The brilliant weather, with the sparkling seaBlue under the blue heaven above it bowed,There the great sun, his solitary stateMaking his own pomp as it moved alongIn that imperial progress through the skies,The blithe wind blowing in the singing sails,And the gay answer of the bounding bark,On either hand bright glimpses of the shore—All these things to enliven were not enoughFor that day's need to Paul and those with him:They could not rally to their customed cheer,Serious, not sad, although light-hearted never.The deed of Shimei and scarce less his doomStill damped their spirits, so strung to sympathy,Till sunny day wore on to starry night.Then, Paul and Stephen by themselves apartResting, the younger to the elder said:"Much, O mine uncle, have I pondered, since,The deep things that I heard from thee, that night,Already now so many months ago,By thy side riding, thou by Lysias sent(Safeguarded by his Romans from the Jews!)To wear out thy duress at Cæsarea.Thou wert then as now escaped from Shimei's snare!We spake, thou wilt remember, of those psalmsWhich breathe, or seem to breathe, such breath of hate.I had recited one aloud to thee—To myself rather, bold, for thee to hear—Vent to the feeling fierce that in my breastBoiled into tempest against Shimei.Thou chidedst me with a most sweet rebukeThat drew the tumor all, out of my heart;Thou taughtst me then that the good Spirit of God,Who breathed the inspiration into menTo utter such dire words, seeming of hate,Hated not any as I to hate had dared.I understood thee that God only soRevealed in forms of vivid human speechThe implacable resentment—but I pause,Pause startled at the word I use; I would,Could I, find other than such words as these,'Resentment,' 'indignation,' 'hatred,' 'wrath,'To speak my thought of holy God aflameWith infinite displacency at sin—Once more! Another word I fain would shun!For by some tether that I cannot break,Bound, I revolve in the same circle still."As if his speech were half soliloquy,The youth let lapse his musing into mute,Which not with word or sign would Paul invade.Almost with admiration, with such joyOf hope for Stephen, Paul remarked in himThe noble gains of knowledge he had made—Wisdom say rather out of knowledge won—In those two years at Cæsarea spent;Years for the youth so rich in fruitful chanceOf converse with his elders, and of thoughtWhich in that quick young mind, for brooding aptNo less than apt for action, brought to fullSweet ripeness all that he from other learned,And touched it with a quality his own.Paul could not but in measure feel himselfGiven back to him reflected in the wordsThat he just now had heard from Stephen's lips;Yet he therein felt too a surge of youthAnd youth's unrest and eagerness and strifeAnd dauntless heart to assay the impossibleWhich were all Stephen's. And he held his peace.Presently Stephen took up voice again:"Almost I thus resolve myself one doubt,One question, that I thought to bring to thee.God is not altogether such, I know,As we are; yet are we too somewhat suchAs He, for in God's image were we made.And we perforce must know God, if at all,Then by ourselves as patterned after Him.So I suppose our best similitudeFor what God feels—but 'feeling,' also that!—How fast do these anthropomorphic wallsEnclose us still in all our thought of God!—'Feeling' is but a parable flung forthBy us, bridge-builders on the hither side,To tremble out a little way toward God,Then flutter helpless down in the abyss,The impassable abyss, of differenceBetween created and Creator, usAnd Him, the finite and the Infinite!Forgive me, but I lose my way in words!"And again Stephen broke his utterance off,Faltering; like one who fording a full streamNow in midcurrent finds his foothold fail,And cannot in such deepened waters walk.This time Paul reached the struggling youth a handWith: "Thou hast not ill achieved in thine essayTo utter what is nigh unutterable.But, Stephen, better bridge than any formOf fancy, figure or similitude,To human sense or reason possibleAnd capable of frame in human speech,For spanning the great gulf immeasurable,Unfathomable, nay, inconceivable,(Gulf, otherwise than so, impassable,Yet so, securely closed forevermore!)The awful gulf of being and of thought,Much more, of moral difference, since our fall,That parts our kind from holy God Most High—Yea, better bridge than any word of oursAspiring upward from beneath to God,Is that Eternal Word of God HimselfTo us, down-reaching hither from above,Who, being God with God, was Man with man,And Who, returning thither whence He came,Carried our nature with Him into heaven,And to the Ever-living joined us one."But rightly thou wert saying, my Stephen, that weBest can approach to put in speech of manThe ineffable regard of God toward sin,If we impute to Him a spurning suchAs we feel when we hate or loathe or scorn,And wish to wreak in punishment our wrath.But we must purge ourselves of self-regard,Or we are sinful in abhorring sin;And we attaint God with gross attributeImputed from what we through fall became.An horrible profaneness, sure, it were,The image first of God in us to foul,And then that foulness back on God asperse,Making Him hate with wicked human hate!"The wide impersonal purport of Paul's words,Not meant, he knew, in hidden hint to him,Still, Stephen with his wise docile spirit tookHome to himself, and fell some moments mute,Considering; then afresh his mind exposed:"I feel, O kinsman most revered, how bold,How froward, how perverse, it were in me,First to lay hold on holy words of GodTo use them, as I used that psalm that night,Profanely for a vehicle of hate;And then, convicted of my fault therein,Turn round and blame the very words I used,Or seem to blame them, as unmeet from God.Yet I experience an obscure distress—Is it of mind or heart? I scarce know which—A sense of contradiction unresolved,When, in the spirit of all-loving love,Such as sometimes I seem to catch from thee,I read or ponder those terrific psalms.""Thou art tempted then perhaps," gently said Paul,Yet with some gentle irony implied,"To doff the pupil's lowly attitudeIn which thou hadst learned so much; as if indeedThou hadst learned enough to be a teacher now,And even a teacher to thy Teacher, God?Beware, my son, of these delusive thoughts;Love also has its specious counterfeits—Whence that deep word of the apostle John,So frequent on his lips, his touchstone word—More needed, as, to seeming, needed not—To make us sure, when we suppose we love,Whether we love in truth: 'Herein we knowThat we God's children love, when we love God,And His commandments do.' For this is loveIndeed of God, to do His holy will!A childlike humble spirit, the spirit of love,Contented to believe and to obey!The wiser that she seeks not to be wise,She wins her wisdom by obedience."Does thy love puff thee up to challenge GodWhether He be consistent with Himself?Suspect 'all-loving love' which moves to that!Love puffs not up—right love, love which is awe(As ever love inbreathed from Jesus is)—To any pride of wisdom questioning God.Some specious counterfeit it is of love,Not love herself—who grows by meekness wiseTo meekness more, and more obedient faith—Not love, nay, Stephen, but other spirit than love(Self-pity, self-indulgence, self-regard,Some