Faith in God
Have faith in God. For whosoever listsTo calm conviction in these days of strife,Will learn that in this steadfast stand existsThe scholarship severe of human life.
This face to face with doubt! I know how strongHis thews must be who fights and falls and bears,By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long,And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers.
Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man thronedWith thunders on an everlasting cloud,But in that awful Entity enzonedBy no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud.
When from the summit of some sudden steepOf speculation you have strength to turnTo things too boundless for the broken sweepOf finer comprehension, wait and learn
That God hath been “His own interpreter”From first to last. So you will understandThe tribe who best succeed, when men most err,To suck through fogs the fatness of the land.
One thing is surer than the autumn tintsWe saw last week in yonder river bend—That all our poor expression helps and hints,However vaguely, to the solemn end
That God is truth; and if our dim idealFall short of fact—so short that we must weep—Why shape specific sorrows, though the realBe not the song which erewhile made us sleep?
Remember, truth draws upward. This to usOf steady happiness should be a causeBeyond the differential calculusOr Kant’s dull dogmas and mechanic laws.
A man is manliest when he wisely knowsHow vain it is to halt and pule and pine;Whilst under every mystery haply flowsThe finest issue of a love divine.