December Eighth, 1869 [pp. 457-459]

December Eigkii4 1869. 457
DECEMBER EIGHTH, 1869.
I.
THERE came an hour, and words were uttered then
That live to-day and echo evermore.
ONE spoke them ~o a knot of simple men,
Who simply took the simple sense they bore:
A promise-such as never tongue or pen
Of sage oracular had made before;
And a design no ~~`isdOm could have planned,
Save His who holds the nations in his hand.
II.
Had less than God so spoken, he had been
The wildest of all dreamers. What! to make
A poor rude fisher, who had never seen
A gloom upon his Galil~an lake
But feared the menace of its boding mien,
A rock no surge should fret, no tempest shakeThe baffled ages foaming at its feet
The broken malice of their ceaseless beat!
III.
God saith; and who shall gainsay? Devils first;
Then fools, their ready dupes. To these, forsooth,
`Tis nobler to resist, and dare the worst,
Than own the gentle majesty of truthAs came the church to free a world accurst,
And heal its heartache, and renew its youth:
A spring to thaw the universal frostFire-dowered from her natal Pentecost.
iv.
But principle is something to defy,
That may not swerve to give a falsehood breath;
Or call masked anarchy its stout ally,
And offer God an honorable death.
And so along the ages rolls a cry The din of onset at the gates of faith:
`Tis Arius now, now Luther heads the fray;
Or bristles up the hydra of to-day.