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Milton's Prayer of Patience.

I AM old and blind!

Men point at me as smitten by God's frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind,

Yet am I not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not that I no longer see ;-
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father Supreme! to Thee.

All merciful One!

When men are farthest, then art thou most near, When friends pass by, my weaknesses to shun, Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face

Is leaning towards me, and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling place-
And there is no more night.

On my bended knee,

I recognize Thy purpose, clearly shown;

My vision Thou hast dimmed, that I

Thyself-Thyself alone.

I have nought to fear;

may see

This darkness is the shadow of thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred-here

Can come no evil thing.

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366

MILTON'S PRAYER OF PATIENCE.

Oh! I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been,
Wrapped in that radiance from the sinless land
Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go,

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng;
From angel lips I seem to hear the flow
Of soft and holy song.

In a purer clime,

My being fills with rapture-waves of thought
Roll in upon my spirit-strains sublime
Break over me unsought.

Give me now my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine,
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire,
Lit by no skill of mine.

Be thou like the first apostles-
Be thou like heroic Paul :—

If a true thought seek expression,

Speak it boldly! speak it all!

E. L. JR.

GALLAGHER.

LEGH RICHMOND, being asked to write in an Album, if it

were but two lines, wrote,

Can two lines teach a lesson from above?

Yes, one can give a volume,—“ God is Love."

A Quaker Meeting.

READER, Would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean? would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude? would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society would'st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species would'st thou be alone and yet accompanied? solitary, yet not desolate? singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance? a unit in aggregate? a simple in composite ?-come with me into a Quaker meeting.

Dost thou love silence deep as that "before the winds were made?"—go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells of thine ears, with little faithed, selfmistrusting Ulysses. Retire with me into a Quaker meeting.

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to hold his peace, it is commendable; but for a multitude, it is great mastery.

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man enjoyeth by himself. The perfect is that which he can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so absolutely as in a Quaker meeting.

To pace alone in the cloisters or side aisles of some cathedral, time-stricken

"Or under hanging mountains,

Or by the fall of fountains"

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those enjoy who come together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness" to be felt." The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-stirring, as the naked walls and benches of a Quaker meeting.

368

A QUAKER MEETING.

"Here are no tombs, no inscriptions

Sands, ignoble things

Dropped from the ruined sides of kings"—

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself into the foreground-SILENCE-eldest of things-language of old Night -primitive discourser to which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur have but arrived by a violent, and unnatural progression.

66

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads,
Looking tranquillity!"

Nothing plotting, naught caballing, unmischievous synod! convocation without intrigue! parliament without debate! what a lesson dost thou read to council and to consistory! if my pen treat of you lightly-as haply it will wander-yet my spirit hath gravely felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting among you in deepest peace, which some outwelling tears would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the seed by Fox and Dewsbury. I have witnessed that which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, inflexible to the rude jests and serious violence of the insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest you-for ye sat between the fires of two persecutions, the outcast and offscouring of church and presbytery. I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered into your receptacle, with the avowed intention of disturbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit among ye as a lamb amid lambs. And I remember Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock, where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and "the judge and the jury became as dead men under his feet."

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all church narratives, to read Sewell's His

A QUAKER MEETING.

369

tory of the Quakers. It is far more edifying and affecting than anything you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit.

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart and love the early Quakers.

Frequently the meeting is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the TONGUE, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness. Oh, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings and nonsense noises of the world, what a balm and solace it is, to go and seat yourself upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers! Their garb and, stillness conjoined, present an uniformity, tranquil and herdlike—as in the pasture" forty feeding like one."

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil: and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily and when they come up in bands to their Whitsun conferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the shining

ones.

CHARLES LAMB.

MENTAL pleasures never cloy: they are increased by repetition, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.

COLTON.

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