Sixth Sunday after Trinity

How solemn, Lord, the days that find
Thy children at Thine altar kneeling!
How life's whole dream comes o'er the mind
In that one hour of faith and feeling!

Long bygone years of guilt and grace
Come crowding painfully before us,
When the deep shadows of Thy face
So calm, so awful, settle o'er us.

Things long forgotten then come back,
As tho' but yesterday we did them;
They will not leave the well-worn track
Of Memory, for all we bid them.

We thought them buried, or when done
They little moved us, then light-hearted,
But now they rise up one by one
Like ghosts of enemies departed.

We see them in their real light,
Stript of the veil once thrown around them,
All bare and naked in Thy sight
Our startled consciences have found them.

Some angry word, some thought unclean,
Some act, some feeling of unkindness,
Something the world had never seen,
And we pass'd o'er in passion's blindness:

They come their sure revenge to take,
And spoil that hour of holy gladness
We little cared for, when we brake
Thy laws in such unmeaning madness.

Yet better far they now should come,
And lead us back to such repentance,
As may, thro' Christ, avert the doom
Of Thy dread Heav'n-excluding sentence.

Better they vex with present grief,
Than ambush'd lie against the morrow,
And come when there is no relief
To shelter us from endless sorrow.

One moment now, with God well spent,
Of real earnest soul-returning,
Were worth a life- time of well-meant
But aimless, fruitless, Godless yearning.

Worthless the richest offering
With which unhallow'd hearts adore Him,
And vile the fairest gift we bring,
If laid with unclean hands before Him.