This world is all enchanted ground, Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb, Thou hidden love of God, whose height, To-morrow, Lord, is thine, To Thee, O God, my prayers ascends, To us the voice of wisdom cries, Trembling with tenderest alarms, U Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb, W Watch'd by the world's malignant eye, What is the chaff? the word of man, When floods of grief assault the mind, Beddome, 171 302 When gathering clouds around I view, When heaves with sighs my anxious breast, When on the margin of the grave, When poison spreading through their veins, When restless on my bed I lie, When those who fear'd the Lord of old, When war on earth suspended, Where are the dead? In heaven or hell, Where high the heavenly temple stands, While through this changing world we roam, Y Ye hearts with youthful vigour warm, Yes, the Redeemer rose, Watts, 299 M. 437 Toplady, 308 H. K. White, 245 M. 168 M. 406 You now must hear my voice no more, Topiady, 347 thoughts, speak their dialects, feel their emotions, but our own thoughts are refined, our scanty language is enriched, our common feelings are elevated; and, though we may never attain their standard, yet, by keeping company with them, we shall rise above our own, as trees growing in the society of a forest, are said to draw each other up into shapely and stately proportion, while field and hedge-row stragglers, exposed to all weathers, never reach their full stature, luxuriance, or beauty. In the composition of hymns, men of wealthier imaginations, and happier utterance, may furnish to others of susceptible hearts, the means of bodying forth their own conceptions, which would otherwise be a burden to their minds, or die in the birth, without the joy of deliverance. The most illiterate person, who understands his Bible, will easily understand the most elegant or emphatic expression of all the feelings which are common to all; and, instead of being passive under them, when they are excited at particular seasons, he will avail himself of the songs put into his mouth, and sing them with gladness and refreshment, as if they were his own. Then, though, like Milton's, his genius can ascend to the heaven of heavens, or like Shakespeare's, search out the secrets of Nature, through all her living combina tions,—blessed is the bard who employs his resources thus; who, from the fulness of his own bosom, pours his divinest thoughts, in his selectest words, into the bosoms of his readers, and enables them to appropriate the rich communications to their personal exigencies, without robbing him, or hindering others from partak ing of the same abundant fountain of human inspiration,—a fountain flowing, like the oil, at the command |