O'er gleaming waters far away,
And by the tired sun gently lay
Their robes of glory, to be worn
More gorgeous with returning morn.
There, and where'er our fancies roam,
Our trusting hearts are still at home;
For at our side we feel

Our father's smile, our mother's glance:
Say, can this earth a loving trance
Of deeper bliss reveal?"

The answer is, that there is a deeper bliss; and we are led to the 'cottage home,' to see if aught is so precious as the 'pale form, half slumbering there,' the little convalescent! and are told that,

'Like a bruised leaf, at touch of fear,

Its hidden sweetness Love gives out.'

And thence we are carried to the thought of the angels, watching the recovery from sin. How, when the prodigal returns,

We are inclined to think this the tenderest of all Mr. Keble's poems. However, this well-endowed day also possesses one of the characteristic Lyra poems-one of those that are most like Mr. Keble's sermonseach line, each stanza, most simple in structure; yet the force of meaning in the whole so great, that it takes us by surprise, as when we take up what looks light as air, and find it full of weight. The young child at his prayers is described; and the angel who bears prayer aloft, is said to perceive in it 'more than we know, and all we need.'

'More than we know, and all we need,

Is in young children's prayer and creed.'

Their childish intercession, that God will guard their home, includes His Church, which is their Home. The father, mother, brothers, and sisters, on whom they pray for blessing, extend from the family they know, to the great Family to which they belong; to priests as fathers, to elder women as mothers; to brethren and sisters, pure, sinful, or penitent, dying, toiling, or new-born. It is not a fanciful poetical imagination. Prayer has a sacramental force, depending not on the understanding, but on the purity and innocence of the suppliant. Intercession is the great privilege of the Church; and in the divine words of our prayers, such as the Lord's Prayer and the Psalms, we

ask for multitudes of benefits to ourselves and others, such as He only could conceive, who put such supplications into our mouths; and yet they are fulfilled. So the babe's home prayer is verily an intercession for the entire Church.

And again the child's constant repetition of the Ten Commandments-what is it but the denunciation of God's judgment on offenders? In like manner, the child Samuel, whose very name was an allusion to the efficacy of prayer, uttered his prayers within the Tabernacle, unknowing, as yet, that it would be his crying unto God' that should chiefly win back the Ark of God, 'forfeit for priests' and people's sin;' and that he should be the first renovator of sinful Israel, preparing the way for David and Solomon. Thus too he repeated the dread warning to Eli.

'Ye hearts profane, with penance ache;

A wondrous peal o'er Israel rung,

Heaven's thunder from a child's weak tongue.'

The thought is somewhat that of 'Advent Buds,' but more awful. These little ones, who stand around us saying the Catechism, are denouncing our sins in the words of God, as surely as Samuel did those of the sons of Eli, when he repeated the message of the night. Yet who knows that among them may not be a Samuel, who may revive that which is ready to perish, strengthen the weak, and be the means of saving our Candlestick from being removed?

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

'THE whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together,' is the theme of this most lovely poem; very lovely to those who delight in looking back at the ancient classical world, though perhaps less interesting to such as heed little behind the present.

Yet even those who have no sympathy with the 'feelings after truth' of the Greek of old, must feel the harmony of the verses that begin, as though replying to the words of St. Paul upon the suffering of creation for the sake of Adam's sin, and with Adam's hope. So then, declares the verse, here is the declaration of the Apostle himself; that it was no mere poetic fancy that there is a certain longing and yearning in all nature for their perfection;

Which bids us hear, at each sweet pause

From care and want and toil,

When dewy eve her curtain draws

Over the day's turmoil,

In the low chant of wakeful birds,
In the deep weltering flood,

In whispering leaves, these solemn words—
"God made us all for good."

So it was, that 'Creation's wondrous choir' began with full harmony of praise; and still 'all' the works of the Lord praise Him, and magnify Him for ever;' and nothing mars their sweet music save man, who should have been its leader, but now overpowers

' with harsh din

The music of Thy works and word,

Ill matched with grief and sin.'

Sin and the world overpower the voice of nature all day; but in the silence of evening, any susceptible soul must become alive to the solemnity and purity of the scene; and the 'still and deep,' though often undefined, impressions that fall on our souls, are the same

'At which high spirits of old would start,
Even from their pagan sleep.'

It would not be easy here to specify the proofs of such yearnings; they are
too numerous, and perhaps more in the spirit than the letter of individual
passages; but let us recollect Hesiod's four ages, Homer's wonderful
passage on the halting prayers that follow in the track of evil; the
Pythagorean theory of the harmony of creation; the grand Promethean
legend, and that of Eros and Psyche, and the whole tone of Æschylus,
and we feel the throbbings of those great bewildered hearts.
Or, again, take these lines of Euripides:

'We will not look on her burial sod
As the cell of sepulchral sleep;

It shall be as the shrine of a radiant God;
And the pilgrim shall visit that blest abode,
To worship, and not to weep.'

