REMNANT 2 My little shift',. that skims theshore,, With half a sail and two short oars, Provides we food in gentler waves: But if they gape in watry graves, I trust th' eternal pow'r, whose hand Has swell'd the storm'so high, V. R I THE mighty frame of glorious grace, That brightest monument of praise That e'er the God of love design'd, Employs and fills my labouring mind. 2 Begin my muse, the heav'nly song, A burden for an angel's tongue: When Gabriel sounds these awful things, He tunes and summons all his strings S Proclaim inimitable love: Jesus, the Lord of worlds above, Puts off the beams of bright array, And veils the God in mortal clay. 4 What black reproach defil'd his name, When with nor stn he took our shame ! S Or. TIME. 467 To waft my boat and we to land, Or give some angel swüt com- mand To bear the drowning sailor to the 'sky. edemption. The pow'r whom kneeling angels ,blest Is made the impious rabble's jest. 5 He that distributes crowns and thrones Hangs on a tree and bleeds and groans The Prince of life resigns his breath, The King of glory bows to death. 6 But see the wonders of his pow'r, He triumphs in his dying hour. And whilst by Satan's rage he fell He dush'd the rising hopes of hell. 7 That were the hosts of death subdn'd, And sin was drown'd in Jesus' Mhos!: Then he arose, and reigns above, And conquers sinners by his love. " If I could pursue all the wondrous atchievemants of a dying and a rising Saviour in verse as fast and as far as my thoughts sometimes attempt to trace them, I should lengthen this ode to many stanzas, and yet at last,' should lose both my thoughts and my verse amongst the unknown wonders of his glory and the ages of eternity. Who shall fulfil this boundless song ? What vairs pretender dares? The theme surmounts an angel's tongue, And Gabriel's harp despairs.* VI. Comptaint and Hope under great Pain. 1736. 1 LORD, T am pain'd t lint I resign To thy superior will; 'Tin grace, 'tis wisdom all divine, Appoints the pains I feel, S Dark are thy ways. of providence, While those that love thee groan: Thy reasons lie conceal'd from sense, Mysterious and unknown. S Yet nature may have leave to speak, And plead before her God, Lest the o'er - burden d heart should break Beneath thy heavy rod. 4 Will nothing but such daily pain Secure my soul from hell? Canst thou not make my health attain Thy kind designs as'well ? o In this ode there are' three or four lines taken from Mr. Stennet's sacra- mental Hymns; for when I found they exprest my thought and design in proper and beautiful language, I choose rather to borrow and to acknowledge the debt, th,n to labour hard for worse lines that I might have the poor pleasure of calling them my own.
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