Part 63

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For His Foes

Devotion all supreme Throbs in the mighty psalm Of One who filled our highest dream And poured His healing balm;

Who worlds inherited And yet renounced them all; Who had not where to lay His head And drank the cup of gall;

Who emptied of His power Became the foremost man-- Calm at the great prophetic hour Through which God's purpose ran;

Who in the darkest fight Imagination knows, Saluted Thee, Eternal Light, And died as for His foes.

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The Master

The Master many a day In pain and darkness wrought: Through death to life He held His way, All lands the glory caught.

And He unlocked the gain Shut up in grievous loss, And made the stairs to heaven as plain As His uplifted cross--

The stairs of pain and woe In all the work on earth, Up which the patient toilers go To their eternal birth.

O Master, Master mine, I read the legend now, To work and suffer is divine, All radiant on Thy brow.

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Life in Death

Strong children of decay, Ye live by perishing: To-morrow thrives on dead to-day, And joy on suffering.

The labor of your hearts, Like that of brain and hands, Shall be for gain in other marts, For bread in other lands.

And will ye now despond Amid consuming toil, When there is hope and joy beyond Which death can not despoil?

Herein all comfort is: In usefulness and zeal, The Lord announces who are His And gives eternal weal.

Sacrifice

Through stern and ruthless years Beyond the ken of man, All filled with ruin, pain, and tears, Has God worked out His plan.

Change on the heels of change, Like blood-hounds in the chase, Has swept the earth in tireless range, Spangled with heavenly grace.

At last the mystery Of the great Cross of Christ, Red with a world-wide agony, The God-Man sacrificed;

And from the Sacrifice The seven great notes of Peace, Which pierce the clouds beneath all skies Till pain and sorrow cease.

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The Mind of Christ

Into the surging world, Upon thy lips His word, And in thy hand His flag unfurled, Go, soldier of the Lord;

Like Him who came from far To toil for our release, And framed the startling notes of war Out of the psalm of peace.

And all the recompense Which thou wilt ever need, Shall kindle in the throbbing sense Of this life-laden creed: