Faith in God

Have faith in God. For whosoever lists     To calm conviction in these days of strife,     Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists     The scholarship severe of human life.     This face to face with doubt! I know how strong     His thews must be who fights and falls and bears,     By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long,     And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers.     Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man throned     With thunders on an everlasting cloud,     But in that awful Entity enzoned     By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud.     When from the summit of some sudden steep     Of speculation you have strength to turn     To things too boundless for the broken sweep     Of finer comprehension, wait and learn     That God hath been His own interpreter     From first to last. So you will understand     The tribe who best succeed, when men most err,     To suck through fogs the fatness of the land.     One thing is surer than the autumn tints     We saw last week in yonder river bend     That all our poor expression helps and hints,     However vaguely, to the solemn end     That God is truth; and if our dim ideal     Fall short of fact so short that we must weep     Why shape specific sorrows, though the real     Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep?     Remember, truth draws upward. This to us     Of steady happiness should be a cause     Beyond the differential calculus     Or Kants dull dogmas and mechanic laws.     A man is manliest when he wisely knows     How vain it is to halt and pule and pine;     Whilst under every mystery haply flows     The finest issue of a love divine.