And in her streets, and in her spacious courts,
Is heard falvation. Eaftern Java there
Kneels with the native of the fartheft weft;
And Æthiopia fpreads abroad the hand,
And worships. Her report has travelled forth
Into all lands. From every clime they come
To fee thy beauty and to share thy joy,
O Sion! an affembly fuch as earth
Saw never, fuch as Heaven stoops down to fee.
Thus heaven-ward all things tend. For all were
Perfect, and all must be at length restored.
So God has greatly purposed; who would else
In his dishonoured works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wronged without redress.
Hafte then, and wheel away a shattered world,
Ye flow-revolving seasons! we would fee
(A fight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world, that does not dread and hate his laws,
And fuffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases him.
Here every drop of honey hides a fting;
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flowers;
And ev'n the joy, that haply some poor heart
Derives from heaven, pure as the fountain is,
Is fullied in the stream, taking a taint
From touch of human lips, at best impure.
Oh for a world in principle as chafte
As this is grofs and selfish! over which
Cuftom and prejudice fhall bear no fway,
That govern all things here, fhouldering afide
The meek and modest truth, and forcing her
To feek a refuge from the tongue of strife
In nooks obfcure, far from the ways of men:
Where violence fhall never lift the fword,
Nor cunning juftify the proud man's wrong,
Leaving the poor no remedy but tears:
Where he, that fills an office, fhall efteem
The occafion it prefents of doing good
More than the perquifite: where law fhall speak
Seldom, and never but as wisdom prompts
And equity; not jealous more to guard
A worthless form, than to decide aright:
Where fashion shall not fanctify abuse,
Nor fmooth good-breeding (fupplemental grace)
With lean performance ape the work of love!
Come then, and added to thy many crowns, Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth, Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth; And thou haft made it thine by purchase fince, And overpaid its value with thy blood.
Thy faints proclaim thee king; and in their hearts Thy title is engraven with a pen
Dipt in the fountain of eternal love.
Thy faints proclaim thee king; and thy delay
Gives courage to their foes; who, could they see
The dawn of thy laft advent, long-defired,
Would creep into the bowels of the hills,
And flee for fafety to the falling rocks.
The very fpirit of the world is tired
Of its own taunting queftion, afked fo long,
"Where is the promise of your Lord's approach?"
The infidel has shot his bolts away,
Till his exhaufted quiver yielding none,
He gleans the blunted fhafts, that have recoiled,
And aims them at the fhield of truth again.
The veil is rent, rent too by priestly hands,
That hides divinity from mortal eyes;
And all the myfteries to faith proposed,
Infulted and traduced, are caft afide,
As useless, to the moles and to the bats.
They now are deemed the faithful, and are praised,
Who conftant only in rejecting thee,
Deny thy Godhead with a martyr's zeal,
And quit their office for their error's fake.
Blind, and in love with darkness! yet even these
Worthy, compared with fycophants, who knee
Thy name adoring, and then preach thee man!
So fares thy church. But how thy church may fare
The world takes little thought. Who will may
preach,
And what they will. All paftors are alike
To wandering sheep, resolved to follow none.
Two gods divide them all-Pleasure and Gain:
For these they live, they sacrifice to these,
And in their service wage perpetual war
With confcience and with thee. Luft in their hearts,
And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth
To prey upon each other; ftubborn, fierce,
High-minded, foaming out their own disgrace.
Thy prophets fpeak of fuch; and, noting down
The features of the laft degenerate times,
Exhibit every lineament of these.
Come then, and added to thy many crowns,
Receive yet one, as radiant as the rest,
Due to thy last and most effectual work,
Thy word fulfilled, the conqueft of a world!
He is the happy man, whose life ev'n now Shows fomewhat of that happier life to come; Who, doomed to an obfcure but tranquil ftate, Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose, Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; befpeak him one
Content indeed to fojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'erlooks him in her busy search
Of objects, more illuftrious in her view;
And, occupied as earneftly as fhe,
Though more fublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She fcorns his pleasures, for fhe knows them not;
He feeks not her's, for he has proved them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like fummer birds
Pursuing gilded flies; and fuch he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
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