XXXIV
"But could I bear to hear him say,
—' Depart, accursed, far away!
With Satan in the lowest hell
Thou art for ever doom'd to dwell!' "
How impotent is this, compared with the terrible words—"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Here the divine theme is degraded by human interpolation and omission both.
Book iii, Hymn 28.
"Perhaps some golden wedge supprest,
Some secret sin offends my God;
Perhaps that Babylonish vest,
Self-righteousness, provokes the rod."
Here the poet adorns the train of his private thoughts with scripture images; and oh with what force and conviction are "the wedge of gold," and "Babylonish vest," brought in! The reader, from previous knowledge, needs no other hint to recollect the whole history,— yea, and to make him tremble too, as though he felt himself in the tent of Achan at the moment when his sin was discovered. Who does not instinctively recoil, and look with horror towards that dark corner of his own heart, in which "the accursed thing" was once found, or is there still?
Of the scriptural hymns before us, Newton's are not so often feeble paraphrases of the text, as suitable meditations on the respective subjects, and not seldom appear to be little skeletons of sermons, which he may have actually preached. Among these "Cain and Abel," Book i, Hymn 2, may be quoted as an average specimen of plain narrative, easy to be understood, but having little grace or elevation besides. Book i, Hymn 19, is a good sample of his spiritualizing manner, and indeed is of a superior order.
Book i, Hymn 31, is excellent. The author is wak-