spirit fixing for the center self),That sits in judgment on the ways of GodTo find Him sometimes wise or sometimes not.God was as wise when He inspired those psalmsAs when in Christ he bade us ever love,Love even our enemies and do them good.Submit thyself to God, my Stephen, and beHumble; for God resists the proud, but givesGrace to the humble still and grace for grace—Grace given already, ground for added grace.Grow then in grace thus, and be meekly wise.I have spoken divining what thy meaning was,Perhaps amiss"—and Paul refrained from more.But Stephen answered: "If such was my thought,At least I did not know it to be such,As thou hast thus divined it now for me.Thither perhaps it tended—but that goal,Shown in this light from thee, though far, I shun;I would not be more wise than God, for God.But is there then no contrarietyAt all, no spirit discrepant, betweenThe frightful fulminations of those psalmsAnd the forgiving love of our Lord Christ?""None, Stephen," said Paul, "for none did Jesus know,Who knew those psalms and never protest madeAgainst them, never softened their austere,Their angry, aspect, never glozed their sense,Never one least slant syllable let slip,Hint as thatHewould not have spoken so,Never with pregnant silence passed them by.Nay, of those psalms one of the fiercest, He—And this, then when His baptism into death,His offering of Himself for sin, was nigh,Those Feet already in the crimson flood!—Most meek and lowly suffering Lamb of God,Took to Himself to make it serve His needIn uttering the just horror of His soulAt such hate wreaked on Him without a cause.'Pour out Thine indignation on them, Lord,And let the fierceness of Thy wrath smite them!To their iniquity iniquityAdd Thou'—such curse invokes this dreadful psalm—'Let them be blotted from the book of life'!From close beside these burning sentences,These drops of Sodom-and-Gomorrah rain,Out of the self-same psalm with them, our Lord,Now nigh to suffer (saying to His ownHe as in holy of holies with them shrined,More heavenly things than ever even HimselfTill then had spoken) drew those words—sad words,Stern words!—'They hated Me without a cause.'Love shrank not, nay, in Him, from holy hate!"His spirit and the spirit of those psalmsEver with one another dwelt at peace;More than at peace, with one another oneWere they, the selfsame spirit both; as needsWas, since the Spirit of all psalms was He.Even thus, I have not to the full expressedThe will, with power, that in Christ Jesus wroughtTo fulmine indignation against sin.The psalms, those fiercest and most branding, failTo match the fury of the Lamb of GodPoured out in words of woe on wickedness,His own words, burning to the lowest hell—Enraged eruption from the heart of love!Most dreadful of things dreadful that! A fire,My Stephen, which, as loth to kindle, so,Once kindled, then will burn the deepest down!Woe the most hopeless of surcease or change—Mercy herself to malediction moved,Love forced to speak in final words of hate!"An energy of earnest in Paul's voice,A tender earnest, full of love and fear,Fear without dread, serene vicarious fear(Yet faithful sympathy with God expressed)The solemn somber of a lighted lookIn him, reflected as from some unseenRegion where light was more than luminous,Appalling, like the splendor of a cloudWhence deep the thunder now begins to break—These, with his words themselves infusing awe,Made Stephen feel his heart in him stand still.Both for meet reverence toward the reverend manWho spake these things, and likewise to assureHimself that he in nothing failed the fullSense and effect of all that he had heard,Stephen his hush awe-struck, of thought, prolonged.Then, partly from a certain manlinessInnate in him, inalienably his,Which, while of noble and ennobling aweIt made his spirit but more capable,Yet kept him ever conscious of his worth,And would not suffer that, with any thoughtQuick in him and still seeming to him trueOr worthy to be questioned for its truth,He should, howso abashed, abandon it—Partly self-stayed so in a constant mind,But more, supported by his perfect trustWell-grounded in his kinsman's gentlenessAnd tact of understanding exquisite,Stephen returned to press his quest once more:"I must not seem insistent overmuch,O thou my kinsman and my master dear,To whom indeed I hearken as to oneDivinely guided to be guide to men;But a desire to know not yet allayed,Perhaps I ought to own, some haunting doubt,Prompts me to ask one question more of thee."I know the psalms whereof we speak were meant,As were their fellow psalms, each, not to breatheThe individual feeling of one soulWhether himself the writer or whosoMight take it for his own, but to be usedBy the great congregation joining voiceIn symphony or in antiphonyOf choral worship, with stringed instrumentsAdding their help, and instruments of wind:So, most unmeet it were if private grudgeOf any whomsoever, high or low,Should mix its base alloy with the fine goldOf prayer and praise stored in our holy psalmsFor pure oblation from all holy heartsTo Him, the Ever-living Holy God.The wicked and the enemy thereinAccurséd so from good to every baneAnd ill here and hereafter following themAnd hunting down their issue to the endOf endless generations of their like—These, I can understand, were public foes,Not private, adversary heathen tribesThat hated us because they hated GodWho chose us for His own peculiar race,And swayed us weapon in His dread right handTo execute His judgment on His foes,His foes, not ours, or only ours as His—'Them that hate Thee do not I hate, O God?'The righteous execration bursting forth,An outcry irrepressible of zeal,Through all the cycle of those fearful psalms,Not from a heart of virulence toward men,But from a love, consuming self, for God.Such, I can understand, the purport wasWherein Himself, the Holy Ghost of God,Inspired those psalms and willed them to be sung.But, O my master, tell me, did not yetSome too importunate spirit not thus pure,Of outright sheer malevolence some trace,Escape of private malice uncontrolled,Hatred toward man that was not love for God,On his part who was chosen God's oracleTo such high end and hard, enter the strainHe chanted, here or there, to jar the tuneAnd of his music make a dissonance?"Stephen, as one who had with resoluteExertion of an overcoming willDischarged his heart with speech, let come what might,Rested; the tension of his purpose stillPersisting to refuse himself recoil.Feeling his nephew's girded attitude,Nowise resistant, though recessive not,Braced to keep staunch his standing where he stood,Paul would not overbear it with sheer strength;Choosing, with just insinuation wise,To ease it through concession yielded him.He said: "My Stephen has pondered deep these things,And to result of truth well worth his pains.Thou hast profited, my son, perhaps beyondThine own thought of thy profiting, in sweetAcquist of wisdom from the mind of Christ.Fair change, change fair and great, in thee since whenThou cursedst Shimei in that bitter psalm!