Signs of the Times By J. P. FORSYTH, D.D.
O YES, we know
The' crushed Redeemer to atone; The bolt that cleaves the soul,
The Churches grow Rich in wealth, work, and thought;
The blood that makes it whole— Our paltering souls these tire.
With words divine, And touches fine, And fancies freshly caught; Exquisite prayers, Golden stairs, Sermons with notions fraught, Where generous views, Which all excuse, Are spiritually taught;
We sing to flutes, And move to lutes, Our worship we can hire.
Thou great Misunderstood, Fix Thy Grace fast ' Beyond our mood, Send flame, and light our altar wood; Regenerate, And re-create Our past. Bring home the mighty living Fact, Thy judging, pitying, saving Act, Till the offending Cross attract, And glows the dreadful rood .With solemn good, And vast, At last. We weary of the victim faint, The hero martyr, peasant saint, Who stirs our love but leaves our taint. Is balm, but never rod, Nor rends our last green sod, Or tomb’s restraint. We crave the Eternal Holy Son, Earth’s Lord and Hell’s, the Living One, Straight from His Cross, His Grave, His Throne, With a world-pardon all our own; With eyes of flame at which we fall Dead men, till He our life recall, And be our Life, our All-in-All. O Spirit of all Pentecost, Break up our all too sparkling frost With sacramental immanence Transcending our abased sense; O patient, patient God, Misprized, profaned God, Grieved and wounded God, Dooming and quickening God,
Praise in high taste, With no rude haste To Heaven’s Connoisseur brought; And able books, And kindly looks, And schemes humanely wrought. And submarines, and fortress ships, And speech through space, and skyborne trips; Only no speech with Heaven at grips,
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And only not the prophet’s lips, No seer, no dread Apocalypse. Higher we fly and higher,
But come to Heaven no nigher, Wealth from earth’s caves is torn, Yet is our soul forlorn,
Man more endeared, And God less feared. How shall we cure The mind unsure, And brace its slack attire; How make adore Those who before Knew only to admire? With heart too light, Conscience too right, Kind, passionless, entire, With cheery push TJie burning bush They see but to inquire. Athenian intelligence,
, But of man’s tragic guilt no sense, To holiness acutely dense.
And salt us with thy fire— O sain our wills with fire.
But visions of the Great White Throne, Red judgments round its great white cone The broken conscience and its moan,
From high suns where no sin is glossed, From nether flames that purge the lost.” Reprint from The British Weekly.
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