Perhaps the Christian volume[64] is the theme:
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; 130
How His first followers and servants sped;[65]
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:[66]
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced
by Heaven's command.[67] 135
Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"[68]
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There ever bask in uncreated rays, 140
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.
Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 145
In all the pomp of method, and of art;
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart,
The Power,[69] incensed, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 150
But haply,[70] in some cottage far apart,
May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul,
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.
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