MAXIMUS. Yet nobler is the one forgiven, Who bears that burden well, and lives. It may be hard to gain, and still To keep a lowly steadfast heart; Yet he who loses has to fill Glorious it is to wear the crown Of a deserved and pure success ; He who knows how to fail has won A crown whose lustre is not less. Great may he be who can command And rule with just and tender sway; Yet is diviner wisdom taught Better by him who can obey. Blessed are those who die for God, And earn the martyr's crown of light— Yet he who lives for God may be A greater conqueror in His sight. MISS PROCTER. AN OLD SERMON WITH A NEW TEXT. M Y wife contrived a fleecy thing her husband to infold, For 'tis the pride of woman true, to cover from the cold: My daughter made it a new text for a sermon very old. The child came trotting to her side, ready with bootless aid. "Lily will make one for papa," the tiny woman said. Her mother gave the needful things, and a knot upon the thread. 66 The knot, mamma! It won't come through, mamma! mamma!" she cried. AN OLD SERMON WITH A NEW TEXT. 93 Her mother cut away the knot, and she was satisfied, Pulling the long thread through and through in fabricating pride. Her mother told me this. It gave a glimpse of something more : Great meanings often hide themselves with little words before; And I brooded over this new text, till the seed a sermon bore. Nannie, to you I preach it now-a little sermon, low: Is it not thus a thousand times, as through the Do we not pull, and fret, and say, instead of "Yes, Lord," "No"? Yet all the rough things that we meet, which will not move a jot— The hindrances to heart and feet-the crook in every lot What mean they, but that every thread has at the end a knot? 94 AN OLD SERMON WITH A NEW TEXT. For circumstance is God's great web-He gives it free of cost; But men must help to make it clothes to shield their hearts from frost: Shall we, because the thread holds fast, think all our labour lost? If He should cut away the knot, and yield each fancy wild, The hidden life within our hearts-His life, the undefiled Would fare as ill as I should fare from the needle of my child. For as the cordage to the sail, as to my verse the rhyme, As mountains to the low green earth, so fair, so hard to climb, As call of striking clock, amid the quiet flow of time, As blows from sculptor's mallet on the marble's dawning face, AN OLD SERMON WITH A NEW TEXT. 95 Such are God's Yea and Nay unto the spirit's growing grace; So work His making hands with what does and does not take place. We know no more the things we need than child to choose his food; We know not what we shall be yet, so we know not present good; For God's ideal who but God hath ever understood? This is my sermon. It is preached against all useless strife. Strive not with anything that is-to cut it with thy knife. Ah! be not angry with the knot that holdeth fast thy life. GEORGE MACDONALD. |