The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

PAUL AND YOUNG STEPHEN.

In sequel of the tragic crime and doom that had just been witnessed by him in the case of Shimei, young Stephen is drawn to resume with his kinsman Paul the topic of the imprecatory psalms, which they had previously discussed on their night ride from Jerusalem toward Cæsarea. Paul gently lets his nephew unbosom all his heart, and, point by point, meets the young man's difficulties with senior counsel and instruction.

PAUL AND YOUNG STEPHEN.

The brilliant weather, with the sparkling sea
Blue under the blue heaven above it bowed,
There the great sun, his solitary state
Making his own pomp as it moved along
In 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 enough
For 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 doom
Still damped their spirits, so strung to sympathy,
Till sunny day wore on to starry night.

Then, Paul and Stephen by themselves apart
Resting, 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 psalms
Which 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 breast
Boiled into tempest against Shimei.
Thou chidedst me with a most sweet rebuke
That drew the tumor all, out of my heart;
Thou taughtst me then that the good Spirit of God,
Who breathed the inspiration into men
To utter such dire words, seeming of hate,
Hated not any as I to hate had dared.
I understood thee that God only so
Revealed in forms of vivid human speech
The 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 aflame
With 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 joy
Of hope for Stephen, Paul remarked in him
The 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 chance
Of converse with his elders, and of thought
Which in that quick young mind, for brooding apt
No less than apt for action, brought to full
Sweet ripeness all that he from other learned,
And touched it with a quality his own.
Paul could not but in measure feel himself
Given back to him reflected in the words
That he just now had heard from Stephen's lips;
Yet he therein felt too a surge of youth
And youth's unrest and eagerness and strife
And dauntless heart to assay the impossible
Which 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 such
As 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 similitude
For what God feels—but 'feeling,' also that!—
How fast do these anthropomorphic walls
Enclose us still in all our thought of God!—
'Feeling' is but a parable flung forth
By 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 difference
Between created and Creator, us
And 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 stream
Now in midcurrent finds his foothold fail,
And cannot in such deepened waters walk.

This time Paul reached the struggling youth a hand
With: "Thou hast not ill achieved in thine essay
To utter what is nigh unutterable.
But, Stephen, better bridge than any form
Of fancy, figure or similitude,
To human sense or reason possible
And 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 ours
Aspiring upward from beneath to God,
Is that Eternal Word of God Himself
To 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 we
Best can approach to put in speech of man
The ineffable regard of God toward sin,
If we impute to Him a spurning such
As 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 attribute
Imputed 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 took
Home 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 God
To 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 attitude
In which thou hadst learned so much; as if indeed
Thou 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 know
That we God's children love, when we love God,
And His commandments do.' For this is love
Indeed 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 God
Whether 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 wise
To 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 God
To find Him sometimes wise or sometimes not.
God was as wise when He inspired those psalms
As when in Christ he bade us ever love,
Love even our enemies and do them good.
Submit thyself to God, my Stephen, and be
Humble; for God resists the proud, but gives
Grace 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 contrariety
At all, no spirit discrepant, between
The frightful fulminations of those psalms
And the forgiving love of our Lord Christ?"
"None, Stephen," said Paul, "for none did Jesus know,
Who knew those psalms and never protest made
Against them, never softened their austere,
Their angry, aspect, never glozed their sense,
Never one least slant syllable let slip,
Hint as that He would 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 need
In uttering the just horror of His soul
At 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 iniquity
Add 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 own
He as in holy of holies with them shrined,
More heavenly things than ever even Himself
Till 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 psalms
Ever with one another dwelt at peace;
More than at peace, with one another one
Were they, the selfsame spirit both; as needs
Was, since the Spirit of all psalms was He.
Even thus, I have not to the full expressed
The will, with power, that in Christ Jesus wrought
To fulmine indignation against sin.
The psalms, those fiercest and most branding, fail
To match the fury of the Lamb of God
Poured 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 look
In him, reflected as from some unseen
Region where light was more than luminous,
Appalling, like the splendor of a cloud
Whence 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 man
Who spake these things, and likewise to assure
Himself that he in nothing failed the full
Sense and effect of all that he had heard,
Stephen his hush awe-struck, of thought, prolonged.

