Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

Mark and use the trial hour;
When his whispers nearest sound,
Be thou then most faithful found;
Then tread down his power.

Stripling though thou be and frail,
Thy right hand shall wield his sword;
From him take his head abhorred,
Christ in thee prevail.

(To be continued.)

MEDIEVAL SEQUENCES AND HYMNS.

No. XVIII.-ON THE HOLY TRINITY.

(Vox clarescat, meus purgetur)

VOICES clear and souls unstained
Bring with emulation high,
Joining innocence unfeigned
To the lips' best melody.
Father, Son, and Spirit praise we,

With exultant hearts and minds;
To the Three one anthem raise we,
Whom One simple Essence binds.

God the Father, self-existent,

God the sole-begotten Son,
Love of God, in them subsistent,
Are in very Nature One;
Three in Person unconfounded,
One in Godhead, One in Name,

One in Majesty unbounded,
In all attributes the Same.

Each in His own function truly
From the Two distinguished is,
But no human mind can duly
Fathom such deep mysteries.
Father, Son, and Spirit, ever

Aid us in our ghostly strife;
Us from bonds of sin dissever,
Bring us to eternal life.

Amen.

ENOUGH TO KNOW.

We need not seek for strange outlying lands
Of thought and knowledge: as we onward go
In paths of God's appointment and commands,
There is enough to learn, enough to know.

Was Moses bound to teach geology

To the young world, scarce able to avow That God is not the earth, or sea, or sky?

That God made all things was enough to know.

Yon stars may be the homes of heavenly bliss;
They may be hells of unimagined woe:
Christ's Passion may have saved more worlds than this:
It saved this world; this is enough to know.

This earth is one among a million orbs ;

Our system one 'mid myriads more that glow : Nor need we think that our sad state absorbs God's mercy: His mercy is enough to know.

Throughout His universe may be a plan

Of worlds and creatures, high in the scale and low, Intact, fallen, redeemed; like this world's man, Perhaps our Saviour is enough to know.

We know not yet the history of our earth;
Yet think to see God moving to and fro,
Among the ages ere our planet's birth:

God was and is; this is enough to know.

Some think God cannot wash away our sins
In water; or in bread and wine stoop low

To feed our souls: but our reply begins,

'The TRUTH spake thus-:' This is enough to know.

How little even the wisest knows! The child

May know all needful things; and even so

As children we receive Truth undefiled:
Our God is Truth; this is enough to know.

F. HARRISON.

PSALM XCV.

(Venite Exultemus.)

As we journey along, let us break into song,

To the Saviour whose love is so faithful and strong;

Let us gather our palms to the music of psalms,

Till the storms of the wilderness die into calms.

Gladly we sing to our God, to our King,

And the proof of our love is the joy that we bring:
There is none like Him, none; give Him thanks every one,
From the gates of the east to the set of the sun.
Fair lies the green land in His peace-giving hand,
The strength of the hills too is His as they stand;
The low solemn roar of the sea on the shore
Is the song of the waters to Him they adore.

O come, let us kneel, while His presence we feel,
And ask Him more clearly Himself to reveal;
We are His, He is ours, all our life, all our powers,
Or we serve Him far worse than His rocks or His flowers.

Lost, soiled, and defaced, as we browsed on the waste,
He saw that we shunned Him, yet sought us in haste;
He has toiled, He has bled, that His flock might be fed,
We are marked for His pasture, both living and dead.

He is seeking to-day for His sheep as they stray;
If ye hear Him, O stragglers, return and obey:
Like dew on the grass, down the hard rocky pass
His voice comes lamenting, 'Alas and alas!

'Will it always be so? in your blindness and woe
Will ye flee from your Shepherd, and follow your foe?
Will hard unbelief still mock My relief,

Rouse Me to anger, and wring Me with grief?

"Weary and worn with your doubt and your scorn,

I wandered among you, the King I was born;

Your hungry I fed, healed your sick, raised your dead,— You filled Me with sorrows and slew Me instead.

'O wander no more! I am here as before,
The Way, and the Truth, and the Life, as of yore;
Come home to My breast; believe and be blest;

For doubt cannot enter the joy of My rest.'

M. C.

SKETCHES FROM HUNGARIAN HISTORY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF 'COURAGE AND COWARDS;' 'IVON,' &c.

X.

THE MONGOL INVASION.

