Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood Part 20

O happy night, that brought forth light, Which makes the blind to see!

The day spring from on high came down To cheer and visit thee.

The wakeful shepherds, near their flocks, Were watchful for the morn; But better news from heaven was brought, Your Saviour Christ is born.

In Bethlem-town the infant lies, Within a place obscure, O little Bethlem, poor in walls, But rich in furniture!

Since heaven is now come down to earth, Hither the angels fly!

Hark, how the heavenly choir doth sing Glory to G.o.d on High!

The news is spread, the church is glad, SIMEON, o'ercome with joy, Sings with the infant in his arms, NOW LET THY SERVANT DIE.

Wise men from far beheld the star, Which was their faithful guide, Until it pointed forth the Babe, And Him they glorified.

Do heaven and earth rejoice and sing-- Shall we our Christ deny?

He's born for us, and we for Him: GLORY TO G.o.d ON HIGH.

JOHN MASON.

CHAPTER XI. SERMON ON G.o.d AND MAMMON.

I never asked questions about the private affairs of any of my paris.h.i.+oners, except of themselves individually upon occasion of their asking me for advice, and some consequent necessity for knowing more than they told me. Hence, I believe, they became the more willing that I should know. But I heard a good many things from others, notwithstanding, for I could not be constantly closing the lips of the communicative as I had done those of Jane Rogers. And amongst other things, I learned that Miss Oldcastle went most Sundays to the neighbouring town of Addicehead to church. Now I had often heard of the ability of the rector, and although I had never met him, was prepared to find him a cultivated, if not an original man. Still, if I must be honest, which I hope I must, I confess that I heard the news with a pang, in a.n.a.lysing which I discovered the chief component to be jealousy. It was no use asking myself why I should be jealous: there the ugly thing was. So I went and told G.o.d I was ashamed, and begged Him to deliver me from the evil, because His was the kingdom and the power and the glory. And He took my part against myself, for He waits to be gracious. Perhaps the reader may, however, suspect a deeper cause for this feeling (to which I would rather not give the true name again) than a merely professional one.

But there was one stray sheep of my flock that appeared in church for the first time on the morning of Christmas Day--Catherine Weir. She did not sit beside her father, but in the most shadowy corner of the church--near the organ loft, however. She could have seen her father if she had looked up, but she kept her eyes down the whole time, and never even lifted them to me. The spot on one cheek was much brighter than that on the other, and made her look very ill.

I prayed to our G.o.d to grant me the honour of speaking a true word to them all; which honour I thought I was right in asking, because the Lord reproached the Pharisees for not seeking the honour that cometh from G.o.d. Perhaps I may have put a wrong interpretation on the pa.s.sage. It is, however, a joy to think that He will not give you a stone, even if you should take it for a loaf, and ask for it as such. Nor is He, like the scribes, lying in wait to catch poor erring men in their words or their prayers, however mistaken they may be.

I took my text from the Sermon on the Mount. And as the magazine for which these Annals were first written was intended chiefly for Sunday reading, I wrote my sermon just as if I were preaching it to my unseen readers as I spoke it to my present paris.h.i.+oners. And here it is now:

The Gospel according to St Matthew, the sixth chapter, and part of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses:--

"'YE CANNOT SERVE G.o.d AND MAMMON. THEREFORE I SAY TO YOU, TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR YOUR LIFE.'

"When the Child whose birth we celebrate with glad hearts this day, grew up to be a man, He said this. Did He mean it?--He never said what He did not mean. Did He mean it wholly?--He meant it far beyond what the words could convey. He meant it altogether and entirely. When people do not understand what the Lord says, when it seems to them that His advice is impracticable, instead of searching deeper for a meaning which will be evidently true and wise, they comfort themselves by thinking He could not have meant it altogether, and so leave it. Or they think that if He did mean it, He could not expect them to carry it out. And in the fact that they could not do it perfectly if they were to try, they take refuge from the duty of trying to do it at all; or, oftener, they do not think about it at all as anything that in the least concerns them. The Son of our Father in heaven may have become a child, may have led the one life which belongs to every man to lead, may have suffered because we are sinners, may have died for our sakes, doing the will of His Father in heaven, and yet we have nothing to do with the words He spoke out of the midst of His true, perfect knowledge, feeling, and action! Is it not strange that it should be so? Let it not be so with us this day.

