The aged Saint's Reflection and Hope. Psalm 71.

1 My God, my everlasting hope, I live upon thy truth;

Thine hands have held my childhood up,
And strengthened all my youth.

2 Still has my life new wonders seen
Repeated every year;
Behold my days that yet remain,
I trust them to thy care.

3 Cast me not off when strength declines, When hoary hairs arise;

And round me let thy glories shine,
Whene'er thy servant dies.

4 Let me thy power and truth proclaim
To the surviving age,
And leave a savor of thy name
When I shall quit the stage.

5 The land of silence and of death
Attends my next remove;

O may these poor remains of breath
Teach the wide world thy love.

Is man's estate below;

To his bright day of gladness soon
Succeeds a night of woe.

The night of woe resigns
Its darkness and its grief;
Again the morn of comfort shines,
And brings our souls relief.

3 Yet not to fickle chance.
Is man's condition given;
His dark and shining hours advance
By the fixed laws of Heaven.

God measures unto all

Their lot of good or ill;

Nor this too great, nor that too small,
Ordained by wisest will.

Let man conform his mind
To every changing state:
Rejoicing now, and now resigned,
And the great issue wait.

Hopeful and humble, bear
Thine evil and thy good:
Nor, by presumption nor despair,
Weak mortal, be subdued.

1 WEAK and irresolute is man:
The purpose of to-day,

Woven with pains into his plan,
To-morrow rends away.

2 Some foe to his upright intent
Finds out his weaker part;

Virtue engages his assent,
But pleasure wins his heart.

3 Bound on a voyage of fearful length,
Through dangers little known,
A stranger to superior strength,
Man vainly trusts his own.

4 But oars alone can ne'er prevail
To reach the distant coast;

The breath of heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.

C. H. M.

619.

J. TAYLOR.

What is your Life?

1 O WHAT is life?'t is like a flower
That blossoms and is gone;
It flourishes its little hour,

With all its beauty on:

Death comes, and, like a wintry day,
It cuts the lovely flower away.

2 O what is life? 't is like the bow
That glistens in the sky:

We love to see its colors glow;
But while we look, they die:
Life fails as soon:

to-day 't is here;

To-morrow it may disappear.

3 Lord, what is life?-if spent with thee, In humble praise and prayer,

How long or short its date may be,
We feel no anxious care:

Though life depart, our joys shall last
When time and all its joys are past.

439

1 I TRAVEL all the irksome night,
By ways to me unknown;
I travel like a bird in flight,
Onward, and all alone.

MONTGOMERY.

2 Just such a pilgrimage is life;
Hurried from stage to stage,
Our wishes with our lot at strife,
Through childhood to old age.

3 The world is seldom what it seems,
To man, who dimly sees,
Realities appear as dreams,
And dreams realities.

4 The Christian's years, though slow their flight Till he is called away,

Are but the watches of a night,

And death the dawn of day.

C. M.

621.

H. K. WHITE.

Journeying through Death to Life.

1 THROUGH Sorrow's night, and danger's path, Amid the deepening gloom,

We, soldiers of a heavenly King,
Are marching to the tomb.

2 There, when the turmoil is no more,
And all our powers decay,

Our cold remains in solitude
Shall sleep the years away.

3 Our labors done, securely laid In this our last retreat, Unheeded o'er our silent dust

The storms of life shall beat.

4 Yet not thus lifeless, thus inane,
The vital spark shall lie;

For o'er life's wreck that spark shall rise,
To seek its kindred sky.

L. M.

622.

The Journey of Life.

MONTGOMERY.

1 THUS far on life's perplexing path,
Thus far the Lord our steps hath led;
Safe from the world's pursuing wrath,
Unharmed though floods hung o'er our head:
Here then we pause, look back, adore,
Like ransomed Israel from the shore.

2 Strangers and pilgrims here below,
As all our fathers in their day,
We to a land of promise go,
Lord! by thine own appointed way;
Still guide, illumine, cheer our flight,
In cloud by day, in fire by night.

3 When we have numbered all our years,
And stand at length on Jordan's brink,
Though the flesh fail with human fears,
O let not then the spirit shrink;

But, strong in faith, and hope, and love,
Plunge through the stream, to rise above.