Fain would we trust thy future years A happier destiny may prove; (For thou hast all thy brother's prayers, And more than all thy brother's love.) Yet, let the future smile or mourn, To us a glorious place is given With 10 the great "church of the first-born, Whose names are registered in heaven." Beyond the bounds of time's expansion, Where change and sorrow never come, 11 We're " journeying to the promised mansion That wont on earth our lot to cheer Thither are, one by one, removed, And we shall find them settled there. Enough! let sin and pain and death This transitory world infest; Those 12 who attain to Abraham's faith Shall be with faithful Abraham blest. NOTES. 1 66 Touched with his golden finger."-WORDSWorth. "Haran begat Lot: and Haran died before his father Terah, in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees."-Gen. xi. 27, 28. 3 "The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran."-Acts vii. 2. "Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great: and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."-Gen. xii. 1-3. 5" He removed thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, having Bethel on the west and Haï on the east."-Gen. xii. 8. It appears that Abram returned to this place after his residence in Egypt. Gen. xiii. 3. The author has taken the liberty of throwing together into one speech the distinguishing features of several addresses made at different times and places by God to Abram before his final settlement in the plain of Mamre. "Fear not, Abram.. I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees...I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars if thou be able to number them...so shall thy seed be... And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that, if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered...Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward...Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee...from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.. to thee will I give it and to thy seed for ever."—Gen. xiii. 14-17; xv. 1, 5, 7, 18. 6 "They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead." 7 See Heb. xi. 8-16. "Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress; a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat.”— Isai. xxv. 4; see also Isai. xxxii. 2. 9 "For verily he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham: wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren," &c.-Heb. ii. 16, 17. 10 "Ye are come...... ...to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven."-Heb. xii. 23. 11 "In my Father's house are many mansions...I go to prepare a place for you."-John xiv. 2. 12 "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham."-Gal. iii. 9. THE CROSS PLANTED UPON THE HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS. THE POEM WHICH OBTAINED THE SEATONIAN PRIZE IN THE YEAR 1842. The vast hills in fluctuation fixed At thy command, how awful! Shall the mind, Even less than these?-Be mute who may, who can, My lips, that might forget Thee in the crowd, Cannot forget Thee here; where Thou hast built, For thine own glory, in the wilderness! Me didst Thou constitute a priest of thine, In such a temple as we now behold Reared for thy presence. "DESPONDENCY CORRECTED." (The Excursion, Book IV.) |