Classic Poem

A PERFECT God, he must have planned
A perfect scheme: his wisdom scanned
His embryo world; his forming thought
Outran the centuries as He wrought.
He gauged it all,—each seeming flaw,—
The dreadful fact of sin; the law
Of sad heredity, whereby
The innocent for the guilty die;
Truth's birth-throes; martyr-stings and pains;
A dusky continent in chains.
He gauged it all: He saw that wrong
Would often win; He knew the strong
Would hurt the weak, and honest worth
Become sweet food for knaves; that dearth
Would blight the land, swift lightnings mar,
And great floods whelm it: schism and war
Keep bloody carnival above
His slaughtered laws of truth and love;
That sickness with its legion brood—
Rheums, fevers, palsies, taints of blood—
Would plague the race. Ah, wherefore, then,
Project a world of suffering men?
Why stayed He not his forming hand?
Why issued He that dread command,
That awful fiat, “Let there be”?
Oh, graceless, vain philosophy,
That seeks with finite grasp to span
The boundaries of infinite plan!
Enough for our imperfect thought
That perfect Love and Wisdom wrought;
That not one atom of the whole
Stupendous scheme but has for goal
A gracious outcome, hidden, sealed
Perhaps, but sure to be revealed;
That sin and suffering have their place
In God's economy of grace.
Ay, sin! we know not why or how;
But, since his wisdom could allow
This alien offshoot on the tree
Of healthy being, who are we
To hurl thereat our puny doubt,
And murmur, “It were best left out”?
Nay, cavil ye who will or can:
“Let God be true and every man
A liar,”—is there other creed
Can serve us at our direst need?

Thus far our quest, if that be quest
Which ends where it began. At best,
We travel in a circle when
We scan God's wondrous ways with men.
Still, still we find his boundless love
The pivot on which all things move.
Still, focus and circumference
Are radiating centres whence
All good evolves,—and evil still
But the blind agent of his will.
All glory, then, to Him who knew
Whereof he wrought. All glory, too,
To that transmuting power which brings
Such sweetness from such bitter things,—
Good still from evil, bliss from bane;
From weakness, strength; from losses, gain.
All glory! Let the stars outpour
Their praiseful song as once before,
When, at the first, creation stood
Complete, and God pronounced it good.
All glory! Let the sons of God
Still shout for joy, and tell abroad
Their gladness from each heavenly hill,
“All, all is good!” proclaiming still.