Then, partly from a certain manliness
Innate in him, inalienably his,
Which, while of noble and ennobling awe
It made his spirit but more capable,
Yet kept him ever conscious of his worth,
And would not suffer that, with any thought
Quick in him and still seeming to him true
Or 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 trust
Well-grounded in his kinsman's gentleness
And 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 one
Divinely 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 breathe
The individual feeling of one soul
Whether himself the writer or whoso
Might take it for his own, but to be used
By the great congregation joining voice
In symphony or in antiphony
Of choral worship, with stringed instruments
Adding their help, and instruments of wind:
So, most unmeet it were if private grudge
Of any whomsoever, high or low,
Should mix its base alloy with the fine gold
Of prayer and praise stored in our holy psalms
For pure oblation from all holy hearts
To Him, the Ever-living Holy God.
The wicked and the enemy therein
Accurséd so from good to every bane
And ill here and hereafter following them
And hunting down their issue to the end
Of endless generations of their like—
These, I can understand, were public foes,
Not private, adversary heathen tribes
That hated us because they hated God
Who chose us for His own peculiar race,
And swayed us weapon in His dread right hand
To 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 was
Wherein Himself, the Holy Ghost of God,
Inspired those psalms and willed them to be sung.
But, O my master, tell me, did not yet
Some 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 oracle
To such high end and hard, enter the strain
He chanted, here or there, to jar the tune
And of his music make a dissonance?"

Stephen, as one who had with resolute
Exertion of an overcoming will
Discharged his heart with speech, let come what might,
Rested; the tension of his purpose still
Persisting 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 beyond
Thine own thought of thy profiting, in sweet
Acquist of wisdom from the mind of Christ.
Fair change, change fair and great, in thee since when
Thou 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 well
Rolling 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 wherein
The psalmist here or there breathes out his soul
In malediction, have such force to thee,
Importing that his spirit let escape
A passion of his own not purified
Amid the pressure and the stress of zeal
Inspired from God against unrighteousness.

"Well, Stephen, the entrusted word of God
To 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 height
Benignly earthward deigning condescends.
In terms of our imperfect, flawed with sin
Even, the Divine inworking wisdom loves
To teach us noble lessons of Himself,
Ennobling us to ever nobler views
Of what He is, so shadowed forth to us.

"'Sin,' that word 'sin,' so weighted as we know
With sense, beyond communication deep,
Of evil, of wrong, of outrage, of offence
Toward God, and toward ourselves of injury
Irreparable and growing ever great
And greater to immortal suicide
Wreaked with incredible madness on the soul—
What is that word in the light shallow speech
Of 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 seem
Than 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 grace
Say rather, yet in all the Greek no word
To name it, till God's wisdom rectified
A word that erst imported what was base,
Mean, sordid, dastard, unuplifted, vile
In spirit, pusillanimous, to name
The lowly temper, best beloved in man
By 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 remove
Of glory unapproachable, and light
That makes a blinding darkness round His throne.
He stoops and finds and touches us abased
So 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 man
He 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 feet
The 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 pit
Out of which we were digged, nor, more, contemn
The way of wisdom thither reaching down
And thence aspiring to the topmost heaven;
Whereby our race may (so we stumble not
Through pride, or like Jeshurun waxen fat
Kick) 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 rose
For 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 down
Forever, in His Filial Godhead Man,
Assessor with His Father on His throne,
Inheriting the Name o'er every name
Ascendant, 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 flight
That soared to viewless in the blinding sun;
As one might hearken while from higher and higher
A lark poured back his singing on the ground,
So Stephen gazed, listening, with ecstatic mind.

"Transported with delight I hear thee speak
Thus, O my reverend master, for with awe,
Which is delight, the deepest that I know"—
Thus at length Stephen spoke, easing his mind
A little, with its fulness overfraught.
"Doxology outbreaking from thy lips
Becomes them so! The rapture of thy praise
Is as the waving of a mighty wing
Beside me that is able to upbear
Me also thither whither it will soar.
I am caught in its motion and I mount
Unmeasured heights as to the heaven of heavens.
Let me join voice with thee and say, 'Amen!'
Not least I love when least I understand
Often thy high discourse. Eluding me
It 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 returned
To what I was—no longer wing not mine
To lift me with its great auxiliar sweep
Upward—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 seemedst
To say but saidst not, veering from the mark
When now almost upon it, so I thought,
Who waited watching—did the psalmist old
Commingle sometimes an alloy of base
Unpurified affection with his clear
All-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 judge
A fellow-servant. What am I to judge
The servant of another, I who am
Servant 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 God
And of God's chosen, His ministers to destroy
Those wicked—if so be such man, so placed,
Half conscious, half unconscious, oracle
Of utterance not his own, did in some part
That utterance make his own, profaning it,
To be his vehicle for sense not meant
By 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 plea
Than thou for lenient judgment on the sin,
Thine the full light, and only twilight his,
With Christ our Sun unrisen—the selfsame fault
As thou, committed. Be both thou and he
Forgiven 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 heart
Of Stephen spoke and said: "Abidest still
Unsatisfied that anything from God,
Though even through man, should less than perfect be,
Or anywise other than incapable,
Than utterly intolerant, of abuse
To purposes profane? Consider this—
And lay thy hand upon thy mouth, nay, put
Thou 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 youth
Cried out, almost with sobs of passionate
Submission, from rebellion passionate
Hardly to be distinguished; "yea, to God
From man, ever amen, only amen,
No other answer possible to Him!—
Who is the potter, in Whose hands the clay
Are we, helpless and choiceless, to be formed
And 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 or
against?"

A struggle of submission shuddered down
To 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 Paul
Breathed as might breathe an infant folded fast
To slumber in its mother's cradling arms!
So had Paul learned to let the peace of Christ
Rule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm,
Like the deep sleep of ocean at his core
Of 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 is
Who worketh in us, both to will and work
For the good pleasure of His holy will.
As thou this fashion of obedience
Obediently acceptest at His gift,
So growest thou faithful mirror to reflect
Clear 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 be
From God henceforth with all His fulness filled!

"This at least learn thou now, how greatly wise
Was God, by that which was in us the lowest
To take us and uplift us higher and higher
Until 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 even
To shadow God's displeasure against sin.
To generation generation linked
In living long succession from the first,
To nation nation joined, one fellowship
Of man, through clime and clime, from sea to sea—
Thus has by slow degrees our human kind
Been brought from what we were to what we are.
Thus and no otherwise the chosen race
Was fitted to provide a welcoming home,
Such welcoming home! on earth for Him from heaven—
The only people of all peoples we
Among whom God could be Immanuel
And be in any measure understood,
Confounded not as of their idol tribes.
And we—we did not understand Him so
But 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 long
To fit our blinking vision for the day,
The glorious sun arising blinded us
And maddened! We smote at him in his sphere,
Loving our darkness rather than that light!"

Therewith, as for the moment lapsed and lost
In backward contemplation, with amaze
And shame and grief and joy and love and awe
And thanks commingling in one surge of thought
At what he thus in sudden transport saw,
Paul into silence passed, which his rapt look
Made 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 decree
Whereof thou spakest, the linking in one chain
Together, one fast bond and consequence,
Of all the generations of mankind
And all their races for a common lot
Of evil or good, yet speak, I pray, thereof,
To make me understand it if I may.
Why should Jehovah on the children wreak
The wages of the fathers' wickedness?
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Yea, doubtless, yea; but that—how is that right?"
"His way is in the sea," said Paul, "His path
In 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 said
Stephen, and Paul went on: "Yet this note thou:
It is not on the children, such by blood,
That God will visit the iniquity
Of fathers: the children must be such in choice
As well, in spirit, must be the fathers' like—
And there another mystery! (for deep
Sinks endless under deep, to who would sound
The bottomless abyss of God's decree)—
The children ever, prave and prone, incline
To 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, God
Taught with expostulation and appeal
Pathetically eloquent of love
With longing in our Heavenly Father's heart
That not one human creature of His hand
Be lost, but all, but all, turn and be saved.

"Nay, even from Sinai's touched and smoking top
Was the same sense of grace to men revealed.
For what said that commandment threatening wrath
Divine, 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 words
Description of the children thus accursed:
'On the third generation and the fourth
Of them that hate Jehovah'—wicked seed
Of wicked sires, and therefore with them well
Deserving 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 love
In 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 love
God 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 prayer
And groanings from the Spirit unutterable
For 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 here
To pray, if haply God will touch his heart."

So they two fell apart and mightily strove
Together in intercession and one prayer.

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