About the Book
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1828. Excerpt: ... Praise God, ye servants of the Lord! praise God, Ye angels strong! praise God, ye sons of men! Praise him who made, and who redeemed your souls; Who gave you hope, reflection, reason, will; Minds that can pierce eternity remote, And live at once on future, present, past: Can speculate on systems yet to make, And hack recoil on ancient days of Time: Of Time, soon past, soon lost among the shades Of buried years. Not so the actions done In Time, the deeds of reasonable men. As if engraven with pen of iron grain, And laid in flinty rock, they stand unchanged, Written on the various pages of the past: If good, in rosy characters of love; If bad, in letters of vindictive fire. God may forgive, but cannot blot them out. Systems begin and end, Eternity Rolls on his endless years, and men, absolved By mercy, from the consequence, forget The evil deed, and God imputes it not; But neither systems ending nor begun, Eternity that rolls his endless years, Nor men absolved, and sanctified, and washed By mercy from the consequence, nor yet Forgetfulness, nor God imputing not, Can wash the guilty deed, once done, from out The faithful annals of the past: who reads, And many read, there finds it, as it was, And is, and shall for ever be, --a dark, Unnatural, and loathly moral spot. The span of Time was short, indeed; and now Three-fourths were past, the last begun, and on Careering to its close, which soon we sing. But first our promise we redeem, to tell The joys of Time, her joys of native growth; And briefly must, what longer tale deserves. Wake, dear remembrances! wake, childhood-days! Loves, friendships, wake! and wake, thou morn and even! Sun! with thy orient locks, night, moon, and stars! And thou, celestial bow! and all ye woods, And hills and vales, first trod in ..