—Bitter from thee who saidst it bitterly.Behold, thou art fain, forsooth, to find those words,Those same words now which then thou likedst wellRolling them under thy tongue a morsel sweet,Almost too human for at all divine.Was there not in them, this thou askest me,Expression intermixed of wicked hate,His whose the occasion was to write the psalm?The turns and phrases of the speech whereinThe psalmist here or there breathes out his soulIn malediction, have such force to thee,Importing that his spirit let escapeA passion of his own not purifiedAmid the pressure and the stress of zealInspired from God against unrighteousness."Well, Stephen, the entrusted word of GodTo men is ours through men and, men being such,Why, needs we have the priceless treasure stored,Stored and conveyed, in vessels framed of clay.No perfect men are found, were ever found:God's inspiration does not change men such.His wisdom is to make of men unwise,Of men, too, fallen far short of holiness,Imperfect organs of His perfect will.Adhesion hence of imperfection, man's,Fast to the letter of the Scripture clings;But it makes part of His perfection, God's,Who knows us, and from His celestial heightBenignly earthward deigning condescends.In terms of our imperfect, flawed with sinEven, the Divine inworking wisdom lovesTo teach us noble lessons of Himself,Ennobling us to ever nobler viewsOf what He is, so shadowed forth to us."'Sin,' that word 'sin,' so weighted as we knowWith sense, beyond communication deep,Of evil, of wrong, of outrage, of offenceToward God, and toward ourselves of injuryIrreparable and growing ever greatAnd greater to immortal suicideWreaked with incredible madness on the soul—What is that word in the light shallow speechOf pagan Greek? What but a word to mean,As if of purpose to make naught the blame,Simply the casual missing of a mark?Venial, forsooth, merely an aim not hit—The aim right, but the arrow flying wide!Into such matrix, shallower as would seemThan could be made capacious of such sense,God must devise to pour His thought of sin!But how the thought has deepened since its mould,Still vain to match the sinfulness of sin!Humbleness—what a virtue, what a graceSay rather, yet in all the Greek no wordTo name it, till God's wisdom rectifiedA word that erst imported what was base,Mean, sordid, dastard, unuplifted, vileIn spirit, pusillanimous, to nameThe lowly temper, best beloved in manBy God, the heavenly temper of His Son!The thought at last is master of its mould,Though mould is needful for the plastic thought."In our imagination of The True,We climb as by a ladder, round by round,Slowly toward Him, the Inaccessible,Who dwells in a seclusion and removeOf glory unapproachable, and lightThat makes a blinding darkness round His throne.He stoops and finds and touches us abasedSo far beneath Him where we grovelling lie;Nay, He lays hold of us and lifts us up;With cords, so it is written, of a manHe draws us, blesséd God!—with bands of love,Of love, the mightiest of His heavenly powers!O, the depth fathomless, the starry height,The breadth, the length immeasurably large,Both of the wisdom and the knowledge, God's!Because, forsooth, we have some few steps climbed,Shall we, proud, spurn from underneath our feetThe ladder that uplifted us so far,That might have raised us yet the full ascent?That ladder rests on earth to reach to heaven:Let us go on forever climbing higher,But not forget the dark hole of the pitOut of which we were digged, nor, more, contemnThe way of wisdom thither reaching downAnd thence aspiring to the topmost heaven;Whereby our race may (so we stumble notThrough pride, or like Jeshurun waxen fatKick) reascend at length to whence we fell—Nay, higher, and far above all height the highest,To Him, with Him, exalted to His right,To Him, with Him, in Him, Lord Christ, Who roseFor us in mighty triumph from His grave,Then reascended where He was before,Ere the world was, God with His Father God,But still for us; and, still for us, sat downForever, in His Filial Godhead Man,Assessor with His Father on His throne,Inheriting the Name o'er every nameAscendant, King of kings and Lord of lords,And us assuming with Himself to reign!Amen! And hallelujah! And amen!"As one might watch an eagle in his flightThat soared to viewless in the blinding sun;As one might hearken while from higher and higherA lark poured back his singing on the ground,So Stephen gazed, listening, with ecstatic mind."Transported with delight I hear thee speakThus, O my reverend master, for with awe,Which is delight, the deepest that I know"—Thus at length Stephen spoke, easing his mindA little, with its fulness overfraught."Doxology outbreaking from thy lipsBecomes them so! The rapture of thy praiseIs as the waving of a mighty wingBeside me that is able to upbearMe also thither whither it will soar.I am caught in its motion and I mountUnmeasured heights as to the heaven of heavens.Let me join voice with thee and say, 'Amen!'Not least I love when least I understandOften thy high discourse. Eluding meIt leads me yet and tempts me after thee,Tempts and enables, and, above myself,I find myself equalled to the impossible!But then when afterward I sink returnedTo what I was—no longer wing not mineTo lift me with its great auxiliar sweepUpward—I grope and stumble on the ground."Bear with me that I need to ask such things,But tell me yet, O thou who knowest, tell me,Am I then right, and is it, as thou seemedstTo say but saidst not, veering from the markWhen now almost upon it, so I thought,Who waited watching—did the psalmist oldCommingle sometimes an alloy of baseUnpurified affection with his clearAll-holy inspiration breathed from God,Lading his language with a sense unmeet,Personal spite, his own, for God's pure ire?Forgive me that I need to ask such things.""Thou dost not need to ask such things, my son,"Paul with a grave severity replied."To ask them is to ask me that I judgeA fellow-servant. What am I to judgeThe servant of another, I who amServant myself with him of the same Lord?I will not judge my neighbor; nay, myself,Mine own self even, I judge not; One is Judge,He who the Master is, not I that serve.If so be, the inspired, not sanctified,Mere man, entrusted with the word of God—Our human fellow in infirmity,Remember, of like passions with ourselves—Indeed in those old days wherein he wrote,His enemies being the enemies of the Lord,And speaking he as voice at once of GodAnd of God's chosen, His ministers to destroyThose wicked—if so be such man, so placed,Half conscious, half unconscious, oracleOf utterance not his own, did in some partThat utterance make his own, profaning it,To be his vehicle for sense not meantBy the august Supreme Inspiring Will—Whether in truth he did, be God the judge,Not thou, my son, nor I, but if he did—Why, Stephen, then that psalmist—with more pleaThan thou for lenient judgment on the sin,Thine the full light, and only twilight his,With Christ our Sun unrisen—the selfsame faultAs thou, committed. Be both thou and heForgiven of Him with Whom forgiveness is—With Whom alone, that so He may be feared!"Abashed, rebuked, the youth in silence stood,Musing; but what he mused divining, Paul,With gently reassuring speech resumed,Soon to the things unspoken in the heartOf Stephen spoke and said: "Abidest stillUnsatisfied that anything from God,Though even through man, should less than perfect be,Or anywise other than incapable,Than utterly intolerant, of abuseTo purposes profane? Consider this—And lay thy hand upon thy mouth, nay, putThou mouth into the dust, before the Lord—That God Most High hath willed it thus to be,That thus Christ found it and pronounced it good.Who are we, Stephen, to be more wise than God,Who, to be holier than His Holy Son?""Amen! Amen! I needs must say, Amen!"In anguish of bewilderment the youthCried out, almost with sobs of passionateSubmission, from rebellion passionateHardly to be distinguished; "yea, to GodFrom man, ever amen, only amen,No other answer possible to Him!—Who is the potter, in Whose hands the clayAre we, helpless and choiceless, to be formedAnd fashioned into vessels at His will!""Helpless, yea, Stephen," Paul said, "but choiceness not;We choose, nay, even, we cannot choose but choose—The choice our freedom, our necessity:Free how to choose, we are to choose compelled.We choose with God, or else against Him choose.Which wilt thou, Stephen? Thou! With Him oragainst?"A struggle of submission shuddered downTo quiet in the bosom of the youth—Strange contrast to the unperturbed repose,With rapture, of obedience, that meantime,And ever, safe within the heart of PaulBreathed as might breathe an infant folded fastTo slumber in its mother's cradling arms!So had Paul learned to let the peace of ChristRule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm,Like the deep sleep of ocean at his coreOf waters underneath the planes of storm.And Stephen answered: "Oh, with God, with God!And blesséd be His name that thus I choose!""Yea, verily," Paul said, "for He sole it isWho worketh in us, both to will and workFor the good pleasure of His holy will.As thou this fashion of obedienceObediently acceptest at His gift,So growest thou faithful mirror to reflectClear to thyself, and just, the thought of God.Thus thou mayst hope to learn somewhat of true,Of high and deep and broad, concerning Him,Him and His ways inscrutable with us—Of thy self emptied, for more room to beFrom God henceforth with all His fulness filled!"This at least learn thou now, how greatly wiseWas God, by that which was in us the lowestTo take us and uplift us higher and higherUntil those very passions, hate and wrath,Which erst seemed right to us, as they were dear,Become, to our changed eyes—eyes, though thus changed,Nay, as thus changed, sore tempted to be proud—Become forsooth unworthy symbols evenTo shadow God's displeasure against sin.To generation generation linkedIn living long succession from the first,To nation nation joined, one fellowshipOf man, through clime and clime, from sea to sea—Thus has by slow degrees our human kindBeen brought from what we were to what we are.Thus and no otherwise the chosen raceWas fitted to provide a welcoming home,Such welcoming home! on earth for Him from heaven—The only people of all peoples weAmong whom God could be ImmanuelAnd be in any measure understood,Confounded not as of their idol tribes.And we—wedid not understand Him soBut that we hissed Him to be crucified!So little were we ready, and even at last,For the sun shining in His proper strength!After slow-brightening twilight ages longTo fit our blinking vision for the day,The glorious sun arising blinded usAnd maddened! We smote at him in his sphere,Loving our darkness rather than that light!"Therewith, as for the moment lapsed and lostIn backward contemplation, with amazeAnd shame and grief and joy and love and aweAnd thanks commingling in one surge of thoughtAt what he thus in sudden transport saw,Paul into silence passed, which his rapt lookMade vocal and more eloquent than voice.This Stephen reverenced, but at last he said:"O thou my teacher in the things of God,That riddle of wisdom in divine decreeWhereof thou spakest, the linking in one chainTogether, one fast bond and consequence,Of all the generations of mankindAnd all their races for a common lotOf evil or good, yet speak, I pray, thereof,To make me understand it if I may.Why should Jehovah on the children wreakThe wages of the fathers' wickedness?Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?Yea, doubtless, yea; butthat—how is that right?""His way is in the sea," said Paul, "His pathIn the great waters! Would we follow Him,His footsteps are not known! Blesséd be God!""Amen! Amen! Forevermore amen!"As one who bound himself with sacrament,Assenting without interrupting saidStephen, and Paul went on: "Yet this note thou:It is not on the children, such by blood,That God will visit the iniquityOf fathers: the children must be such in choiceAs well, in spirit, must be the fathers' like—And there another mystery! (for deepSinks endless under deep, to who would soundThe bottomless abyss of God's decree)—The children ever, prave and prone, inclineTo follow where the fathers lead the way;The children, yea, must do the fathers' deeds,Then only share the fathers' punishment.This, by that prophet mouth, Ezekiel, GodTaught with expostulation and appealPathetically eloquent of loveWith longing in our Heavenly Father's heartThat not one human creature of His handBe lost, but all, but all, turn and be saved."Nay, even from Sinai's touched and smoking topWas the same sense of grace to men revealed.For what said that commandment threatening wrathDivine, in sequel of ancestral sin,To light on generations yet to be?Said it not, 'On the children?' Yea, but heed,It hasted to supply in pregnant wordsDescription of the children thus accursed:'On the third generation and the fourthOf them that hate Jehovah'—wicked seedOf wicked sires, and therefore with them wellDeserving to partake one punishment.And now consider what stands written next.Deterrent menace done, to fend from sin,Allurement then, how large! to righteousness.If first the warning filled a mighty bound,All bound the grace succeeding overflowed.O, limitless outpouring from a full,An overfull, an aching, heart of loveIn God our Father! Mercy to be shown,Not to two generations or to three,But to a thousand generations, drawn,A bright succession, to unending date,Of them—that 'fear and worship'? nay—that loveGod for their Father and His will observe!"But, Stephen, enough for now of such discourse.My mind is helpless absent while we talk,My heart being heavy with desire and prayerAnd groanings from the Spirit unutterableFor Shimei in his noisome dungeon pent.I have sung praises in worse stead than his,Christ in me joyance and the hope of glory:But, chafed with fetters and with manacles,And worse bonds wearing of iniquity,He sits unvisited of this fair light,A midnight of no hope within his heart.Go pray for Shimei thou, and leave me hereTo pray, if haply God will touch his heart."So they two fell apart and mightily stroveTogether in intercession and one prayer.
The brilliant weather, with the sparkling seaBlue under the blue heaven above it bowed,There the great sun, his solitary stateMaking his own pomp as it moved alongIn that imperial progress through the skies,The blithe wind blowing in the singing sails,And the gay answer of the bounding bark,On either hand bright glimpses of the shore—All these things to enliven were not enoughFor that day's need to Paul and those with him:They could not rally to their customed cheer,Serious, not sad, although light-hearted never.The deed of Shimei and scarce less his doomStill damped their spirits, so strung to sympathy,Till sunny day wore on to starry night.