A. D. 1235 TO A. D. 1241.

BELA IV. was crowned at Stuhlweissenburg,* immediately on the death of his father; and, after the ceremony, rode through the streets of the town with S. Stephen's crown on his head, to exhibit himself to the people. His horizon was, to say the least of it, not a very bright one; and even during the transient gleam of sunshine caused by the coronation festivities, he could hardly forget the dark clouds looming in the distance. The scene was gay enough externally, but there were fierce dark looks of resentment on many a face, which boded little good to the young King, and seemed to warn him that his father's sins and his own mistakes were all to be visited on his own head.

Things in general could scarcely have looked more gloomy. The treasury was empty; the highest offices of state were held by unworthy and mercenary men; the Magnates were so overbearing and so taken up with their own private interests, as to have no thought for the fatherland; and the lower nobility were exhausting their strength in fruitless struggles with the Magnates; while the people had been so down-trodden as to lose the independence of character and public spirit which are the great guarantees for a nation's welfare. Add to this, that Béla himself was unpopular on account of his severe measures, and the picture is dark enough. On the other hand, he was in the flower of his age, had had ten years experience in the art of governing, and possessed great natural qualities, which only needed training and moderating to be invaluable.

One of his first acts was to bring to justice those who had fomented the misunderstandings between himself and his father; his next was to take measures for raising the dignity of the throne from the depths to which of late years it had sunk. Among other decrees he issued one commanding that only Bishops, and the highest officers of state, should be permitted to sit in the royal presence, and that the chairs of the other nobles should be burnt. Further, no one was to be allowed to plead his cause in person before the King. These measures, together with the confiscation of all State property, whether in the possession of ecclesiastics or laymen, excited great displeasure among all the upper classes; whose vexation was still greater when they found it impossible to stir up strife

* He had been previously crowned A. D. 1217, before the departure of András for the Holy Land.

between the King and his brother. Kálmán had borne the sword before Béla on the coronation day, and continued to wield it faithfully in his service till the day of his death. One fertile source of trouble to the country was therefore happily removed; but the malcontents, in their selfish folly, finding they could not humble the King through his brother, turned to Friedrich of Austria, promising to meet him with an army on the frontiers, and place the crown on his head. Nothing loth, Friedrich obeyed the summons; but the plot had been discovered, the ring-leaders secured, and when he reached the place of rendez-vous, he found himself confronted by the King and his brother at the head of an army which pursued him to the walls of Vienna, and obliged him to buy peace on Hungarian terms-a disgrace which Friedrich neither forgot nor forgave.

Shortly after this, Béla was urgently entreated by Pope Gregory IX. to assist in maintaining Baldwin II. on his tottering throne; and, for that purpose, to attack the Bulgarian King Asan, who, besides having entered into an alliance with the Emperor of Nicæa* against the Latin Empire, had yet more grievously offended the Pope by returning to the Greek Church.

Béla did not enter with much zest into the affair, even though he extorted from Pope and Emperor a promise that they would renounce in his favour all claims to the sovereignty of Bulgaria, should he succeed in dethroning King Asan. There were home affairs of more pressing importance; and Béla, after making a few preparations, abandoned a project which he seems never seriously to have entertained, in favour of one much more singular and romantic, so romantic indeed that it sounds more like a passage from the Arabian Nights, than matter-of-fact history.

From ancient chronicles † (now unhappily lost,) the brothers of St. Dominic had learnt that, when the seven Magyar tribes emigrated from the old fatherland, part of the nation had remained behind. The Dominicans were zealous missionaries, and it so grieved them to think that their fellow countrymen were still living in the darkness of heathenism, that in the reign of András II. (Béla's father,) they despatched four of the brethren to Asia in quest of the old mother country. Three years long did they wander about, enduring all manner of dangers and hardships, till one of their number, Otto, who was travelling as a merchant, met a few men who spoke the Magyar tongue, and informed him where he would find the old home of the Magyars. Delighted with his success, he at once turned his steps homewards, in order that he might make the discovery known, and also procure some companions. But he had scarcely reached Hungary and related his discoveries, when he died from the effects of the great hardships he had undergone. The Dominicans, however, by no means abandoned their * John Dukas Vatazes, successor of Theodore Lascaris.

VOL. 7.

Fessler and Jókai Mór.

37

PART 42.

« VorigeDoorgaan »