Let us seek to find out what our Lord means, that we may do it; trying and failing and trying again--verily to be victorious at last--what matter WHEN, so long as we are trying, and so coming nearer to our end!

"MAMMON, you know, means RICHES. Now, riches are meant to be the slave--not even the servant of man, and not to be the master. If a man serve his own servant, or, in a word, any one who has no just claim to be his master, he is a slave. But here he serves his own slave. On the other hand, to serve G.o.d, the source of our being, our own glorious Father, is freedom; in fact, is the only way to get rid of all bondage.

So you see plainly enough that a man cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon. For how can a slave of his own slave be the servant of the G.o.d of freedom, of Him who can have no one to serve Him but a free man? His service is freedom. Do not, I pray you, make any confusion between service and slavery. To serve is the highest, n.o.blest calling in creation. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, yea, with Himself.

"But how can a man SERVE riches? Why, when he says to riches, 'Ye are my good.' When he feels he cannot be happy without them. When he puts forth the energies of his nature to get them. When he schemes and dreams and lies awake about them. When he will not give to his neighbour for fear of becoming poor himself. When he wants to have more, and to know he has more, than he can need. When he wants to leave money behind him, not for the sake of his children or relatives, but for the name of the wealth.

When he leaves his money, not to those who NEED it, even of his relations, but to those who are rich like himself, making them yet more of slaves to the overgrown monster they wors.h.i.+p for his size. When he honours those who have money because they have money, irrespective of their character; or when he honours in a rich man what he would not honour in a poor man. Then is he the slave of Mammon. Still more is he Mammon's slave when his devotion to his G.o.d makes him oppressive to those over whom his wealth gives him power; or when he becomes unjust in order to add to his stores.--How will it be with such a man when on a sudden he finds that the world has vanished, and he is alone with G.o.d?

There lies the body in which he used to live, whose poor necessities first made money of value to him, but with which itself and its fict.i.tious value are both left behind. He cannot now even try to bribe G.o.d with a cheque. The angels will not bow down to him because his property, as set forth in his will, takes five or six figures to express its amount It makes no difference to them that he has lost it, though; for they never respected him. And the poor souls of Hades, who envied him the wealth they had lost before, rise up as one man to welcome him, not for love of him--no wors.h.i.+pper of Mammon loves another--but rejoicing in the mischief that has befallen him, and saying, 'Art thou also become one of us?' And Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, however sorry he may be for him, however grateful he may feel to him for the broken victuals and the penny, cannot with one drop of the water of Paradise cool that man's parched tongue.

"Alas, poor Dives! poor server of Mammon, whose vile G.o.d can pretend to deliver him no longer! Or rather, for the blockish G.o.d never pretended anything--it was the man's own doing--Alas for the Mammon-wors.h.i.+pper! he can no longer deceive himself in his riches. And so even in h.e.l.l he is something n.o.bler than he was on earth; for he wors.h.i.+ps his riches no longer. He cannot. He curses them.

"Terrible things to say on Christmas Day! But if Christmas Day teaches us anything, it teaches us to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d and not Mammon; to wors.h.i.+p spirit and not matter; to wors.h.i.+p love and not power.

"Do I now hear any of my friends saying in their hearts: Let the rich take that! It does not apply to us. We are poor enough? Ah, my friends, I have known a light-hearted, liberal rich man lose his riches, and be liberal and light-hearted still. I knew a rich lady once, in giving a large gift of money to a poor man, say apologetically, 'I hope it is no disgrace in me to be rich, as it is none in you to be poor.' It is not the being rich that is wrong, but the serving of riches, instead of making them serve your neighbour and yourself--your neighbour for this life, yourself for the everlasting habitations. G.o.d knows it is hard for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven; but the rich man does sometimes enter in; for G.o.d hath made it possible. And the greater the victory, when it is the rich man that overcometh the world. It is easier for the poor man to enter into the kingdom, yet many of the poor have failed to enter in, and the greater is the disgrace of their defeat. For the poor have more done for them, as far as outward things go, in the way of salvation than the rich, and have a beat.i.tude all to themselves besides. For in the making of this world as a school of salvation, the poor, as the necessary majority, have been more regarded than the rich.

