Temperance and peace insure its healthful state,
And make it brightest at its latest date.
Oh, I have seen (nor hope perhaps in vain,
Ere life go down, to see such sights again),
A veteran warrior in the Christian field,

Who never saw the sword he could not wield;
Grave without dulness, learned without pride,
Exact, yet not precise, though meek, keen-eyed:
A man that would have foiled at their own play
A dozen would-be's of the modern day;
Who, when occasion justified its use,
Had wit as bright as ready to produce,
Could fetch from records of an earlier age,
Or from philosophy's enlightened page,
His rich materials, and regale your ear
With strains it was a privilege to hear:
Yet above all, his luxury supreme,

And his chief glory, was the gospel theme;
There he was copious as old Greece or Rome,
His happy eloquence seemed there at home,
Ambitious not to shine or to excel,

But to treat justly what he loved so well.

It moves me more perhaps than folly ought, When some green heads, as void of wit as thought, Suppose themselves monopolists of sense,

And wiser mens' ability pretence.

Though time will wear us, and we must grow old,

Such men are not forgot as soon as cold,
Their fragrant memory will outlast their tomb,
Embalmed for ever in its own perfume.
And to say truth, though in its early prime,
And when unstained with any grosser crime,
Youth has a sprightliness and fire to boast,
That in the valley of decline are lost,
And virtue with peculiar charms appears,
Crowned with the garland of life's blooming years;

Yet age, by long experience well-informed,
Well read, well tempered, with religion warmed,
That fire abated, which impels rash youth,
Proud of his speed to overshoot the truth,
As time improves the grape's authentic juice,
Mellows and makes the speech more fit for use,
And claims a reverence in its shortening day,
That 'tis an honour and a joy to pay.

The fruits of age, less fair, are yet more sound,
Than those a brighter season pours around;
And, like the stores autumnal suns mature,
Through wintry rigours unimpaired endure.

What is fanatic frenzy, scorned so much,
And dreaded more than a contagious tonch?
I grant it dangerous, and approve your fear,
That fire is catching if you draw too near ;
But sage observers oft mistake the flame,
And give true piety that odious name.
To tremble (as the creature of an hour
Ought at the view of an almighty power),
Before his presence, at whose awful throne
All tremble in all worlds, except our own,
To supplicate his mercy, love his ways,
And prize them above pleasure, wealth, or praise,
Though common sense allowed a casting voice,
And free from bias, must approve the choice,
Convicts a man fanatic in th' extreme,
And wild as madness in the world's esteem.
But that disease, when soberly defined,
Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind;
It views the truth with a distorted eye,
And either warps or lays it useless by ;
'Tis narrow, selfish, arrogant, and draws
Its sordid nourishment from man's applause;
And while at heart sin unrelinquished lies,
Presumes itself chief favourite of the skies.

'Tis such a light as putrefaction breeds
In fly-blown flesh, whereon the maggot feeds,
Shines in the dark, but ushered into day
The stench remains, the lustre dies away.

True bliss, if man may reach it, is composed
Of hearts in union mutually disclosed;
And, farewell else all hope of pure delight,
Those hearts should be reclaimed, renewed, upright.
Bad men, profaning friendship's hallowed name,
Form, in its stead, a covenant of shame,
A dark confederacy against the laws
Of virtue, and religion's glorious cause:
They build each other up with dreadful skill,
As bastions set point blank against God's will;
Enlarge and fortify the dread redoubt,
Deeply resolved to shut a Saviour out;
Call legions up from hell to back the deed;
And, curst with conquest, finally succeed.
But souls, that carry on a blest exchange
Of joys, they meet with in their heavenly range,
And with a fearless confidence make known
The sorrows, sympathy esteems its own,
Daily derive increasing light and force

From such communion in their pleasant course,
Feel less the journey's roughness and its length,
Meet their opposers with united strength,
And, one in heart, in interest, and design,
Gird up each other to the race divine.

But conversation, choose what theme we may, And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer showers, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers. The Christian, in whose soul, though now distressed, Lives the dear thought of joys he once possessed, When all his glowing language issued forth With God's deep stamp upon its current worth,

Will speak without disguise, and must impart,
Sad as it is, his undissembling heart,
Abhors constraint, and dares not feign a zeal,
Or seem to boast a fire, he does not feel.
The song of Sion is a tasteless thing,
Unless, when rising on a joyful wing,
The soul can mix with the celestial bands,
And give the strain the compass it demands.
Strange tidings these to tell a world, who treat
All but their own experience as deceit !
Will they believe, though credulous enough
To swallow much upon much weaker proof,
That there are blest inhabitants of earth,
Partakers of a new ethereal birth,

Their hopes, desires, and purposes estranged
From things terrestrial, and divinely changed,
Their very language of a kind, that speaks
The soul's sure interest in the good she seeks,
Who deal with scripture, its importance felt,
As Tully with philosophy once dealt,
And in the silent watches of the night,
And through the scenes of toil renewing light,
The social walk, or solitary ride,

Keep still the dear companion at their side?
No-shame upon a self-disgracing age,
God's work may serve an ape upon a stage
With such a jest, as filled with hellish glee
Certain invisibles as shrewd as he;
But veneration or respect finds none,

Save from the subjects of that work alone.
The world grown old her deep discernment shows,
Claps spectacles on her sagacious nose,
Peruses closely the true Christian's face,
And finds it a mere mask of sly grimace,
Usurps God's office, lays his bosom bare,
And finds hypocrisy close lurking there,

And serving God herself through mere constraint,
Concludes his unfeigned love of him a feint.
And yet, God knows, look human nature through
(And in due time the world shall know it too),
That since the flowers of Eden felt the blast,
That after man's defection laid all waste,
Sincerity towards the heart-searching God
Has made the new-born creature her abode,
Nor shall be found in unregenerate souls,
Till the last fire burn all between the poles.
Sincerity! Why 'tis his only pride,
Weak and imperfect in all grace beside,
He knows that God demands his heart entire,
And gives him all his just demands require.
Without it his pretensions were as vain,
As having it he deems the world's disdain ;
That great defect would cost him not alone
Man's favourable judgment, but his own;
His birthright shaken, and no longer clear,
Than while his conduct proves his heart sincere.
Retort the charge, and let the world be told
She boasts a confidence she does not hold;
That, conscious of her crimes, she feels instead
A cold misgiving, and a killing dread;
That while in health the ground of her support
Is madly to forget that life is short;

That sick she trembles knowing she must die,
Her hope presumption, and her faith a lie ;

That while she dotes and dreams that she believes
She mocks her Maker, and herself deceives,
Her utmost reach, historical assent,

The doctrines warped to what they never meant ;
That truth itself is in her head as dull,
And useless, as a candle in a scull,

And all her love of God a groundless claim,
A trick upon the canvass, painted flame.