p. 3 | MYSTERY by H. P. B.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 45.

MYSTERY

By H. P. B.

The height, the depth, the mystery of grace, Must thrice unfold when I shall see His face. How He beheld the fetters of my soul, That, chained with clustering bands, o'er which control Of mine had no more choice than power to sway The destiny of fruitless life a day. He saw grown in this rankest wilderness A field of death His tender care could bless— A place where thorns and thistles of the curse Had, seeding, flourished far to something worse. He, turning of these noxious boughs aside, Kissed all the dormant rootlets scattered wide, Like fire-seeds sleeping for the furnace glow Of deepest, smoldering heat, to overthrow The heavy coverlid of pressing earth, To bring their upturned faces into birth And life.

Transformed beneath this overshine, How beats the soul to richest rime Of light! Revivifying, it exalts To nameless visions of the upper vaults— Unknown to seraphs, who have sensed no sin, Which had the strength to bruise and cripple Him— To rise triumphant.

All unmeasured ill, How great is thy unraveled mystery still! How deeper yet this love; in mystery, Divinely sealed till I His face shall see!

H. P. B.

New Orleans, La.