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446.-Ordination.

ACTS ii. 4.

HE poem on Ordination in The Christian Year, of which this beautiful Hymn forms the close, is founded upon the direction (in the Church of England Ordination office) to pause at a certain period of the service for silent prayer, after which the Hymn Veni Creator Spiritus is to be sung. The soft music of this strain, following the act of devotion, seems to the poet no less than the earnest given that the prayer is heard. For use as a Hymn, apart from the prefatory and descriptive verses, some such alteration as that made in the first line is necessary. No other change is

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"THE

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HE livelong night we've toiled in vain,

But at Thy gracious word

We will let down the net again;

Do Thou Thy will, O Lord."

So, day by day, and week by week,
In sad and weary thought
They muse, whom God hath set to seek

The souls His Christ hath bought.
At morn we look, and nought is there-
Sad dawn of cheerless day!
Who then from pining and despair

The sickening heart can stay?

There is a stay-and we are strong;
Our Master is at hand
To cheer our solitary song,
And guide us to the strand.

In His own time; but yet awhile Our bark at sea must ride; Cast after cast, by force or guile, All waters must be tried.

Should e'er Thy wonder-working grace

Triumph by our weak arm,

Let not our sinful fancy trace
Aught human in the charm.

To our own nets ne'er bow we down;
Lest on the eternal shore

The angels, while our draught they own,
Reject us evermore :

Or if, for our unworthiness,

Toil, prayer, and watching fail ; In disappointment Thou canst bless, So love at heart prevail.

J. KEBLE.

448.-"Do this in Remembrance

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of Me."

LUKE xxii. 14.

YMNS on the Lord's Supper as the great festival of the Church of Christ are very numerous, and some that here follow will be found especially beautiful. The selection might have been much larger but for two defects, from which indeed some of those included here are not wholly free. One is the too exclusive stress given to the thought of a suffering Redeemer, often with an almost sensuous dwelling on the details of His passion. Even when we show forth ("proclaim," as in the Revised Version) the Lord's death, we should never forget that He lives (see Hymn 129). The commemoration of the sacrifice is emphatically a Communion with the Intercessor; and thus also it becomes a true Eucharist, the highest act of Christian "Thanksgiving."

The second defect is the tendency, kindred with the above, to materialize the great metaphor of "partaking the Body and Blood of the Lord." That participation is and can be only spiritual. The doctrine of Transubstantiation itself, as has been said, is but a prosaic hardening of figure into fact, and not a few hymn-writers, who have been far enough from holding this doctrine, have not been sufficiently on their guard against misapprehension. Hymns which really imply this doctrine, or which speak of the Supper as a "tremendous mystery," of course have no place in the following pages.

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Then His parting word He said, Blessed the cup and brake the bread — "This whene'er ye do or see,

Evermore remember Me."

Years have passed in every clime,
Changing with the changing time,
Varying through a thousand forms,
Torn by factions, rocked by storms,
Still the sacred table spread,
Flowing cup and broken bread,
With that parting word agree,
"Drink and eat; remember Me."

When by treason, doubt, unrest,
Sinks the soul, dismayed, oppressed:
When the shadows of the tomb
Close us round with deepening gloom,
Then bethink us at that board
Of the sorrowing, suffering Lord,
Who, when tried and grieved as we,
Dying said "Remember Me."

When in this thanksgiving feast
We would give to God our best,
From the treasures of His might
Seeking life and love and light;
Then, O Friend of human-kind,
Make us true and firm of mind,
Pure of heart, in spirit free;
Thus may we remember Thee.

DEAN STANLEY.

449.-Christ's Glory revealed. REVELATION i. 17.

HE first four verses are the beginning of a poem of seventeen stanzas in the Christian Year. The following verses of the poem enumerate the consolations which "the Church" gives to the penitent in the Communion feast. These stanzas form a beautiful commentary on the several parts of the Church of England Service; but the last verse, as added by Mr. G. Rawson in the Leeds Hymnbook (736), brings out a deeper truth and richer sweetness, in fixing the mind on Christ alone.

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