Do not think, my poor friend, that G.o.d will let you off. He lets n.o.body off. You, too, must pay the uttermost farthing. He loves you too well to let you serve Mammon a whit more than your rich neighbour. 'Serve Mammon!' do you say? 'How can I serve Mammon? I have no Mammon to serve.'--Would you like to have riches a moment sooner than G.o.d gives them? Would you serve Mammon if you had him?--'Who can tell?' do you answer? 'Leave those questions till I am tried.' But is there no bitterness in the tone of that response? Does it not mean, 'It will be a long time before I have a chance of trying THAT?'--But I am not driven to such questions for the chance of convicting some of you of Mammon-wors.h.i.+p. Let us look to the text. Read it again.

"'YE CANNOT SERVE G.o.d AND MAMMON. THEREFORE I SAY UNTO YOU, TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR YOUR LIFE.'

"Why are you to take no thought? Because you cannot serve G.o.d and Mammon. Is taking thought, then, a serving of Mammon? Clearly.--Where are you now, poor man? Brooding over the frost? Will it harden the ground, so that the G.o.d of the sparrows cannot find food for His sons?

Where are you now, poor woman? Sleepless over the empty cupboard and to-morrow's dinner? 'It is because we have no bread?' do you answer?

Have you forgotten the five loaves among the five thousand, and the fragments that were left? Or do you know nothing of your Father in heaven, who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds? O ye of little faith? O ye poor-spirited Mammon-wors.h.i.+ppers! who wors.h.i.+p him not even because he has given you anything, but in the hope that he may some future day benignantly regard you. But I may be too hard upon you. I know well that our Father sees a great difference between the man who is anxious about his children's dinner, or even about his own, and the man who is only anxious to add another ten thousand to his much goods laid up for many years. But you ought to find it easy to trust in G.o.d for such a matter as your daily bread, whereas no man can by any possibility trust in G.o.d for ten thousand pounds. The former need is a G.o.d-ordained necessity; the latter desire a man-devised appet.i.te at best--possibly swinish greed. Tell me, do you long to be rich? Then you wors.h.i.+p Mammon.

Tell me, do you think you would feel safer if you had money in the bank?

Then you are Mammon-wors.h.i.+ppers; for you would trust the barn of the rich man rather than the G.o.d who makes the corn to grow. Do you say--'What shall we eat? and what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothedl?' Are ye thus of doubtful mind?--Then you are Mammon-wors.h.i.+ppers. "But how is the work of the world to be done if we take no thought?--We are nowhere told not to take thought. We MUST take thought. The question is--What are we to take or not to take thought about? By some who do not know G.o.d, little work would be done if they were not driven by anxiety of some kind. But you, friends, are you content to go with the nations of the earth, or do you seek a better way--THE way that the Father of nations would have you walk in?

