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A PRAYER.

BE YE THEREFORE PERFECT, EVEN AS YOUR FATHER WHICH IS IN

HEAVEN IS PERFECT."

FATHER in Heaven! Thou who hearest pray'r,

Who madest me-who makest me thy care,

Be glory thine, that I am not the clay

Of brutish life, that perisheth away,

But MAN,-earth's lord, in thine own image formed,
Breathing thy breath, by thine own spirit warm'd;
Deathless as thou art; made to mount tow'rd thee,
O'er self triumphing, through eternity.

O blest command, by thy Beloved, given,

of,

"Be ye perfect," as THOU art, in heaven! Thou Giver, kind, of every perfect gift,

Whose height, the low above themselves can lift,

Whose strength upon the strengthless sheds a might,
Whose radiance round the dark diffuses light-

O let thine all-sufficiency descend

On my beginning for thy glorious end!
Though such thy purpose-such I am to be,

I fail-I fall, unless I hold to thee;

Thy child would fasten to those living ties,
By which the faithful cling and climb the skies;

That chain of hallow'd feeling, holy thought,

Up which they tend, down which thy spirit's brought,
Whose links from earth, through heaven still bright'ning run,

Till lost in glories of the HIGHEST ONE.
O Gracious Father! upward as I spring,
Upon my soul thine influences fling;

As thought and feeling lift the fervent pray'r,
Let fall thy spirit in its fullness there;

As swell the strains of gratitude and love,
Speed me to nobler songs of praise above.
Still would I be what yet I ne'er have been,
And grasp at glory faith alone hath seen,
Would tread where angels, arch-angels, have trod,
To stand perfection, face to face with God!

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