The Ledger Opened by MRS. S. M. SPICER

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 4, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 1.

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The Ledger Opened

By MRS. S. M. SPICER

The Angel's Record — No. 1

The Ledger Opened

MRS. S. M. SPICER

(A poem for the new year)

How happy, lovely, glorious, blest, Of human life the Eden dawn! While feet of innocence still pressed The virgin soil of paradise.

How sad, how fearful, wretched, lost, When tempted, sin-seduced, man fell! With exile, death,—the bitter cost,— Earth, cursed for him, his days must tell.

So soon the shouting angel choir Must heavenward fly with notes of woe, Grieved that the unstained record there The blot of sin and death must show.

Dark, and more dark, the moral night Man's devious way now shadowed o'er; While farther from the heavenly light His erring footsteps wandered more.

Yet God, all loving, watched him still, Though veiled his face to mortal eye; Betimes, in dreams revealed his will, And treasured each repentant sigh.

The angel's record darkly gloomed With sin's vile traces, stained with blood; Man's pathway, sorrowing to the tomb, So little knew of wise and good.

The angel scribe still faithful traced, Or glad or grieved, the deathless page; In God's own Book the record placed, Of every clime, of every age.

Man's guardian watcher, hovering near, His inner life he read unseen, And oft, as things to man appear Seldom to God and angels seem.

Takoma Park, D. C.