"WHAT then are we to take thought about? Why, about our work. What are we not to take thought about? Why, about our life. The one is our business: the other is G.o.d's. But you turn it the other way. You take no thought of earnestness about the doing of your duty; but you take thought of care lest G.o.d should not fulfil His part in the goings on of the world. A man's business is just to do his duty: G.o.d takes upon Himself the feeding and the clothing. Will the work of the world be neglected if a man thinks of his work, his duty, G.o.d's will to be done, instead of what he is to eat, what he is to drink, and wherewithal he is to be clothed? And remember all the needs of the world come back to these three. You will allow, I think, that the work of the world will be only so much the better done; that the very means of procuring the raiment or the food will be the more thoroughly used. What, then, is the only region on which the doubt can settle? Why, G.o.d. He alone remains to be doubted. Shall it be so with you? Shall the Son of man, the baby now born, and for ever with us, find no faith in you? Ah, my poor friend, who canst not trust in G.o.d--I was going to say you DESERVE--but what do I know of you to condemn and judge you?--I was going to say, you deserve to be treated like the child who frets and complains because his mother holds him on her knee and feeds him mouthful by mouthful with her own loving hand. I meant--you deserve to have your own way for a while; to be set down, and told to help yourself, and see what it will come to; to have your mother open the cupboard door for you, and leave you alone to your pleasures. Alas! poor child! When the sweets begin to pall, and the twilight begins to come duskily into the chamber, and you look about all at once and see no mother, how will your cupboard comfort you then? Ask it for a smile, for a stroke of the gentle hand, for a word of love. All the full-fed Mammon can give you is what your mother would have given you without the consequent loathing, with the light of her countenance upon it all, and the arm of her love around you.--And this is what G.o.d does sometimes, I think, with the Mammon-wors.h.i.+ppers amongst the poor. He says to them, Take your Mammon, and see what he is worth. Ah, friends, the children of G.o.d can never be happy serving other than Him.

The prodigal might fill his belly with riotous living or with the husks that the swine ate. It was all one, so long as he was not with his father. His soul was wretched. So would you be if you had wealth, for I fear you would only be worse Mammon-wors.h.i.+ppers than now, and might well have to thank G.o.d for the misery of any swine-trough that could bring you to your senses.

"But we do see people die of starvation sometimes,--Yes. But if you did your work in G.o.d's name, and left the rest to Him, that would not trouble you. You would say, If it be G.o.d's will that I should starve, I can starve as well as another. And your mind would be at ease. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon Thee, because he trusteth in Thee." Of that I am sure. It may be good for you to go hungry and bare-foot; but it must be utter death to have no faith in G.o.d. It is not, however, in G.o.d's way of things that the man who does his work shall not live by it. We do not know why here and there a man may be left to die of hunger, but I do believe that they who wait upon the Lord shall not lack any good. What it may be good to deprive a man of till he knows and acknowledges whence it comes, it may be still better to give him when he has learned that every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.

"I SHOULD like to know a man who just minded his duty and troubled himself about nothing; who did his own work and did not interfere with G.o.d's. How n.o.bly he would work--working not for reward, but because it was the will of G.o.d! How happily he would receive his food and clothing, receiving them as the gifts of G.o.d! What peace would be his! What a sober gaiety! How hearty and infectious his laughter! What a friend he would be! How sweet his sympathy! And his mind would be so clear he would understand everything His eye being single, his whole body would be full of light. No fear of his ever doing a mean thing. He would die in a ditch, rather. It is this fear of want that makes men do mean things. They are afraid to part with their precious lord--Mammon. He gives no safety against such a fear. One of the richest men in England is haunted with the dread of the workhouse. This man whom I should like to know, would be sure that G.o.d would have him liberal, and he would be what G.o.d would have him. Riches are not in the least necessary to that.

Witness our Lord's admiration of the poor widow with her great farthing.

"But I think I hear my troubled friend who does not love money, and yet cannot trust in G.o.d out and out, though she fain would,--I think I hear her say, "I believe I could trust Him for myself, or at least I should be ready to dare the worst for His sake; but my children--it is the thought of my children that is too much for me." Ah, woman! she whom the Saviour praised so pleasedly, was one who trusted Him for her daughter.

What an honour she had! "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt." Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have not you often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice! You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. G.o.d sent it. He makes you love your children; be sorry when you have been cross with them; ashamed when you have been unjust to them; and yet you won't trust Him to give them food and clothes! Depend upon it, if He ever refuses to give them food and clothes, and you knew all about it, the why and the wherefore, you would not dare to give them food or clothes either. He loves them a thousand times better than you do--be sure of that--and feels for their sufferings too, when He cannot give them just what He would like to give them--cannot for their good, I mean.

"But as your mistrust will go further, I can go further to meet it. You will say, 'Ah! yes'--in your feeling, I mean, not in words,--you will say, 'Ah! yes--food and clothing of a sort! Enough to keep life in and too much cold out! But I want my children to have plenty of GOOD food, and NICE clothes.'

