REASON—REASONS.

Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, Is Reason to the soul; and as on high Those rolling fires discover but the sky, Not light us here; so Reason’s glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day. And as those nightly tapers disappear, When day’s bright lord ascends our hemisphere; So pale grows Reason, at Religion’s sight; So dies, and so dissolves, in supernatural light. Dryden.

Yet, since the effects of Providence, we find, Are variously dispensed to human kind; That Vice triumphs and Virtue suffers here, A brand that sovereign justice cannot bear; Our reason prompts us to a future state, The last appeal from fortune and from fate: Where God’s all-righteous ways will be declared; The bad meet punishment, the good reward. Dryden.

Though Reason cannot through Faith’s mysteries see, It sees that there, and such they be; Though it, like Moses, by a sad command Must not come into th’ Holy Land, Yet thither it infallibly does guide, And from afar ’tis all descried. Cowley.

Through Reason’s wounds alone, thy faith can die. Young.

Reason the root; fair faith is but the flower; The fading flower shall die, but reason lives Immortal, as her Father in the skies. Young.

’Tis Reason our great Master holds so dear; ’Tis Reason’s injured rights His wrath resents; ’Tis Reason’s voice obeyed, His glories crown; To give lost Reason life, He poured His own. Young.

With scanty line shall Reason dare to mete Th’ immeasurable depths of Providence? On the swol’n bladders of opinion borne, She floats awhile, then, floundering, sinks absorbed Within that boundless sea she strove to grasp. Shall man, here stationed to revere that God Who called him into being from the dust, His moral scheme implead, and, impious, cite Th’ Almighty Legislator to the bar Of erring intellect? George Bally.

Far other flame the vain enthusiast feels When, reason by delusive fancy led In sad captivity, the thoughts confused Rush on his mind in dark and doubtful sense, His mind a chaos of blind zeal, that spurns Th’ unerring clue which mild discretion lends. Perchance the clashing images strike out Some ray of casual light; how soon The weak and momentary glance is lost Beneath a load of wild obscurity! Much does he labour with some weighty thought Of faith, of grace, of Heaven, perchance of hell, But all in vain be draws the thread confused To tedious length; the end eludes his search, And leaves him wrapt in wild perplexity, Recoiling still on the same beaten track. Charles Jenner.

The godhead which is ours Can never utterly be charmed or stilled; That nothing hath a natural right to last But equity and reason. Wordsworth.