Page:The Christian Year 1887.djvu/136



"Thou know'st our service sad and hard,  Thou know'st us fond and frail; Win us to be loved and spared   When all the world shall fail.

"So when at last our weary days  Are well-nigh wasted here, And we can trace Thy wondrous ways   In distance calm and clear,

"When in Thy love and Israel's sin  We read our story true, We may not, all too late, begin   To wish our hopes were new.

"Long loved, long tried, long spared as they,  Unlike in this alone, That, by Thy grace, our hearts shall stay   For evermore Thine own."


 * Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.  He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.  Daniel iii. 24, 25.

When Persecution's torrent blaze Wraps the unshrinking Martyr's head; When fade all earthly flowers and bays, When summer friends are gone and fled, Is he alone in that dark hour Who owns the Lord of love and power?

Or waves there not around his brow A wand no human arm may wield, Fraught with a spell no angels know, His steps to guide, his soul to shield? Thou, Saviour, art his Charmed Bower, His Magic Ring, his Rock, his Tower.

And when the wicked ones behold Thy favourites walking in Thy light, Just as, in fancy triumph bold, They deemed them lost in deadly night,