Confession, Creed, and Prayer.

By Alan Sullivan

Silent around me a cathedral dim,

Still throbbing with the echoes of a hymn,

Lifted its ghostly arches, great and grim;

Slowly the worshippers had filed away;

Untenanted the vacant cloisters lay;

As even followed on the steps of day;

But one remained, who bent his reverent head

Where graven figures slumber with the dead,

And spake with faltering accents, and he said:

“Light, light, more light; Great Father, give me light;

I cannot see my way, so dark the night;

My finite heart shrinks from the infinite.

“Anon the shadow lifts: my straining eyes

One moment see that which before me lies;

This fades, and new-born hope within me dies.

“I looked for sunshine, yet there cometh rain;

My sweetest pleasure turneth into pain:

I would sink back to nothingness again.

“Beliefs are but perpetual ideas,

The gospel worketh only on my fears,

In bitterness and sorrow, void of tears;

“In one God I believe, eternally

Omnipotent and present, and that He

Rules Heaven and Hell, the earth, the sky, the sea.

“As carnal life by carnal love is given,

So life divine by love divine is proven,

Of which the fountain head is God in Heaven.

“That since each body is the fleshly home

Of something better, something not our own,

So God all faults but foulness will condone.

“For I believe impurity is sin

Against the Spirit life that dwells within

Creating Father and created men;

“That every soul is judged true and well

According to the light that on it fell:

No light, no judgment; strong light, Heaven or Hell.

“All this and more; Great Father, I have heard

Of Thy dear Son; my heart expectant stirred

To welcome Him, confessing I had erred.

“Nay, said humanity within me, nay,

I cannot grasp this mystery, so stay

Until I comprehend, and I obey:

“I would, yet cannot — herein lies my grief.

Thy Son spake comfort to the dying thief,

So speak to me and help mine unbelief.”

Here the voice faltered, ceased. God, can it be

The morn has dawned on him and not on me?

Is this the Publican, I Pharisee?