Poems About God's Word

All efforts to destroy are vain -
God's Holy Word will still remain;
So hammer on, ye hostile hands,
Your hammers break, God's anvil stands.
Unknown

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Poems About God's Word: THE BOOK OF GOD

Thy thoughts are here, my God,
Expressed in words divine,
The utterance of heavenly lips
In every sacred line.

Across the ages they
Have reached us from afar,
Than the bright gold more golden they,
Purer than purest star.

More durable they stand
Than the eternal hills;
Far sweeter and more musical
Than music of earth's rills.

Fairer in their fair hues
Than the fresh flowers of earth,
More fragrant than the fragrant climes
Where odors have their birth.

Each word of thine a gem
From the celestial mines,
A sunbeam from that holy heaven
Where holy sunlight shines.

Thine, thine, this book, though given
In man's poor human speech,
Telling of things unseen, unheard,
Beyond all human reach.

No strength it craves or needs
From this world's wisdom vain;
No filling up from human wells,
Or sublunary rain.

No light from sons of time,
Nor brilliance from its gold;
It sparkles with its own glad light,
As in the ages old.

A thousand hammers keen,
With fiery force and strain,
Brought down on it in rage and hate,
Have struck this gem in vain.

Against this sea-swept rock
Ten thousand storms their will
Of foam and rage have wildly spent;
It lifts its calm face still.

It standeth and will stand,
Without or change or age,
The word of majesty and light,
The church's heritage.

HORATIUS BONAR

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HER CREED

She stood before a chosen few,
With modest air and eyes of blue;
A gentle creature, in whose face
Were mingled tenderness and grace.

"You wish to join our fold," they said:
"Do you believe in all that's read
From ritual and written creed,
Essential to our human need?"

A troubled look was in her eyes;
She answered, as in vague surprise.
As though the sense to her were dim,
"I only strive to follow Him."

They knew her life; how, oft she stood,
Sweet in her guileless maidenhood,
By dying bed, in hovel lone,
Whose sorrow she had made her own.

Oft had her voice in prayer been heard,
Sweet as the voice of singing bird;
Her hand been open in distress;
Her joy to brighten and to bless.

Yet still she answered, when they sought
To know her inmost earnest thought,
With look as of the seraphim,
"I only strive to follow Him."

Creeds change as ages come and go;
We see by faith, but little know:
Perchance the sense was not so dim
To her who "strove to follow Him."

SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON

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