Then, Paul and Stephen by themselves apartResting, the younger to the elder said:"Much, O mine uncle, have I pondered, since,The deep things that I heard from thee, that night,Already now so many months ago,By thy side riding, thou by Lysias sent(Safeguarded by his Romans from the Jews!)To wear out thy duress at Cæsarea.Thou wert then as now escaped from Shimei's snare!We spake, thou wilt remember, of those psalmsWhich breathe, or seem to breathe, such breath of hate.I had recited one aloud to thee—To myself rather, bold, for thee to hear—Vent to the feeling fierce that in my breastBoiled into tempest against Shimei.Thou chidedst me with a most sweet rebukeThat drew the tumor all, out of my heart;Thou taughtst me then that the good Spirit of God,Who breathed the inspiration into menTo utter such dire words, seeming of hate,Hated not any as I to hate had dared.I understood thee that God only soRevealed in forms of vivid human speechThe implacable resentment—but I pause,Pause startled at the word I use; I would,Could I, find other than such words as these,'Resentment,' 'indignation,' 'hatred,' 'wrath,'To speak my thought of holy God aflameWith infinite displacency at sin—Once more! Another word I fain would shun!For by some tether that I cannot break,Bound, I revolve in the same circle still."
As if his speech were half soliloquy,The youth let lapse his musing into mute,Which not with word or sign would Paul invade.Almost with admiration, with such joyOf hope for Stephen, Paul remarked in himThe noble gains of knowledge he had made—Wisdom say rather out of knowledge won—In those two years at Cæsarea spent;Years for the youth so rich in fruitful chanceOf converse with his elders, and of thoughtWhich in that quick young mind, for brooding aptNo less than apt for action, brought to fullSweet ripeness all that he from other learned,And touched it with a quality his own.Paul could not but in measure feel himselfGiven back to him reflected in the wordsThat he just now had heard from Stephen's lips;Yet he therein felt too a surge of youthAnd youth's unrest and eagerness and strifeAnd dauntless heart to assay the impossibleWhich were all Stephen's. And he held his peace.
Presently Stephen took up voice again:"Almost I thus resolve myself one doubt,One question, that I thought to bring to thee.God is not altogether such, I know,As we are; yet are we too somewhat suchAs He, for in God's image were we made.And we perforce must know God, if at all,Then by ourselves as patterned after Him.So I suppose our best similitudeFor what God feels—but 'feeling,' also that!—How fast do these anthropomorphic wallsEnclose us still in all our thought of God!—'Feeling' is but a parable flung forthBy us, bridge-builders on the hither side,To tremble out a little way toward God,Then flutter helpless down in the abyss,The impassable abyss, of differenceBetween created and Creator, usAnd Him, the finite and the Infinite!Forgive me, but I lose my way in words!"And again Stephen broke his utterance off,Faltering; like one who fording a full streamNow in midcurrent finds his foothold fail,And cannot in such deepened waters walk.
This time Paul reached the struggling youth a handWith: "Thou hast not ill achieved in thine essayTo utter what is nigh unutterable.But, Stephen, better bridge than any formOf fancy, figure or similitude,To human sense or reason possibleAnd capable of frame in human speech,For spanning the great gulf immeasurable,Unfathomable, nay, inconceivable,(Gulf, otherwise than so, impassable,Yet so, securely closed forevermore!)The awful gulf of being and of thought,Much more, of moral difference, since our fall,That parts our kind from holy God Most High—Yea, better bridge than any word of oursAspiring upward from beneath to God,Is that Eternal Word of God HimselfTo us, down-reaching hither from above,Who, being God with God, was Man with man,And Who, returning thither whence He came,Carried our nature with Him into heaven,And to the Ever-living joined us one.
"But rightly thou wert saying, my Stephen, that weBest can approach to put in speech of manThe ineffable regard of God toward sin,If we impute to Him a spurning suchAs we feel when we hate or loathe or scorn,And wish to wreak in punishment our wrath.But we must purge ourselves of self-regard,Or we are sinful in abhorring sin;And we attaint God with gross attributeImputed from what we through fall became.An horrible profaneness, sure, it were,The image first of God in us to foul,And then that foulness back on God asperse,Making Him hate with wicked human hate!"
The wide impersonal purport of Paul's words,Not meant, he knew, in hidden hint to him,Still, Stephen with his wise docile spirit tookHome to himself, and fell some moments mute,Considering; then afresh his mind exposed:"I feel, O kinsman most revered, how bold,How froward, how perverse, it were in me,First to lay hold on holy words of GodTo use them, as I used that psalm that night,Profanely for a vehicle of hate;And then, convicted of my fault therein,Turn round and blame the very words I used,Or seem to blame them, as unmeet from God.Yet I experience an obscure distress—Is it of mind or heart? I scarce know which—A sense of contradiction unresolved,When, in the spirit of all-loving love,Such as sometimes I seem to catch from thee,I read or ponder those terrific psalms."
"Thou art tempted then perhaps," gently said Paul,Yet with some gentle irony implied,"To doff the pupil's lowly attitudeIn which thou hadst learned so much; as if indeedThou hadst learned enough to be a teacher now,And even a teacher to thy Teacher, God?Beware, my son, of these delusive thoughts;Love also has its specious counterfeits—Whence that deep word of the apostle John,So frequent on his lips, his touchstone word—More needed, as, to seeming, needed not—To make us sure, when we suppose we love,Whether we love in truth: 'Herein we knowThat we God's children love, when we love God,And His commandments do.' For this is loveIndeed of God, to do His holy will!A childlike humble spirit, the spirit of love,Contented to believe and to obey!The wiser that she seeks not to be wise,She wins her wisdom by obedience.
"Does thy love puff thee up to challenge GodWhether He be consistent with Himself?Suspect 'all-loving love' which moves to that!Love puffs not up—right love, love which is awe(As ever love inbreathed from Jesus is)—To any pride of wisdom questioning God.Some specious counterfeit it is of love,Not love herself—who grows by meekness wiseTo meekness more, and more obedient faith—Not love, nay, Stephen, but other spirit than love(Self-pity, self-indulgence, self-regard,Some spirit fixing for the center self),That sits in judgment on the ways of GodTo find Him sometimes wise or sometimes not.God was as wise when He inspired those psalmsAs when in Christ he bade us ever love,Love even our enemies and do them good.Submit thyself to God, my Stephen, and beHumble; for God resists the proud, but givesGrace to the humble still and grace for grace—Grace given already, ground for added grace.Grow then in grace thus, and be meekly wise.I have spoken divining what thy meaning was,Perhaps amiss"—and Paul refrained from more.
