He that negotiates between God and man, As God's ambassador, the grand concerns Of judgment and of mercy, should beware Of lightness in his speech. 'Tis pitiful To court a grin, when you should woo a soul;To break a jest, when pity would inspire Pathetic exhortation; and to address The skittish fancy with facetious tales, When sent with God's commission to the heart.
So did not Paul. Direct me to a quip Or merry turn in all he ever wrote, And I consent you take it for your text, Your only one, till sides and benches fail.
No: he was serious in a serious cause, And understood too well the weighty terms That he had ta'en in charge. He would not stoop To conquer those by jocular exploits, Whom truth and soberness assailed in vain.
Oh, popular applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
The wisest and the best feel urgent need Of all their caution in thy gentlest gales;But swelled into a gust--who then, alas!
With all his canvas set, and inexpert, And therefore heedless, can withstand thy power?
Praise from the riveled lips of toothless, bald Decrepitude, and in the looks of lean And craving poverty, and in the bow Respectful of the smutched artificer, Is oft too welcome, and may much disturb The bias of the purpose. How much more, Poured forth by beauty splendid and polite, In language soft as adoration breathes?
Ah, spare your idol! think him human still;Charms he may have, but he has frailties too;Dote not too much, nor spoil what ye admire.
All truth is from the sempiternal source Of light divine. But Egypt, Greece, and Rome Drew from the stream below. More favoured, we Drink, when we choose it, at the fountain head.
To them it flowed much mingled and defiled With hurtful error, prejudice, and dreams Illusive of philosophy, so called, But falsely. Sages after sages strove, In vain, to filter off a crystal draught Pure from the lees, which often more enhanced The thirst than slaked it, and not seldom bred Intoxication and delirium wild.
In vain they pushed inquiry to the birth And spring-time of the world; asked, Whence is man?
Why formed at all? and wherefore as he is?
Where must he find his Maker? With what rites Adore Him? Will He hear, accept, and bless?
Or does He sit regardless of His works?
Has man within him an immortal seed?
Or does the tomb take all? If he survive His ashes, where? and in what weal or woe?
Knots worthy of solution, which alone A Deity could solve. Their answers vague, And all at random, fabulous and dark, Left them as dark themselves. Their rules of life, Defective and unsanctioned, proved too weak To bind the roving appetite, and lead Blind nature to a God not yet revealed.
'Tis Revelation satisfies all doubts, Explains all mysteries, except her own, And so illuminates the path of life, That fools discover it, and stray no more.
Now tell me, dignified and sapient sir, My man of morals, nurtured in the shades Of Academus, is this false or true?
Is Christ the abler teacher, or the schools?
If Christ, then why resort at every turn To Athens or to Rome for wisdom short Of man's occasions, when in Him reside Grace, knowledge, comfort, an unfathomed store?
How oft when Paul has served us with a text, Has Epictetus, Plato, Tully, preached!
Men that, if now alive, would sit content And humble learners of a Saviour's worth, Preach it who might. Such was their love of truth, Their thirst of knowledge, and their candour too.
And thus it is. The pastor, either vain By nature, or by flattery made so, taught To gaze at his own splendour, and to exalt Absurdly, not his office, but himself;Or unenlightened, and too proud to learn, Or vicious, and not therefore apt to teach, Perverting often, by the stress of lewd And loose example, whom he should instruct, Exposes and holds up to broad disgrace The noblest function, and discredits much The brightest truths that man has ever seen.
For ghostly counsel, if it either fall Below the exigence, or be not backed With show of love, at least with hopeful proof Of some sincerity on the giver's part;Or be dishonoured in the exterior form And mode of its conveyance, by such tricks As move derision, or by foppish airs And histrionic mummery, that let down The pulpit to the level of the stage;Drops from the lips a disregarded thing.
The weak perhaps are moved, but are not taught, While prejudice in men of stronger minds Takes deeper root, confirmed by what they see.
A relaxation of religion's hold Upon the roving and untutored heart Soon follows, and the curb of conscience snapt, The laity run wild.--But do they now?
Note their extravagance, and be convinced.
As nations, ignorant of God, contrive A wooden one, so we, no longer taught By monitors that Mother Church supplies, Now make our own. Posterity will ask (If e'er posterity sees verse of mine), Some fifty or a hundred lustrums hence, What was a monitor in George's days?
My very gentle reader, yet unborn, Of whom I needs must augur better things, Since Heaven would sure grow weary of a world Productive only of a race like us, A monitor is wood--plank shaven thin.
We wear it at our backs. There, closely braced And neatly fitted, it compresses hard The prominent and most unsightly bones, And binds the shoulders flat. We prove its use Sovereign and most effectual to secure A form, not now gymnastic as of yore, From rickets and distortion, else, our lot.
But thus admonished we can walk erect, One proof at least of manhood; while the friend Sticks close, a Mentor worthy of his charge.
Our habits costlier than Lucullus wore, And, by caprice as multiplied as his, Just please us while the fashion is at full, But change with every moon. The sycophant, That waits to dress us, arbitrates their date, Surveys his fair reversion with keen eye;Finds one ill made, another obsolete, This fits not nicely, that is ill conceived;And, making prize of all that he condemns, With our expenditure defrays his own.