"Faithless mother! Consider the birds of the air. They have so much that at least they can sing! Consider the lilies--they were red lilies, those. Would you not trust Him who delights in glorious colours--more at least than you, or He would never have created them and made us to delight in them? I do not say that your children shall be clothed in scarlet and fine linen; but if not, it is not because G.o.d despises scarlet and fine linen or does not love your children. He loves them, I say, too much to give them everything all at once. But He would make them such that they may have everything without being the worse, and with being the better for it. And if you cannot trust Him yet, it begins to be a shame, I think.

"It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow's burden is added to the burden of to-day, that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not G.o.d's. He begs you to leave the future to Him, and mind the present. What more or what else could He do to take the burden off you? Nothing else would do it. Money in the bank wouldn't do it. He cannot do to-morrow's business for you beforehand to save you from fear about it. That would derange everything. What else is there but to tell you to trust in Him, irrespective of the fact that nothing else but such trust can put our heart at peace, from the very nature of our relation to Him as well as the fact that we need these things.

We think that we come nearer to G.o.d than the lower animals do by our foresight. But there is another side to it. We are like to Him with whom there is no past or future, with whom a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, when we live with large bright spiritual eyes, doing our work in the great present, leaving both past and future to Him to whom they are ever present, and fearing nothing, because He is in our future, as much as He is in our past, as much as, and far more than, we can feel Him to be in our present. Partakers thus of the divine nature, resting in that perfect All-in-all in whom our nature is eternal too, we walk without fear, full of hope and courage and strength to do His will, waiting for the endless good which He is always giving as fast as He can get us able to take it in. Would not this be to be more of G.o.ds than Satan promised to Eve? To live carelessly-divine, duty-doing, fearless, loving, self-forgetting lives--is not that more than to know both good and evil--lives in which the good, like Aaron's rod, has swallowed up the evil, and turned it into good? For pain and hunger are evils, but if faith in G.o.d swallows them up, do they not so turn into good? I say they do. And I am glad to believe that I am not alone in my parish in this conviction. I have never been too hungry, but I have had trouble which I would gladly have exchanged for hunger and cold and weariness. Some of you have known hunger and cold and weariness. Do you not join with me to say: It is well, and better than well--whatever helps us to know the love of Him who is our G.o.d?

"But there HAS BEEN just one man who has acted thus. And it is His Spirit in our hearts that makes us desire to know or to be another such--who would do the will of G.o.d for G.o.d, and let G.o.d do G.o.d's will for Him. For His will is all. And this man is the baby whose birth we celebrate this day. Was this a condition to choose--that of a baby--by one who thought it part of a man's high calling to take care of the morrow? Did He not thus cast the whole matter at once upor the hands and heart of His Father? Sufficient unto the baby's day is the need thereof; he toils not, neither does he spin, and yet he if fed and clothed, and loved, and rejoiced in. Do you remind me that sometimes even his mother forgets him--a mother, most likely, to whose self-indulgence or weakness the child owes his birth as hers? Ah! but he is not therefore forgotten, however like things it may look to our half-seeing eyes, by his Father in heaven. One of the highest benefits we can reap from understanding the way of G.o.d with ourselves is, that we become able thus to trust Him for others with whom we do not understand His ways.

"But let us look at what will be more easily shown--how, namely, He did the will of His Father, and took no thought for the morrow after He became a man. Remember how He forsook His trade when the time came for Him to preach. Preaching was not a profession then. There were no monasteries, or vicarages, or stipends, then. Yet witness for the Father the garment woven throughout; the ministering of women; the purse in common! Hard-working men and rich ladies were ready to help Him, and did help Him with all that He needed.--Did He then never want? Yes; once at least--for a little while only.

"He was a-hungered in the wilderness. 'Make bread,' said Satan. 'No,'

said our Lord.--He could starve; but He could not eat bread that His Father did not give Him, even though He could make it Himself. He had come hither to be tried. But when the victory was secure, lo! the angels brought Him food from His Father.--Which was better? To feed Himself, or be fed by His Father? Judg? yourselves, jinxious people, He sought the kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and the bread was added unto Him.

