If I am low and sinful, bring
More love where need is rife ;
Thou knowest what an awful thing
It is to be a life.

Hast Thou not wisdom to enwrap
My waywardness about,

In doubting safety on the lap

Of Love that knows no doubt?

Lo! Lord, I sit in Thy wide space,
My child upon my knee;

She looketh up unto my face,

And I look up to Thee.

GEORGE MACDONALD.

I

THE WILL OF GOD.

WORSHIP thee, sweet Will of God!
And all thy ways adore,

And, every day I live, I seem

To love thee more and more.

When obstacles and trials seem
Like prison-walls to be,

I do the little I can do,

And leave the rest to thee.

I know not what it is to doubt,
My heart is ever gay;

I run no risk, for, come what will,

Thou always hast thy way.

I have no cares, O blessed Will!
For all my cares are thine;

I live in triumph, Lord! for thou
Hast made thy triumphs mine.

And when it seems no chance or change
From grief can set me free,

Hope finds its strength in helplessness,
And gaily waits on thee.

He always wins who sides with God,
To him no chance is lost;
God's will is sweetest to him when
It triumphs at his cost.

Ill that He blesses is our good,
And unblest good is ill;

And all is right that seems most wrong,

If it be His sweet Will!

FROM "IN MEMORIAM."

LIII.

F. W. FABER.

YET we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.

Behold! we know not any thing;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last, far off, at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

COMPENSATION.

TEARS wash away the atoms of the eye

That smarted for a day:

Rain-clouds that spoiled the splendors of the sky The fields with flowers array.

No chamber of pain but has some hidden door

That promises release:

No solitude so drear but yields its store

Of thought and inward peace.

No night so wild but brings the constant sun

With love and power untold:

No time so dark but through its woof there run
Some blessed threads of gold.

And through the long and storm-tost centuries burn, In changing calm and strife,

The Pharos-lights of truth, where'er we turn

The unquenched lamps of life.

O Love supreme ·

O Providence divine!

What self-adjusting springs

Of law and life what even scales are thine:
What sure-returning wings

Of hopes and joys that flit like birds away
When chilling autumn blows,

But come again, long ere the buds of May
Their rosy lips unclose!

What wondrous play of mood and accident,
Through shifting days and years!
What fresh returns of vigor over-spent

In feverish dreams and fears!

What wholesome air of conscience and of thought, When doubts and forms oppress :

What vistas opening through the gates we sought Beyond the wilderness

Beyond the narrow cells where, self-involved,

Like chrysalids we wait

The unknown births, the mysteries unsolved

Of death and change and fate!

O Light Divine! we need no fuller test
That all is ordered well.

We know enough to trust that all is best
Where Love and Wisdom dwell.

C. P. CRANCH.