“WHAT VARIOUS HINDRANCES WE MEET.”
Another hymn of Cowper's; and no one ever suffered more deeply the plaintive regret in the opening lines, or better wrought into poetic expression an argument for prayer.
What various hindrances we meet
In coming to a mercy-seat!
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer
But wishes to be often there?
Prayer makes the darkest clouds withdraw,
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw.
The whole hymn is (or once was) so thoroughly learned by heart as to be fixed in the church among its household words. Preachers to the diffident do not forget to quote—
Have you no words? ah, think again;
Words flow apace when you complain.
* * * * * *
Were half the breath thus vainly spent
To Heaven in supplication sent,
Our cheerful song would oftener be,
“Hear what the Lord hath done for me!”
And there is all the lifetime of a proverb in the couplet—
Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees.
Tune, Lowell Mason's “Rockingham.”