"And this gives me occasion to remark that the same truth holds with regard to any portion of the future as well as the morrow. It is a principle, not a command, or an encouragement, or a promise merely. In respect of it there is no difference between next day and next year, next hour and next century. You will see at once the absurdity of taking no thought for the morrow, and taking thought for next year. But do you see likewise that it is equally reasonable to trust G.o.d for the next moment, and equally unreasonable not to trust Him? The Lord was hungry and needed food now, though He could still go without for a while. He left it to His Father. And so He told His disciples to do when they were called to answer before judges and rulers. 'Take no thought. It shall be given you what ye shall say.' You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine and ten and eleven, and all between, with the colour of twelve. Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. How often do men who have made up their minds what to say and do under certain expected circ.u.mstances, forget the words and reverse the actions! The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last duty done. For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the Spirit of G.o.d because he cares for nothing but the will of G.o.d, will trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid the cruel mockings of the men he loves.

"Do you feel inclined to say in your hearts: 'It was easy for Him to take no thought, for He had the matter in His own hands?' But observe, there is nothing very n.o.ble in a man's taking no thought except it be from faith. If there were no G.o.d to take thought for us, we should have no right to blame any one for taking thought. You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the one dreadful thing. That His Father should forget Him!--no power in Himself could make up for that. He feared nothing for Himself; and never once employed His divine power to save Him from His human fate. Let G.o.d do that for Him if He saw fit. He did not come into the world to take care of Himself. That would not be in any way divine. To fall back on Himself, G.o.d failing Him--how could that make it easy for Him to avoid care? The very idea would be torture. That would be to declare heaven void, and the world without a G.o.d. He would not even pray to His Father for what He knew He should have if He did ask it. He would just wait His will.

"But see how the fact of His own power adds tenfold significance to the fact that He trusted in G.o.d. We see that this power would not serve His need--His need not being to be fed and clothed, but to be one with the Father, to be fed by His hand, clothed by His care. This was what the Lord wanted--and we need, alas! too often without wanting it. He never once, I repeat, used His power for Himself. That was not his business.

He did not care about it. His life was of no value to Him but as His Father cared for it. G.o.d would mind all that was necessary for Him, and He would mind the work His Father had given Him to do. And, my friends, this is just the one secret of a blessed life, the one thing every man comes into this world to learn. With what authority it comes to us from the lips of Him who knew all about it, and ever did as He said!

"Now you see that He took no thought for the morrow. And, in the name of the holy child Jesus, I call upon you, this Christmas day, to cast care to the winds, and trust in G.o.d; to receive the message of peace and good-will to men; to yield yourselves to the Spirit of G.o.d, that you may be taught what He wants you to know; to remember that the one gift promised without reserve to those who ask it--the one gift worth having--the gift which makes all other gifts a thousand-fold in value, is the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the child Jesus, who will take of the things of Jesus, and show them to you--make you understand them, that is--so that you shall see them to be true, and love Him with all your heart and soul, and your neighbour as yourselves."

And here, having finished my sermon, I will give my reader some lines with which he may not be acquainted, from a writer of the Elizabethan time. I had meant to introduce them into my sermon, but I was so carried away with my subject that I forgot them. For I always preached extempore, which phrase I beg my reader will not misinterpret as meaning ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT, OF WITHOUT THE DUE PREPARATION OF MUCH THOUGHT.

"O man! thou image of thy Maker's good, What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood His Spirit is that built thee? What dull sense Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence Who made the morning, and who placed the light Guide to thy labours; who called up the night, And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers, In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers; Who gave thee knowledge; who so trusted thee To let thee grow so near Himself, the Tree?

Must He then be distrusted? Shall His frame Discourse with Him why thus and thus I am?

He made the Angels thine, thy fellows all; Nay even thy servants, when devotions call.

Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim, To seek a saving* influence, and lose Him?

Can stars protect thee? Or can poverty, Which is the light to heaven, put out His eye!

He is my star; in Him all truth I find, All influence, all fate. And when my mind Is furnished with His fulness, my poor story Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory.