“O living will”—free will in man—that will outlast all present things, surviving and enduring
“When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,”
which is Christ, the source of all life and strength; and flowing through our deeds, “make them pure;” so that out of the dust of death, we may cry to One that hears, and has conquered time, and with us works; and we may put our whole trust in those “truths that never can be proved until we close with all we loved,” and with God Himself, who will be “all in all”—not by the souls of mankind becoming absorbed into the “general Soul”—a notion which Poem xlvii. repudiates—but by the Divine nature being infused into and prevailing in all.
PREFATORY POEM.
To this final confession of faith, worked out through Sorrow by the sustaining help of Love, the prefatory Poem is merely a pendant.
“Strong Son of God, immortal Love,”
is addressed to Christ, God Himself upon earth.[88] George Herbert had before called our Saviour
“Immortal Love, author of this great frame;”
and our Poet says, though we have not seen His face, we embrace Him by faith,
“Believing where we cannot prove.”