Recumbent virtue's downy doctors, preach;
That profe of piety, a lukewarm praise ?
Rife odours fweet from incenfe uninflam'd?
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout;
But when it glows, its heat is ftruck to heaven;
To human hearts her golden harps are strung;
High heaven's orchestra chaunts amen to man.
Hear I, or dream I hear, their distant strain,
Sweet to the foul, and tafting strong of heaven,
Soft-wafted on celestial pity's plume,
Through the vaft spaces of the universe,
To chear me in this melancholy gloom?
Oh when will death (now ftinglefs), like a friend,
Admit me of their choir? O when will death
This mouldering, old, partition-wall throw down?
Give beings, one in nature, one abode?
'Oh death divine! that giv'ft us to the skies!
Great future! glorious patron of the past,
And prefent! when shall I thy fhrine adore?
From nature's continent, immensely wide,
Immenfely bleft, this little ifle of life,
This dark, incarcerating colony,
Divides us. Happy day! that breaks our chain;
That manumits; that calls from exile home;
That leads to nature's great metropolis,
And re-admits us, through the guardian hand
Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne;
Who hears our Advocate, and, through his wounds Beholding man, allows that tender name.
'Tis this makes Chriftian triumph a command:
'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wife;
'Tis impious in a good man to be sad.
See thou, Lorenzo! where hangs all our hope?
Touch'd by the Grofs, we live; or, more than die;
That touch which touch'd not angels; more divine
Than that which touch'd confufion into form,
And darkness into glory; partial touch!
Ineffably pre-eminent regard!
Sacred to man, and fovereign through the whole
Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs
From heaven through all duration, and fupports
In one illuftrious and amazing plan,
Thy welfare, nature! and thy God's renown;
That touch, with charm celeftial, heals the foul
Difeas'd, drives pain from guilt, lights life in death,
Turns earth to heaven, to heavenly thrones transforms
The ghaftly ruins of the mouldering tomb.
Doft afk me when? When he who dy'd returns;
Returns, how chang'd! Where then the man of woe?
In glory's terrors all the Godhead burns;
And all his courts, exhausted by the tide
Of deities triumphant in his train,
Leave a ftupendous folitude in heaven;
Replenish'd foon, replenish'd with increase
Of pomp, and multitude; a radiant band
Of angels new; of angels from the tomb.
Is this by fancy thrown remote; and rife
Dark doubts between the promise and event?
I fend thee not to volumes for thy cure;
Read Nature; Nature is a friend to truth;
Nature is Chriftian; preaches to mankind;
And bids dead matter aid us in our creed.
Haft thou ne'er feen the comet's flaming flight?
Th' illuftrious ftranger paffing, terror sheds
On gazing nations; from his fiery train
Of length enormous, takes his ample round
Through depths of ether; coafts unnumber'd worlds, 710
Of more than folar glory; doubles wide
Heaven's mighty cape; and then revisits earth,
From the long travel of a thousand years.
Thus, at the destin'd period, fhall return
He, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze:
And, with Him, all our triumph o'er the tomb.
Nature is dumb on this important point;
Or hope precarious in low whisper breathes;
Faith peaks aloud, diftinct; ev'n adders hear;
But turn, and dart into the dark again.
Faith builds a bridge across the gulph of death,
To break the fhock blind nature cannot fhun,
And lands thought smoothly on the farther fhore.
Death's terror is the mountain faith removes;
That mountain barrier between man and peace.
'Tis faith difarms deftruction; and abfolves
From every clamorous charge, the guiltless tomb.
Why difbelieve? Lorenzo!" Reafon bids,
"All-facred reafon."-Hold her facred still;
Nor fhalt thou want a rival in thy flame :
All-facred reafon! fource, and foul, of all
Demanding praise, on earth, or earth above!
My heart is thine: deep in its inmoft folds,
Live thou with life; live dearer of the two.
Wear I the bleffed Crofs, by fortune stamp'd
On paffive nature, before thought was born ?
My birth's blind bigot! fir'd with local zeal!
No; reason re-baptis'd me when adult;
Weigh'd true, and false, in her impartial scale;
My heart became the convert of my head;
And made that choice, which once was but my fate. "On argument alone my faith is built:”
Reafon purfued is faith; and, unpursued
Where proof invites, 'tis reafon, then, no more:
And fuch our proof, That, or our faith is right, 745
Or reafon lies, and heaven design'd it wrong:
Abfolve we This? What, then, is blafphemy?
Fond as we are, and justly fond, of faith,
Reason, we grant, demands our first regard;
The mother honour'd, as the daughter dear.
Reafon the root, fair faith is but the flower;
The fading flower fhall die; but reason lives
Immortal, as her Father in the skies.
When faith is virtue, reafon makes it fo.
Wrong not the Christian; think not reafon yours: 755 'Tis reafon our great Mafter holds fo dear; 'Tis reafon's injur'd rights His wrath refents; 'Tis reason's voice obey'd His glories crown; To give loft reafon life, He pour'd his own: Believe, and fhew the reason of a man; Believe, and tafte the pleasure of a God; Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb : Through reafon's wounds alone thy faith can die;
Which dying, tenfold terror gives to death,
And dips in venom his twice-mortal fting.
765
Learn hence what honours, what loud paans, due
To thofe, who push our antidote afide;
Those boafted friends to reason, and to man,
Whofe fatal love ftabs every joy, and leaves
Death's terror heighten'd, gnawing on his heart.
Thefe pompous fons of reason idoliz'd
And vilify'd at once; of reafon dead,
Then deify'd, as monarchs were of old;
What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow?
While love of truth through all their camp refounds, 775
They draw pride's curtain o'er the noon-tide-ray,
Spike up their inch of reafon, on the point
Of philofophic wit, call'd Argument;
And then, exulting in their taper, cry,
"Behold the fun :" and, Indian-like, adore.
Talk they of morals? O thou bleeding Love!
Thou maker of new morals to mankind!
The grand morality is love of Thee.
As wife as Socrates, if fuch they were,
(Nor will they 'bate of that fublime renown) As wife as Socrates, might justly stand
The definition of a modern fool.
A Chriftian is the highest stile of man :
And is there, who the bleffed Crofs wipes off,
As a foul blot from his difhonour'd brow?
If angels tremble, 'tis at fuch a fight:
The wretch they quit, defponding of their charge,
More ftruck with grief or wonder, who can tell?
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