Lo! Thou art here. Hence, doubt; hence, vain alarms; And lifts His voice on high, and sheds His peace. This morn, with loving hearts and conscience pure, We met Him at His sacramental Feast; This eve He comes our pardon to assure, And shadow forth the image of our rest. The whole body of Paschal doctrine is set forth in the fifteenth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and its moral and spiritual significance, as affecting Christian conduct, is fully exhibited, amongst other places, in the Epistle to the Colossians, from the third chapter of which the Epistle for the day is taken. It was impossible that every aspect of Easter should not at least be intimated wherever one was poetically exhibited. The doctrinal and the didactic have thus appeared in the historical poems which we have already placed before the reader. It remains for us to offer two or three other poems which refer severally to the Resurrection hopes of the Christian individual, and of the Church, the Christian corporation. The first, entitled "The Resurrection," we owe to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, the author of the "Messiah; " who, besides his larger poem, left a number of odes, "the general character of which," says Mr. Nind, the translator of the "Odes of Klopstock, from 1747 to 1780,” “is to promote humanity, friendship, patriotism, and religion. Nor ought it to be forgotten, that at a time when an eclectic scepticism was supposed to be the badge of genius and philosophy-when the tide of infidelity was billowing up Europe-he planted the Cross above the waves, and sang to his fellow-countrymen, GOD THE REDEEMER.” following, from among the spiritual songs of Mr. Nind's volume, has appeared in other versions; and a rendering of it, at once smoother and more paraphrastic, occurs in the " Lyra Sacra of the Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile. The The Resurrection of Jesus was the Great Charter of humanity. Man, contemplating this most magnificent of events, becomes irradiate with a light that never was on sea or shore. Feelings of a mysterious grandeur struggle in his soul; for it is on this Day that his soul first ascertains the fact of her immortality-a fact which had been but feebly lighted by the Old Testament, left in doubt by Plato, denied by Epicurus, or perverted by Pythagoras into a mongrel metempsychosis. The universality of the Resurrection hope is set forth in Crashaw's "Easter Day," a short ode, which occurs in his volume called " Steps to the Temple." Rise, Heir of fresh Eternity From thy virgin-tomb: Rise, mighty Man of Wonders, and Thy world with Thee, Nature's new womb; Thy tomb, fair Immortality's perfumed nest. Of all the glories make noon gay, This is the morn; This Rock buds forth the fountain of the stream of day. When Life was born; No cloud scowl on his radiant lips, no tempest lour. Life, by this light's nativity, All creature's have. Death only by this day's just doom is forced to die; Throned in Thy grave Death will on this condition be content to die. The late Dr. Isaac Williams, author of "The Cathedral," and the of "Lyra Apostolica," published in 1849 a volume entitled "The Altar: or, Meditations in Verse on the Great Christian Sacrifice.' From this volume we take our last poetical illustration of Easter. It is in the form of a Sonnet, and has for its theme:-"If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His Resurrection." Christ rises!-not alone, with Him His own Are rising from their graves, and burst the veil, Even as the moon doth not arise alone, But watchful sentinels attend her throne, Yet love that they themselves should fade and fail, 'Tis thus when Christ within the soul made known But all the graces with Him make their home, 66 THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION." 221 When He the darkness of the soul lays bare, "The Resurrection once believed," to conclude with the words of the late Professor Archer Butler," who can believe it, and not acknowledge that it alters the whole complexion of his existence; that he has sprung at one bound from dust to angels; that he stands on the great platform of immortal natures, can see below him the whole universe, above him nothing but his God? Shall we not then awake, and know ourselves the immortals that we are? This world is but the womb of eternity. The Father, who has regenerated, has regenerated that He may immortalize. Sooner shall He yield His heavenly throne than hold it and forsake us; sooner shall God be no longer God, than ‘the children of God' fail to be the children of the Resurrection.' Behold! we stand alone in creation; earth, sea, and sky, can show nothing so awful as we are! The rooted hills shall flee before the fiery glance of the Almighty Judge; the mountains shall become dust, the ocean a vapour; the very stars of heaven shall fade and fall as the fig-tree casts her untimely fruit! yea, 'heaven and earth shall pass away: but the humblest, poorest, lowliest among us is born for undying life. Amid all the terrors of dissolving nature, the band of immortals shall stand before their Judge. He has made you to be sharers of His own eternity; the most incomprehensible of His attributes is permitted in its measure to be yours. Alone in a world of weak and fading forms, with all perishable, even to the inmost folds of the fleshly garment that invests you, with the very beauty of nature dependent on its revolutions, its order the order of successive evanescence, its constancy the constancy of change,-amid all this mournful scenery of death, you alone are deathless. In the lapse of millions of ages hence, for aught we can tell, may be the purpose of God that all this outward visible universe shall gradually give place to some new creation; it that other planets shall circle other suns; that unheard-of forms of animated existence shall crowd all the chambers of the sensitive universe with forms of life unlike all that we can dream of; that in slow progression the universal cycle of our present system of nature shall at length expire:-but even then no decay shall dare to touch the universe of souls. Even then there shall be memories in heaven that shall speak of their little speck of earthly existence as a well-remembered history; yea, that shall anticipate millions of even such cycles as this, as not consuming even the first glorious minute of the everlasting day! For these things ye are born; unto this heritage are ye redeemed. Live, then, as citizens of the immortal empire. Let the impress of the eternal country be on your foreheads. Let the angels see that you know yourselves their fellows. Speak, think, and act, as becomes your high ancestry; for your Father is in heaven, and the First-born of your brethren is on the throne of God. Oh! as you read and hear of these things, strain your eyes beyond the walls of this dim prison, and catch the unearthly light of that spiritual world where the perfected just are already awaiting your arrival.” * |