OF HATRED AND ANGER.

BLUNTED unto goodness is the heart which anger never stirretli,
But that which hatred swelleth, is keen to carve out evil.

Anger is a noble infirmity, the generous failing of the just,

The one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogatives of virtue: But hatred is a slow continuing crime, a fire in the bad man's breast,

A dull and hungry flame, for ever craving insatiate.

Hatred would harm another; anger would indulge itself:

Hatred is a simmering poison; anger, the opening of a valve:
Hatred destroyeth as the upas-tree; anger smiteth as a staff:
Hatred is the atmosphere of hell; but anger is known in heaven.

Is there not a righteous wrath, an anger just and holy,

When goodness is sitting in the dust, and wickedness enthroned on Babel ?
Doth pity condemn guilt ?—is justice not a feeling but a law

Appealing to the line and to the plummet, incognizant of moral sense?
Thou that condemnest anger, small is thy sympathy with angels;
Thou that hast accounted it for sin, cold is thy communion with heaven.

Beware of the angry in his passion; but fear not to approach him after ward;

For if thou acknowledge thine error, he himself will be sorry for his wrath
Beware of the hater in his coolness; for he meditateth evil against thee;
Commending the resources of his mind calmly to work thy ruin.
Deceit and treachery skulk with hatred, but an honest spirit flieth with
anger:

The one lieth secret, as a serpent; the other chaseth, as a leopard.
Speedily be reconciled in love, and receive the returning offender,
For wittingly prolonging anger, thou tamperest unconsciously with hatre
Patience is power in a man, nerving him to rein his spirit:

Passion is as palsy to his arm, while it yelleth on the coursers to the speed:

Patience keepeth counsel, and standeth in solid self-possession,

But the weakness of sudden passion layeth bare the secrets of the soul. The sentiment of anger is not ill, when thou lookest on the impudence of

vice,

Or savourest the breath of calumny, or hast earned the hard wages of in

justice,

But see thou that thou curb it in expression, rendering the mildness of

rebuke,

So shalt thou stand without reproach, mailed in all the dignity of virtue.

OF GOOD IN THINGS EVIL.

I HEARD the man of sin reproaching the goodness of Jehovah,
Wherefore, if he be Almighty Love, permitteth he misery and pain?
I saw the child of hope vexed in the labyrinth of doubt,

Wherefore, O holy One and just, is the horn of thy foul foe so high exalted?

And, alas! for this our groaning world, for that grief and guilt are here; Alas! for that Earth is the battle-field, where good must combat with evil : Angels look on and hold their breath, burning to mingle in the conflict, But the troops of the Captain of Salvation may be none but the soldiers of the cross:

And that slender band must fight alone, and yet shall triumph gloriously, Enough shall they be for conquest, and the motto of their standard is ENOUGH.

Thou art sad, O denizen of earth, for pains and diseases and death,

But remember, thy hand hath earned them; grudge not at the wages of thy

doings:

Thy guilt, and thy fathers' guilt, must bring many sorrows in their company,
And if thou wilt drink sweet poison, doubtless it shall rot thee to the core.
Who art thou but the heritor of evil, with a right to nothing good?
The respite of an interval of ease were a boon which Justice might deny

thee:

Therefore lay thy hand upon thy mouth, O man much to be forgiven,
And wait, thou child of hope, for time shall teach thee all things.

Yet hear, for my speech shall comfort thee; reverently, but with boldness,
I would raise the sable curtain, that hideth the symmetry of Providence.
Pain and sin are convicts, and toil in their fetters for good;

The weapons of evil are turned against itself, fighting under better

banners:

The leech delighteth in stinging, and the wicked loveth to do harm,
But the wise Physician of the universe useth that ill tendency for health.
Verily from others' griefs are gendered sympathy and kindness;
Patience, humility, and faith, spring not seldom from thine own:

An enemy, humbled by his sorrows, cannot be far from thy forgiveness, A friend who hath tasted of calamity, shall fan the dying incense of thy love:

And for thyself, is it a small thing, so to learn thy frailty,

That from an aching bone thou savest the whole body?

The furnace of affliction may be fierce, but if it refineth thy soul,

The good of one meek thought shall outweigh years of torment.

Nevertheless, wretched man, if thy bad heart be hardened in the flame,
Being earth-born, as of clay, and not of moulded wax,

Judge not the hand that smiteth, as if thou wert visited in wrath ;
Reproach thyself, for He is Justice: repent thee, for He is Mercy.

Cease, fond caviller at wisdom, to be satisfied that every thing is wrong:
Be sure there is good necessity, even for the flourishing of evil.
Would the eye delight in perpetual noon? or the ear in unqualified har-
monies?

