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Greater, O Lord, Thy glories are

Than all the heavenly chariot far.

Whose mind can grasp Thy world's design? Whose word can fitly Thee define?

Whose tongue set forth Thy powers divine?

Can heart approach, can eye behold
Thee in Thy righteousness untold?
Whom didst Thou to Thy counsel call,
When there was none to speak withal,
Since Thou wast first and Lord of all?

Thy world eternal witness bears
That none its Maker's glory shares.
Thy wisdom is made manifest
In all things formed by Thy behest,
All with Thy seal's clear mark imprest.

Before the pillars of the sky

Were raised, before the mountains high

Were wrought, ere hills and dales were known,

Thou in Thy majesty alone

Didst sit, O Lord, upon Thy throne!

Hearts, seeking Thee, from search refrain,

And weary tongues their praise restrain.
Thyself unbound by time and place,
Thou dost pervade, support, embrace,
The world and all created space.

The sages' minds bewildered grow,

The lightning speed of thought is slow.

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Awful in praises " art Thou named;

Thou fillest, strong in strength proclaimed,
This universe Thy hand has framed.

Deep, deep beyond all fathoming,
Far, far beyond all measuring,
We can but seek Thy deeds alone;
When bow Thy saints before Thy throne,
Then is Thy faithfulness made known.

Thy righteousness we can discern,
Thy holy law proclaim and learn;
Is not Thy presence near alway
To them who penitently pray,
But far from those who sinning stray?

Pure souls behold Thee, and no need
Have they of light; they hear and heed
Thee with the mind's keen ear, although
The ear of flesh be dull and slow.
Their voices answer to and fro.

Thy holiness forever they proclaim:

The Lord of Hosts! thrice holy is His name!

JEHUDA HALEVI

Translation from the Hebrew by Mrs. Henry Lucas

128

NATURE PROCLAIMS A DEITY

There is a God! The herbs of the valley, the cedars of the mountain, bless Him; the insect sports in His beam; the bird sings Him in the foliage; the thunder proclaims Him in the heavens; the ocean declares His immensity;-man alone has said, There is no God! Unite in thought at the same instant the most beautiful objects in nature. Suppose that you see at once all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year,—a morning of spring, and a morning of autumn--a night bespangled with stars, and a night darkened by clouds-meadows enamelled with flowers-forests hoary with snow-fields gilded by the tints of autumn, then alone you will have a just conception of the universe! While you are gazing on that sun which is plunging into the vault of the west, another observer admires him emerging from the gilded gates of the east. By what inconceivable power does that agèd star, which is sinking fatigued and burning in the shades of evening, reappear at the same instant fresh and humid with the rosy dew of the morning? At every hour of the day, the glorious orb is at once rising, resplendent as noon-day, and setting in the west; or rather, our senses deceive us, and there is, properly speaking, no east or west, no north or south in the world.

CHATEAUBRIAND

129

ON THE GLORY OF GOD

Heaven and Earth is a
Who set those candles,
Who hung out those

When we see a stately house, although we see not the man who built it, yet will we conclude thus: Surely some wise artificer hath been working here. Can we, when we behold the stately theatre of Heaven and Earth, conclude other than that the finger, arms, and wisdom of God have been here, although we see not Him that is invisible, and although we know not the time when He began to build? Every creature in loud preacher of this truth. those torches of Heaven? lanterns in Heaven to enlighten a dark world? Who can make the statue of a man but one wiser than the stone out of which it is hewn? Could any frame a man but one wiser and greater than man? Who taught the birds to build their nests, and the bees to set up and order their commonwealth? Who sends the sun from one end of Heaven to the other, carrying so many thousand blessings to so many ten thousands of people and kingdoms? What power of men or angels can make the least blade of grass, or put life into the least fly, if once dead? There is, therefore, a Power over all created power, which is God.

THOMAS SHEPARD

130

THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD

"The fool hath said in his heart: There is no God."

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Go out beneath the arched heavens at night and say, if you can, There is no God! Pronounce that dreadful blasphemy, and each star above you will reproach the unbroken darkness of your intellect; every voice that floats upon the night-winds. will bewail your utter hopelessness and folly.

Is there no God? Who, then, unrolled the blue scroll, and threw upon its high frontispiece the legible gleamings of immortality? Who fashioned this green earth, with its perpetual rolling waters, and its wide expanse of islands and of main? Who settled the foundations of the mountains? Who paved the heavens with clouds, and attuned, amid the clamor of storms, the voice of thunders, and unchained the lightnings that flash in their gloom? Who gave to the eagle a safe eyrie where the tempests dwell, and to the dove a tranquil abode amid the forests that echo to the minstrelsy of her moan? Who made thee, O man, with thy perfect intellect and form? Who made the light pleasant to thee, and the darkness a covering, and a herald to the first gorgeous flashes of the morning?

There is a God. All nature declares it in a language too plain to be misapprehended. The great truth is too legibly written over the face of the whole creation to be easily mistaken. Thou canst behold it in the tender blade just starting from the earth in the early spring, or in the sturdy oak that

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