THE SABBATH | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 15, 1879

THE SABBATH.

FRESH glides the brook and grows the gale, Yet yonder halts the quiet mill: The whirling wheel, the rushing sail, How motionless and still!

Six days of toil, poor child of Cain, Thy strength the slave of want may be; The seventh thy limbs escape the chain— For God hath made them free!

Ah! tender was the law that gave This holy respite to the breast: To breathe the gale, to watch the wind, And know the wheel may rest!

But where the waves the gentlest glide, What image charms to light thine eyes? The spire reflected on the tide Invites thee to the skies.

To teach the soul its noblest worth The rest from mortal toil is given; Go snatch the brief reprieve from earth, And pass—a guest to Heaven.

They tell thee, in their dreaming school, Of power from old dominion hurled, When rich and poor, with juster rule Shall share the altered world.

Alas! Since time itself began, That fable hath but fooled the hour; Each age that ripens power in man But subjects man to power.

Yet every day in seven at least, One bright republic shall be known; Man's world awhile hath surely ceased, When God proclaims his own.

—English Paper.