Resurgam

F. W. Grant.

Abstracted from "Leaves from the Book".

1. — Night

The sun at noon is paling into night;

Without a cloud the circling hills grow dim;

A city's murmur hushes into blank

And utter silence, as if nature stood

Suspense, to hear the uncreating word,

And at her Maker's bidding be unmade.

One shadow only, 'mid the deepening gloom,

Still deepening stands, as if the judgment-scroll

Upon its blighted head were nature's doom:

As if the awful burden which it raised

Upon its naked arms, in mute appeal

To heaven, had stricken to her centre earth.

Two crosses, with their freight of living death,—

Of life with death which wrestles, for defeat,

Not victory two deaths of common shame

And common sin, which the night blots but out

Easily, as a thing 'mid myriad things

Accustomed, which but wake a moment's ruth,

And pass, and are forgotten.

But here — though numbered with transgressors — here,

Not where the night falls, but from whence it falls,

Stilling the mocks of mockers, who for sin

Had silence, if not pity, — here, not sin

Suffers, but righteousness; from hatred, love;

Love most compassionate, from basest hate

Bred by it, as corruption by the sun.

No strange thing yet, for earth which has drunk in

From many a brother's hand a brother's blood,

Since Abel; and the heaven looked calmly down,

Nor paled her light for many a sight like this;

The ashes from the martyr's furnace-fire

Have flaunted in her face and brought no frown;

Her rains have washed the stains from off the earth,

And fields have fattened on her slaughter'd dead.

No cloud for those upon whose face had shone,

Ev'n to the last, heaven's sweet approving ray;

Who smiled it back to heaven from block and stake,

And various battle-field of good with ill,

And, dying, found but death transformed to life,—

Defeat to victory.

No cloud for sufferers who had but plumb'd

The depths of human enmity, to find,

Beyond it all, a bottom; for their hearts

Failing, had met a heart that could not fail,

Nor yet forsake: they trusted upon God,

And, howsoe'er the storm of trial raged,

Their roof abode, they housed them in His love,

Trusting and not forsaken; shepherd-rod

And staff were there to comfort, the way of life

If yet through death; and darkness glorified

At even-tide to noon.

Here had God failed, that thus the heavens should blank?

For He was surely righteous; o'er His head

They once had opened, and the Father's voice

Proclaimed His pleasure in His Well-beloved:

'Gainst Him false witness witnessed but its shame;

The judge had justified whom he condemned;

The pitiless voices round about His cross

Mock'd but His goodness and His trust in God.

Yet, as the darkness deepened into night,—

A voiceless night, as nature had no cry,

As grief had now no meaning, but with joy

Had ceased, like shadow with the bye-gone sun,—

His voice of truth, if still truth were, His voice,

Not of His silenced enemies, proclaimed

Himself by God forsaken.

We had built our hopes upon Him; we had thought

The wreck that yet had spared no other thing,

Could not touch Him: all other things to Him

Had been but total and mere opposites:

It seemed as if all else had failed, that He

Alone might bear the pillars of the earth,

As if He were a rock too high for floods,

On which whoever builded built secure.

He had brought light into the world, and life

Into the valley of the shadow of death,

Where hope sat dumbly gazing on despair,

Stanching, if but she might, the wounds which truth

Had gotten at the traitor hand of greed,

While discord built its Babel-empire up

And preached that evil was a phase of good

And curse was misread blessing.

His voice, had made faith possible once more,

And right, being possible; the spectral mists

Rolled off the earth, rolled off the face of heaven,

And the clouds changing, changed no whit the sun,

Which kept its ordered path amid them all,

Hidden or manifest; and which was cloud

Changeful, we knew, and which was changeless sun.

Earth stood revealed, as heaven alone reveals:

Its penury, its squalor, and its sin;

Its evil worse in evil, as the pure,

Rebuking light shone, undefilable,

Upon the surging of its yeasty sea,

Which chafing, hoarse and white-lipped, had its bound

From God, and broke in vain upon the shore.

No winter ray, upon the earth it fell

And kissed the tears of night from off its face,

And waked it with the gentle touch of Spring

Into new life, life out of death, which waked

Amid the murmur of a thousand tongues

Swelling into a harmony of song

From heaven's sweet choristers. Earth's spring had come,

Spring with her burst of life and leaf had come,

Her winter night had fled away forever.

