Grace Before Meat: Another

Enslaved to sense, to pleasure prone,
Fond of created good;
Father, our helplessness we own,
And trembling taste our food.

Trembling, we taste: for ah! no more
To Thee the creatures lead;
Changed, they exert a fatal power,
And poison while they feed.

Cursed for the sake of wretched man,
They now engross him whole;
With pleasing force on earth detain,
And sensualise his soul.

Grov'ling on earth we still must lie
Till Christ the curse repeal;
Till Christ, descending from on high,
Infected nature heal.

Come, then, our Heavenly Adam, come!
Thy healing influence give;
Hallow our food, reverse our doom,
And bid us eat and live.

The bondage of corruption break!
For this our spirits groan;
Thy only will we fain would seek;
O, save us from our own.

Turn the full stream of nature's tide:
Let all our actions tend
To Thee, their Source; Thy love the guide,
Thy glory be the end.

Earth then a scale to heaven shall be,
Sense shall point out the road;
The creatures then shall lead to Thee,
And all we taste be God!

beautifully suggests a comparison between the 5th and last
verses of this hymn, and a stanza of Pope's " Universal Prayer,"
which runs thus: —

"The blessings Thy free bounty gives.
Let me not cast away;
For God is pleased when man receives:
To' enjoy is to obey."

This is very true," he says, "but is it not very flat? Let us
hear our religious poet."
The comparison may properly be extended to the other
hymns in this volume bearing the title of " Graces."