Even a child cannot read of Socrates' life and death, without reverence for his grasp of the truth, almost out of reach; and Plato's system was only too perfect for a heathen. Nay, Virgil almost divined the restoration at hand; and though Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Seekers after God,' failed to comprehend the Light when it was already shining in the world, they were deeply sensible of the longing for perfection. Even the rude north looked beyond the dread 'Twilight of the gods,' to a perfect restitution of all things. These thoughts were 'the wreck of Paradise,' and long upbore whatever was good or pure; but though the suffering of nature was perceived, neither reason nor hope could have discovered the remedy.

'The hour that saw from opening heaven

Redeeming glory stream,

Beyond the summer hues of heaven,

Beyond the mid-day beam.

Thenceforth to eyes of high desire,
The meanest things below,

As with a seraph's robe of fire
Invested, burn and glow.

The rod of Heaven has touched them all,
The word from Heaven is spoken;
Rise, shine, and sing, thou captive thrall;
Are not thy fetters broken?'

Yet all is not mirth and joy in creation. Living things still feel pain, the more acute in proportion to their finer development; decay passes on all in existence; and, as Dante touchingly says, the loveliest forms in nature are as if made by an artificer with a trembling hand. Why is this? Because, though the world is redeemed, 'sin lingers still:' the full adoption of the sons of God is not complete; the redemption of the body,' which belongs to the world of Adam, is not yet complete ; and until our Lord return, creation still must be subject to vanity, i.e. nothingness and decay, in hope of that hour when He shall make new heavens and a new earth; when old things shall have passed away, and all things shall have become new.

'The creature' sings his chant of promise again in the person of the robin-redbreast, that so often haunts our churches, that it seems hardly needful to specify one which spent its winters in Winchester Cathedral as a home, and which we believe to have been the subject of this poem, especially as it was often heard singing throughout the Anthem, and continuing through the ensuing prayers and the Thanksgiving. To the poet, the sweet joyous song, breaking forth from the top of the old crowned chests of the bones of kings a thousand years ago, and chiming in as we bless God for our creation, preservation, and the redemption of the world, seems to say,

'Not man alone

Lives in the shade of JESU's Throne,
And shares the saints' employ.'

The angels, who were not purchased by the Death of Christ, like us, adore It with us, we know; and may not some gleams of light have fallen from our Lord on our sinless companions, who suffer because he who has dominion over them has transgressed?

We know that the sheep at Bethlehem saw the angelic choir; and the ox and ass shared the cave where the holy Babe was born; nay, the patient and often misused animal, whom our Lord selected for His triumphal procession, bears the mark of His own Cross. Surely we who bear that sign should fear to enthrall to woe and wrong His

'creatures sealed

For blessing; aid to earn and yield,

As ere our father's fall.'

The spirit is akin to that of the beautiful legends of St. Francis and the birds; or of St. Antony of Padua and the frogs, whose croakings he silenced because they interfered with his devotions, until he felt himself rebuked by coming to the words, 'O ye whales, and all that more in the waters, bless ye the Lord! praise Him and magnify Him for ever.'

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

6

MUCH more simple than those we have had lately to study, is this song of the fishermen of Bethsaida. It is of course primarily the meditation of one of the 'fishers of men,' the ministry of the Church; but it also touches the hearts of all who are in any way set to seek the souls' that 'Christ hath bought; and who is not? Who has not felt how far from tranquil is our ocean? who has not watched in anxiety? who has not been disappointed in the best considered schemes, and known the sad dawn of cheerless day,' when those for whom we have most earnestly sought refuse to be brought in? Yet still there is the same confidence:

'Our Master is at hand

To cheer our solitary song,
And guide us to the strand:"

but only in His own time, and when we have toiled in many waters, still patiently, hopefully, dutifully. There are times of success too; and then well is it if we take the warning from the prophet of old, against worshipping our own nets; namely, ascribing the work to our own contrivance; adoring, so to speak, our own influence, our pains, care, or good management, and saying, 'My own right hand, and the strength of my might, hath gotten me these.'

Perhaps St. Bernard best met such a temptation when, on feeling some complacency in a sermon of his own, he burst forth aloud, 'Satan, I did not make this for thee; neither hast thou any part therein.'

In the Lyra, the Christian child is addressed as anointed, even as David was, and reminded of his Christian conflict. The lion and the bear represent childish faults conquered by prayer; but the mightier foe, the battle of the life, is approaching. Confirmation bestows a stronger life, and the armour must be put on ; not sword, shield, or spear, but ‘Charm words from our Book,' and 'Gems from our baptismal brook,' are the weapons. For since Satan attacks us through all our five gateways' of the senses, each must be guarded with the smooth stones from the Fount; namely, the Commandments, the Word of God, that we know to be the best weapon against Satan. Then

'Keep thy staff, the Cross in hand;
Thou shalt see the giant foe
By the word of faith laid low,
O'er him conquering stand.