And He, of all her deep-hid mysteries, He,

God's dear Interpreter, Man amongst men,

Of lowly lowliest, of near most near,

Grief's intimate, as come to be acquaint,

Love-sent, with all the sorrows He would heal,

The crown of thorns, which but of late He wore,

Was His in more than mockery, — thorns which, plucked

Out of man's pathway, were indeed His crown.

He called not for Elias: He who called

Only on God, His God; on God He called

The hearer and the answerer of prayer;

The hope of all the righteous evermore,

The refuge and the shield of the oppressed,

The Rock of all that trust Him evermore;

Out of the dark, out of the inner dark

Upon His soul, He in His agony:

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"

2. — Morning

The bitter night is past, the morn is come;

The morn for which earth's forty centuries

Have waited on in hope, that, oft deferred,

Oft nigh to death, now out of death itself

New-born, has sprung up into life o'er which

Death has no more dominion. Over Him

It has no more: our hope, our life, our all

He has brought with Him out of death, and death

Henceforth has no dominion evermore.

Darkness is past, and the true light now shines;

The shadow on the face of God is gone, —

Gone with the awful shadow of the cross:

The light is in His face come back from death,

Back from the tomb so impotently closed,

To tell us of our peace secured, and heaven,

His and His Father's dwelling-place, our home.

And now as we look back from off the bank

Of Jordan's waters, parted for our path,

To where lie midway the memorial stones

To which our Gilgal twelve upon the shore

Answer, as resurrection to the grave,—

The new-ris'n Sun upon the clouds which are

Its late-left bed, sheds its transfiguring rays

Till all the night of sorrow is transformed

From formless chaos into order fair,

And in each tear an orb of beauty shines.

The Son of God is glorified, and God

Is glorified in Him. There where so late

Our faith o'ershadowed fainted, following Him,

And could not follow,—there alone He stood

While on Him fell the flood of all our woes,

And on Him pressed the burden of our sins,

Self-made His own; and Wisdom's counsel-plans

And Justice' claims, and Love's dear purposes

Freighted the Ark of our salvation as,

Outriding all our woes, it bare us in,

Into the haven of eternal rest.

That cry of anguish, hush'd in joy forever,

Was but the travail pain of our new birth,

When out of human weakness power was born

In our behalf, and love came girded down

T' endear itself by lowliest services;

In manhood gaining power for sacrifice,

And loving us from enmity into love.

But yet no vain display nor meaningless

The fury of that storm which o'er Him rolled,

To which the Father's self must give His Son,

And which the Son of God perforce must suffer:

If He His harvest-sheaves would have from earth

The precious seed with weeping must be sown;

For sin had severed love from righteousness,

And stricken from its hand the power to save;

A righteous God awoke the heart to fear,

And not to worship; sin had changed the Lord

Our dear Creator to our Judge, and gift

We had not to appease, nor bribe to turn

The sentence Time was graving on our brows,

And sending down for sad Eternity

Sadly but unrepenting to confirm.

Death was our portion, darker than the grave,

Till into death the Shepherd of the sheep,

The Son of God and God-sent Son of man,

Stepped 'mid the breathless silence of the heavens

With love stronger than death, with zeal for God

As altar-fire consuming even Himself;

And there the sword that pierced a mother's heart

Reached unto His.

Reached, and made bare before the eye of God

While principalities and powers adored,

A human heart which only for Him moved,

Spring of a life which lived but by His word,

And where the flame of whole burnt-offering

Brought out but incense-savor unto God.

Nought was there there of blemish nor defect,

But piety that challenged answer,—love

That gave fresh argument to love. He cried,

And He was heard; the love and glory of God

Broke through the bands of darkness and of death

And resurrection from the dead proclaimed

That God had found a ransom.

And righteousness and peace have kissed each other,

The just God is the Saviour, and upon

The sinner's side, confessed but only that,

In every attribute united stands.

Grace reigns, and reigns through righteousness; and where

It had been death t' approach, th' atoning blood

Makes boldness but simplicity of faith.

A Father's house, a Father's tenderness,

A Father's watchful eye upon our path,—

His care, without whom not a sparrow falls,

And not a hair uncounted from our heads:—

These are our joys, and these our songs of praise,

As on the lighted path that leads to God

We walk, amid the glory of His face,

Unclouded and unsetting, evermore

Past shadow, evermore!

Thus the night passes and the day abides;

Out of the womb of sorrow comes our joy:

The painful lessons of the school of time

Become the wisdom of eternity.