When I am weak He still supplies
The strength I daily need,
And at His word mine enemies
Are all discomfited.

He ever lifteth up my face
To look to Him alone,
The God and giver of all grace,
The glorious Holy One!

Open Thine eye of mercy upon this Thy servant.

R. C. Trench.

OT Thou from us, O Lord, but we

NOT

Withdraw ourselves from Thee.

When we are dark and dead,
And Thou art covered with a cloud,
Hanging before Thee, like a shroud,
So that our prayer can find no way,
O teach us that we do not say,
"Where is thy brightness fled?"

But that we search and try

What in ourselves has wrought this blame;

For Thou remainest still the same,

But earth's own vapours earth may fill
With darkness and thick clouds, while still
The sun is in the sky.

Open Thine eye of mercy upon this Thy servant.

A PRAYER.

(PART.)

Princess Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia).

MY God! for Christ His sake,
Quite from me this dulness take;
Cause me earth's love to forsake,
And of Heaven my realm to make.

If early thanks I render Thee,
That Thou hast enlightened me
With such knowledge that I see
What things most behoveful be;

O enlighten more my sight,
And dispel my darksome night,
Good Lord, by Thy heavenly light,
And Thy beams most pure and bright.

What care I for lofty place,
If the Lord grant me His grace,
Showing me His pleasant face,
And with joy I end my race?

O my soul of heavenly birth,
Do thou scorn this basest earth;
Place not here thy joy and mirth,
Where of bliss is greatest dearth.

From below thy mind remove
And affect the things above:
Set thy heart and fix thy love
Where the truest joys shalt prove.

If I do love things on high,
Doubtless them enjoy shall I;
Earthly pleasures if I try,
They pursued faster fly.

To me grace, O Father, send,
On Thee wholly to depend,
That all may to Thy glory tend ;
So let me live, so let me end.

Now to the true Eternal King,
Not seen with human eye,
Th' immortal, only wise, true God,
Be praise perpetually!

Renew in him, most loving Father, whatsoever hath been decayed by the fraud and malice of the devil, or by his own carnal will and frailness;

R. C. Trench.

NCE if I felt no heart or strength to pray,

ON

If on a sudden vanished quite I found The goods wherein I dreamed I did abound, And this blank mood continued many a day, I was quite swallowed up in dim dismay :

My heart, I said, by deadly frost is bound,
And never will warm days again come round:
But now more hopefully I learn to say—
Either some sin is lurking in my breast,
Troubling the host,1 which being once confest,
He will His presence and His light restore,
Or thus one needful lesson He is fain

To teach-that in ourselves we are always poor,
Which learned, He soon will make me rich again.

Preserve and continue this sick member in the unity of the

Church;

EMPLOYMENT.

George Herbert.

F as a flower doth spread and die,

IF

Thou would'st extend me to some good,

Before I were by frosts' extremity

Nipt in the bud;

The sweetness and the praise were Thine;
But the extension and the room

Which in Thy garland I should fill, were mine,
At Thy great doom.

For as Thou dost impart Thy grace,

The greater shall our glory be.

The measure of our joys is in this place,

The stuff with Thee.

1 See Josh. vii. 25.

Let me not languish, then, and spend
A life as barren to Thy praise,

As in the dust to which that life doth tend,
But with delays.

All things are busy; only I

Neither bring honey with the bees,
Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry
To water these.

I am no link of Thy great chain,
But all my company is as a weed.

Lord! place me in Thy concert; give one strain
To my poor reed.

Preserve and continue this sick member in the unity of the

Church;

THE CONSTELLATION.

(PART.)

Henry Vaughan.

HUS, by our lusts disordered into wars,

TH

Our guides prove wand'ring stars,

Which for these mists and black days were reserved,

What time we from our first love swerved.