But Stephen answered: "If such was my thought,At least I did not know it to be such,As thou hast thus divined it now for me.Thither perhaps it tended—but that goal,Shown in this light from thee, though far, I shun;I would not be more wise than God, for God.But is there then no contrarietyAt all, no spirit discrepant, betweenThe frightful fulminations of those psalmsAnd the forgiving love of our Lord Christ?""None, Stephen," said Paul, "for none did Jesus know,Who knew those psalms and never protest madeAgainst them, never softened their austere,Their angry, aspect, never glozed their sense,Never one least slant syllable let slip,Hint as thatHewould not have spoken so,Never with pregnant silence passed them by.Nay, of those psalms one of the fiercest, He—And this, then when His baptism into death,His offering of Himself for sin, was nigh,Those Feet already in the crimson flood!—Most meek and lowly suffering Lamb of God,Took to Himself to make it serve His needIn uttering the just horror of His soulAt such hate wreaked on Him without a cause.'Pour out Thine indignation on them, Lord,And let the fierceness of Thy wrath smite them!To their iniquity iniquityAdd Thou'—such curse invokes this dreadful psalm—'Let them be blotted from the book of life'!From close beside these burning sentences,These drops of Sodom-and-Gomorrah rain,Out of the self-same psalm with them, our Lord,Now nigh to suffer (saying to His ownHe as in holy of holies with them shrined,More heavenly things than ever even HimselfTill then had spoken) drew those words—sad words,Stern words!—'They hated Me without a cause.'Love shrank not, nay, in Him, from holy hate!
"His spirit and the spirit of those psalmsEver with one another dwelt at peace;More than at peace, with one another oneWere they, the selfsame spirit both; as needsWas, since the Spirit of all psalms was He.Even thus, I have not to the full expressedThe will, with power, that in Christ Jesus wroughtTo fulmine indignation against sin.The psalms, those fiercest and most branding, failTo match the fury of the Lamb of GodPoured out in words of woe on wickedness,His own words, burning to the lowest hell—Enraged eruption from the heart of love!Most dreadful of things dreadful that! A fire,My Stephen, which, as loth to kindle, so,Once kindled, then will burn the deepest down!Woe the most hopeless of surcease or change—Mercy herself to malediction moved,Love forced to speak in final words of hate!"
An energy of earnest in Paul's voice,A tender earnest, full of love and fear,Fear without dread, serene vicarious fear(Yet faithful sympathy with God expressed)The solemn somber of a lighted lookIn him, reflected as from some unseenRegion where light was more than luminous,Appalling, like the splendor of a cloudWhence deep the thunder now begins to break—These, with his words themselves infusing awe,Made Stephen feel his heart in him stand still.Both for meet reverence toward the reverend manWho spake these things, and likewise to assureHimself that he in nothing failed the fullSense and effect of all that he had heard,Stephen his hush awe-struck, of thought, prolonged.
Then, partly from a certain manlinessInnate in him, inalienably his,Which, while of noble and ennobling aweIt made his spirit but more capable,Yet kept him ever conscious of his worth,And would not suffer that, with any thoughtQuick in him and still seeming to him trueOr worthy to be questioned for its truth,He should, howso abashed, abandon it—Partly self-stayed so in a constant mind,But more, supported by his perfect trustWell-grounded in his kinsman's gentlenessAnd tact of understanding exquisite,Stephen returned to press his quest once more:"I must not seem insistent overmuch,O thou my kinsman and my master dear,To whom indeed I hearken as to oneDivinely guided to be guide to men;But a desire to know not yet allayed,Perhaps I ought to own, some haunting doubt,Prompts me to ask one question more of thee.
"I know the psalms whereof we speak were meant,As were their fellow psalms, each, not to breatheThe individual feeling of one soulWhether himself the writer or whosoMight take it for his own, but to be usedBy the great congregation joining voiceIn symphony or in antiphonyOf choral worship, with stringed instrumentsAdding their help, and instruments of wind:So, most unmeet it were if private grudgeOf any whomsoever, high or low,Should mix its base alloy with the fine goldOf prayer and praise stored in our holy psalmsFor pure oblation from all holy heartsTo Him, the Ever-living Holy God.The wicked and the enemy thereinAccurséd so from good to every baneAnd ill here and hereafter following themAnd hunting down their issue to the endOf endless generations of their like—These, I can understand, were public foes,Not private, adversary heathen tribesThat hated us because they hated GodWho chose us for His own peculiar race,And swayed us weapon in His dread right handTo execute His judgment on His foes,His foes, not ours, or only ours as His—'Them that hate Thee do not I hate, O God?'The righteous execration bursting forth,An outcry irrepressible of zeal,Through all the cycle of those fearful psalms,Not from a heart of virulence toward men,But from a love, consuming self, for God.Such, I can understand, the purport wasWherein Himself, the Holy Ghost of God,Inspired those psalms and willed them to be sung.But, O my master, tell me, did not yetSome too importunate spirit not thus pure,Of outright sheer malevolence some trace,Escape of private malice uncontrolled,Hatred toward man that was not love for God,On his part who was chosen God's oracleTo such high end and hard, enter the strainHe chanted, here or there, to jar the tuneAnd of his music make a dissonance?"
Stephen, as one who had with resoluteExertion of an overcoming willDischarged his heart with speech, let come what might,Rested; the tension of his purpose stillPersisting to refuse himself recoil.Feeling his nephew's girded attitude,Nowise resistant, though recessive not,Braced to keep staunch his standing where he stood,Paul would not overbear it with sheer strength;Choosing, with just insinuation wise,To ease it through concession yielded him.He said: "My Stephen has pondered deep these things,And to result of truth well worth his pains.Thou hast profited, my son, perhaps beyondThine own thought of thy profiting, in sweetAcquist of wisdom from the mind of Christ.Fair change, change fair and great, in thee since whenThou cursedst Shimei in that bitter psalm!—Bitter from thee who saidst it bitterly.Behold, thou art fain, forsooth, to find those words,Those same words now which then thou likedst wellRolling them under thy tongue a morsel sweet,Almost too human for at all divine.Was there not in them, this thou askest me,Expression intermixed of wicked hate,His whose the occasion was to write the psalm?The turns and phrases of the speech whereinThe psalmist here or there breathes out his soulIn malediction, have such force to thee,Importing that his spirit let escapeA passion of his own not purifiedAmid the pressure and the stress of zealInspired from God against unrighteousness.
