CHRIST ON EARTH by Christian Union

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 3, 1881

CHRIST ON EARTH.

By Christian Union

HAD we but lived in those mysterious days When, a veiled God, 'mid unregenerate men, Christ calmly walked our devious mortal ways, Crowned with grief's bitter rule in place of bays— Ah! had we lived but then!

Lived to drink in with every wondering breath A consciousness beyond all human ken, That, clothed in flesh, as long conceived in faith, We viewed the Lord of life and Lord of death— Ah! had we lived but then!

At! "Peace! be still!" the storm-wind ceased to roar, And the lulled waters seemed to sigh, "Amen!" Fear—the heart's mightier tempest—surged no more, But a strange silence fell on sea and shore! Ah! had we lived but then!

With our own ears to catch the words He said (Their magic pondering o'er and o'er again)— The wine of wisdom quaff from Fountainhead, Mark the lame leap, and watch the rising dead— Ah! had we lived but then!

The world grows old! Faith, once a mountain stream, Now crawls polluted down a poisonous fen; The Bethlehem star has lost its morning beam; Thy face, O Christ! wanes like a wasted dream— How changed, how cold since then!

Ah! 'tis our dreary lives whose promise fails!— These languorous lives of low, lost, aimless men. Through mockery's mist our Lord's pure aureole pales, Yet tenderer than the Syrian nightingale's, His voice sounds now as then!

—Christian Union.