear, And we, earth's children, walk abroad, Children of light and sons of G.o.d.

And when the last red evening-glow Shall greet these failing eyes below, When yearns my soul to wing its way To the high track of endless day, Then all the s.h.i.+ning ones shall come To bear me to the spirit's home.

II.

THE UNKNOWN.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF AUERSPERG.)

Through the city's narrow gateway Forth an aged beggar fares, None is there to give him escort, And no farewell word he bears.

Heaven's grey cloud to no one whispers Of G.o.d's message in its fold; Earth's grey rock to no one whispers That it hides the shaft of gold.

And the naked tree in winter Tells not straightway to the eye That it once so greenly glistened, Bloomed and bore so bounteously.

None would dream that yon old beggar, Tottering, bending toward the ground, Once was clothed in royal purple, And his silver locks gold-crowned!

Foul conspirators discrowned him, Tore the radiant purple off, Placing in his hands, for sceptre, Yonder wormy pilgrim-staff.

Thus, for years, now, has he wandered, All ungreeted and unknown, Through so many a foreign country, Bowed and broken and alone.

Weary unto death, he lays him 'Neath a tree, in evening's beam, Music in the twigs and blossoms Sings him to an endless dream.