Hath winter's frost no welcome, contrasting sturdily with summer?
Couldst thou discern benevolence, if there were no sorrows to be soothed?
Or discover the resources of contrivance, if nothing stood opposed to the

means?

What were power without an enemy? or mercy without an object?

Or truth, where the false were impossible? or love, where love were a

debt?

The characters of God were but idle, if all things around him were perfection,

And virtues might slumber on like death, if they lacked the opportunities

of evil.

There is one all-perfect, and but one; man dare not reason of His Essence. But there must be deficiencies in heaven, to leave room for progression in

bliss:

A realm of unqualified BEST were a stagnant pool of being,

And the circle of absolute perfection, the abstract cipher of indolence.
Sin is an awful shadow, but it addeth new glories to the light;
Sin is a black foil, but it setteth off the jewelry of heaven;

Sin is the traitor that hath dragged the majesty of mercy into action;

Sin is the whelming argument, to justify the attribute of vengeance.

It is a deep dark thought, and needeth to be diligently studied,

But perchance evil was essential, that God should be seen of his creatures: For where perfection is not, there lacketh possible good,

And the absence of better that might be, taketh from the praise of it is well:

And creatures must be finite, and finite cannot be perfect;

Therefore, though in small degree, creation involveth evil,

He chargeth his angels with folly, and the heavens are not clean in His sight:

For every existence in the universe hath either imperfection or Godhead : And the light that blazeth but in One, must be softened with shadow for

the many.

There is then good in evil; or none could have known his Maker;

No spiritual intellect or essence could have gazed on his high perfections, No angel harps could have tuned the wonders of his wisdom,

No ransomed souls have praised the glories of his mercy,

No howling fiends have shown the terrors of his justice,

But God would have dwelt alone in the fearful solitude of holiness.

Nevertheless, O sinner, harden not thine heart in evil;

Nor plume thee in imaginary triumph, because thou art not valueless as

vile;

Because thy dark abominations add lustre to the charity of Light;
Because a wonder-working alchemy draineth elixir out of poisons;
Because the same fiery volcano that scorcheth and ravageth a continent,
Hath in the broad blue bay cast up some petty island;

Because to the full demonstration of the qualities and accidents of good,
The swarthy legions of the devil have toiled as unwitting pioneers:
For sin is still sin; so hateful Love doth hate it ;

A blot on the glory of creation, which justice must wipe out.

Sin is a loathsome leprosy, fretting the white robe of innocence;

A rottenness, eating out the heart of the royal cedars of Lebanon;

A pestilential blast, the terror of that holy pilgrimage;

A rent in the sacred veil, whereby God left his temple.

Therefore, consider thyself, thou that dost not sorrow for thy guilt:
Fear evil, or face its enemy: dread sin, or dare justice.

Yea, saith the Spirit: and their works do follow them;

Habits, and thoughts, and deeds, are shadows and satellites of self.
What! shall the claimant to a throne stand forward with a rabble rout,—
Meanness, impiety, and lust; riot and indolence and vanity?

Nay, man! the train wherewith thou comest attend whither thou shalt go;
A throne for a king's son, but an inner dungeon for the felon.

For a man's works do follow him: bodily, standing in the judgment,

Behold the false accuser, behold the slandered saint;

The slave, and his bloody driver; the poor, and his generous friend;
The simple dupe, and the crafty knave: the murderer, and—his victim!
Yet all are in many characters the best stand guilty at the bar;
And he that seemed the worst may have most of real excuse.

The talents unto which a man is born, be they few or many,

Are dropped into the balance of account, working unlooked-for changes, And perchance the convict from the galleys may stand above the hermit from his cell,

For that the obstacles in one outweigh the propensions in the other.

There be, who have made themselves friends, yea, by unrighteous

mammon,

Friends, ready waiting as an escort to those everlasting habitations;
Embodied in living witnesses, thronging to meet them in a cloud,
Charity, meekness and truth, zeal, sincerity and patience.
There be, who have made themselves foes, yea, by honest gain,

Foes, whose plaint must have its answer, before the bright portal is

unbarred:

Pride, and selfishness, and sloth, apathy, wrath, and falsehood,
Bind to their everlasting toil many that must weary in the fires.
Love hath a power and a longing to save the gathered world,
And rescue universal man from the hunting hell-hounds of his doings:
Yet few, here one and there one, scanty as the gleaning after harvest,
Are glad of the robes of praise which Mercy would fling around the

naked;

But wrapping closer to their skin the poisoned tunic of their works,
They stand in self-dependence to perish in abandonment of God.