"Well, Stephen, the entrusted word of GodTo men is ours through men and, men being such,Why, needs we have the priceless treasure stored,Stored and conveyed, in vessels framed of clay.No perfect men are found, were ever found:God's inspiration does not change men such.His wisdom is to make of men unwise,Of men, too, fallen far short of holiness,Imperfect organs of His perfect will.Adhesion hence of imperfection, man's,Fast to the letter of the Scripture clings;But it makes part of His perfection, God's,Who knows us, and from His celestial heightBenignly earthward deigning condescends.In terms of our imperfect, flawed with sinEven, the Divine inworking wisdom lovesTo teach us noble lessons of Himself,Ennobling us to ever nobler viewsOf what He is, so shadowed forth to us.
"'Sin,' that word 'sin,' so weighted as we knowWith sense, beyond communication deep,Of evil, of wrong, of outrage, of offenceToward God, and toward ourselves of injuryIrreparable and growing ever greatAnd greater to immortal suicideWreaked with incredible madness on the soul—What is that word in the light shallow speechOf pagan Greek? What but a word to mean,As if of purpose to make naught the blame,Simply the casual missing of a mark?Venial, forsooth, merely an aim not hit—The aim right, but the arrow flying wide!Into such matrix, shallower as would seemThan could be made capacious of such sense,God must devise to pour His thought of sin!But how the thought has deepened since its mould,Still vain to match the sinfulness of sin!Humbleness—what a virtue, what a graceSay rather, yet in all the Greek no wordTo name it, till God's wisdom rectifiedA word that erst imported what was base,Mean, sordid, dastard, unuplifted, vileIn spirit, pusillanimous, to nameThe lowly temper, best beloved in manBy God, the heavenly temper of His Son!The thought at last is master of its mould,Though mould is needful for the plastic thought.
"In our imagination of The True,We climb as by a ladder, round by round,Slowly toward Him, the Inaccessible,Who dwells in a seclusion and removeOf glory unapproachable, and lightThat makes a blinding darkness round His throne.He stoops and finds and touches us abasedSo far beneath Him where we grovelling lie;Nay, He lays hold of us and lifts us up;With cords, so it is written, of a manHe draws us, blesséd God!—with bands of love,Of love, the mightiest of His heavenly powers!O, the depth fathomless, the starry height,The breadth, the length immeasurably large,Both of the wisdom and the knowledge, God's!Because, forsooth, we have some few steps climbed,Shall we, proud, spurn from underneath our feetThe ladder that uplifted us so far,That might have raised us yet the full ascent?That ladder rests on earth to reach to heaven:Let us go on forever climbing higher,But not forget the dark hole of the pitOut of which we were digged, nor, more, contemnThe way of wisdom thither reaching downAnd thence aspiring to the topmost heaven;Whereby our race may (so we stumble notThrough pride, or like Jeshurun waxen fatKick) reascend at length to whence we fell—Nay, higher, and far above all height the highest,To Him, with Him, exalted to His right,To Him, with Him, in Him, Lord Christ, Who roseFor us in mighty triumph from His grave,Then reascended where He was before,Ere the world was, God with His Father God,But still for us; and, still for us, sat downForever, in His Filial Godhead Man,Assessor with His Father on His throne,Inheriting the Name o'er every nameAscendant, King of kings and Lord of lords,And us assuming with Himself to reign!Amen! And hallelujah! And amen!"
As one might watch an eagle in his flightThat soared to viewless in the blinding sun;As one might hearken while from higher and higherA lark poured back his singing on the ground,So Stephen gazed, listening, with ecstatic mind.
"Transported with delight I hear thee speakThus, O my reverend master, for with awe,Which is delight, the deepest that I know"—Thus at length Stephen spoke, easing his mindA little, with its fulness overfraught."Doxology outbreaking from thy lipsBecomes them so! The rapture of thy praiseIs as the waving of a mighty wingBeside me that is able to upbearMe also thither whither it will soar.I am caught in its motion and I mountUnmeasured heights as to the heaven of heavens.Let me join voice with thee and say, 'Amen!'Not least I love when least I understandOften thy high discourse. Eluding meIt leads me yet and tempts me after thee,Tempts and enables, and, above myself,I find myself equalled to the impossible!But then when afterward I sink returnedTo what I was—no longer wing not mineTo lift me with its great auxiliar sweepUpward—I grope and stumble on the ground.
"Bear with me that I need to ask such things,But tell me yet, O thou who knowest, tell me,Am I then right, and is it, as thou seemedstTo say but saidst not, veering from the markWhen now almost upon it, so I thought,Who waited watching—did the psalmist oldCommingle sometimes an alloy of baseUnpurified affection with his clearAll-holy inspiration breathed from God,Lading his language with a sense unmeet,Personal spite, his own, for God's pure ire?Forgive me that I need to ask such things."
"Thou dost not need to ask such things, my son,"Paul with a grave severity replied."To ask them is to ask me that I judgeA fellow-servant. What am I to judgeThe servant of another, I who amServant myself with him of the same Lord?I will not judge my neighbor; nay, myself,Mine own self even, I judge not; One is Judge,He who the Master is, not I that serve.If so be, the inspired, not sanctified,Mere man, entrusted with the word of God—Our human fellow in infirmity,Remember, of like passions with ourselves—Indeed in those old days wherein he wrote,His enemies being the enemies of the Lord,And speaking he as voice at once of GodAnd of God's chosen, His ministers to destroyThose wicked—if so be such man, so placed,Half conscious, half unconscious, oracleOf utterance not his own, did in some partThat utterance make his own, profaning it,To be his vehicle for sense not meantBy the august Supreme Inspiring Will—Whether in truth he did, be God the judge,Not thou, my son, nor I, but if he did—Why, Stephen, then that psalmist—with more pleaThan thou for lenient judgment on the sin,Thine the full light, and only twilight his,With Christ our Sun unrisen—the selfsame faultAs thou, committed. Be both thou and heForgiven of Him with Whom forgiveness is—With Whom alone, that so He may be feared!"
Abashed, rebuked, the youth in silence stood,Musing; but what he mused divining, Paul,With gently reassuring speech resumed,Soon to the things unspoken in the heartOf Stephen spoke and said: "Abidest stillUnsatisfied that anything from God,Though even through man, should less than perfect be,Or anywise other than incapable,Than utterly intolerant, of abuseTo purposes profane? Consider this—And lay thy hand upon thy mouth, nay, putThou mouth into the dust, before the Lord—That God Most High hath willed it thus to be,That thus Christ found it and pronounced it good.Who are we, Stephen, to be more wise than God,Who, to be holier than His Holy Son?"
"Amen! Amen! I needs must say, Amen!"In anguish of bewilderment the youthCried out, almost with sobs of passionateSubmission, from rebellion passionateHardly to be distinguished; "yea, to GodFrom man, ever amen, only amen,No other answer possible to Him!—Who is the potter, in Whose hands the clayAre we, helpless and choiceless, to be formedAnd fashioned into vessels at His will!"
"Helpless, yea, Stephen," Paul said, "but choiceness not;We choose, nay, even, we cannot choose but choose—The choice our freedom, our necessity:Free how to choose, we are to choose compelled.We choose with God, or else against Him choose.Which wilt thou, Stephen? Thou! With Him oragainst?"
A struggle of submission shuddered downTo quiet in the bosom of the youth—Strange contrast to the unperturbed repose,With rapture, of obedience, that meantime,And ever, safe within the heart of PaulBreathed as might breathe an infant folded fastTo slumber in its mother's cradling arms!So had Paul learned to let the peace of ChristRule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm,Like the deep sleep of ocean at his coreOf waters underneath the planes of storm.And Stephen answered: "Oh, with God, with God!And blesséd be His name that thus I choose!""Yea, verily," Paul said, "for He sole it isWho worketh in us, both to will and workFor the good pleasure of His holy will.As thou this fashion of obedienceObediently acceptest at His gift,So growest thou faithful mirror to reflectClear to thyself, and just, the thought of God.Thus thou mayst hope to learn somewhat of true,Of high and deep and broad, concerning Him,Him and His ways inscrutable with us—Of thy self emptied, for more room to beFrom God henceforth with all His fulness filled!
"This at least learn thou now, how greatly wiseWas God, by that which was in us the lowestTo take us and uplift us higher and higherUntil those very passions, hate and wrath,Which erst seemed right to us, as they were dear,Become, to our changed eyes—eyes, though thus changed,Nay, as thus changed, sore tempted to be proud—Become forsooth unworthy symbols evenTo shadow God's displeasure against sin.To generation generation linkedIn living long succession from the first,To nation nation joined, one fellowshipOf man, through clime and clime, from sea to sea—Thus has by slow degrees our human kindBeen brought from what we were to what we are.Thus and no otherwise the chosen raceWas fitted to provide a welcoming home,Such welcoming home! on earth for Him from heaven—The only people of all peoples weAmong whom God could be ImmanuelAnd be in any measure understood,Confounded not as of their idol tribes.And we—wedid not understand Him soBut that we hissed Him to be crucified!So little were we ready, and even at last,For the sun shining in His proper strength!After slow-brightening twilight ages longTo fit our blinking vision for the day,The glorious sun arising blinded usAnd maddened! We smote at him in his sphere,Loving our darkness rather than that light!"
Therewith, as for the moment lapsed and lostIn backward contemplation, with amazeAnd shame and grief and joy and love and aweAnd thanks commingling in one surge of thoughtAt what he thus in sudden transport saw,Paul into silence passed, which his rapt lookMade vocal and more eloquent than voice.This Stephen reverenced, but at last he said:"O thou my teacher in the things of God,That riddle of wisdom in divine decreeWhereof thou spakest, the linking in one chainTogether, one fast bond and consequence,Of all the generations of mankindAnd all their races for a common lotOf evil or good, yet speak, I pray, thereof,To make me understand it if I may.Why should Jehovah on the children wreakThe wages of the fathers' wickedness?Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?Yea, doubtless, yea; butthat—how is that right?""His way is in the sea," said Paul, "His pathIn the great waters! Would we follow Him,His footsteps are not known! Blesséd be God!"
"Amen! Amen! Forevermore amen!"As one who bound himself with sacrament,Assenting without interrupting saidStephen, and Paul went on: "Yet this note thou:It is not on the children, such by blood,That God will visit the iniquityOf fathers: the children must be such in choiceAs well, in spirit, must be the fathers' like—And there another mystery! (for deepSinks endless under deep, to who would soundThe bottomless abyss of God's decree)—The children ever, prave and prone, inclineTo follow where the fathers lead the way;The children, yea, must do the fathers' deeds,Then only share the fathers' punishment.This, by that prophet mouth, Ezekiel, GodTaught with expostulation and appealPathetically eloquent of loveWith longing in our Heavenly Father's heartThat not one human creature of His handBe lost, but all, but all, turn and be saved.
"Nay, even from Sinai's touched and smoking topWas the same sense of grace to men revealed.For what said that commandment threatening wrathDivine, in sequel of ancestral sin,To light on generations yet to be?Said it not, 'On the children?' Yea, but heed,It hasted to supply in pregnant wordsDescription of the children thus accursed:'On the third generation and the fourthOf them that hate Jehovah'—wicked seedOf wicked sires, and therefore with them wellDeserving to partake one punishment.And now consider what stands written next.Deterrent menace done, to fend from sin,Allurement then, how large! to righteousness.If first the warning filled a mighty bound,All bound the grace succeeding overflowed.O, limitless outpouring from a full,An overfull, an aching, heart of loveIn God our Father! Mercy to be shown,Not to two generations or to three,But to a thousand generations, drawn,A bright succession, to unending date,Of them—that 'fear and worship'? nay—that loveGod for their Father and His will observe!
"But, Stephen, enough for now of such discourse.My mind is helpless absent while we talk,My heart being heavy with desire and prayerAnd groanings from the Spirit unutterableFor Shimei in his noisome dungeon pent.I have sung praises in worse stead than his,Christ in me joyance and the hope of glory:But, chafed with fetters and with manacles,And worse bonds wearing of iniquity,He sits unvisited of this fair light,A midnight of no hope within his heart.Go pray for Shimei thou, and leave me hereTo pray, if haply God will touch his heart."
So they two fell apart and mightily stroveTogether in intercession and one prayer.
Arrived at Myra on their way toward Rome, Paul and his companions are transferred to a different vessel to pursue their voyage. The new vessel is from Alexandria: it brings thence as passengers for Rome two mutual friends, one of them a Roman, the other a Buddhist from India named Krishna. Rachel, having seen Paul and the Roman greet each other as old acquaintances, soon inquires apart of Paul who the Roman is, and, learning is thence drawn on into exchange of reminiscence and reflection with her brother. The two at length unite in interceding with Julius on behalf of Shimei. They secure for him the freedom of the deck.
RE-EMBARKED.