The Preacher
by
George Whitefield, the celebrated preacher, died at Newburyport in 1770, and was buried under the church which has since borne his name.
ITS windows flashing to the sky,
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown,
Far down the vale, my friend and I
Beheld the old and quiet town;
The ghostly sails that out at sea
Flapped their white wings of mystery;
The beaches glimmering in the sun,
And the low wooded capes that run
Into the sea-mist north and south;
The sand-bluffs at the river’s mouth;
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,
The foam-line of the harbor-bar.
Over the woods and meadow-lands
A crimson-tinted shadow lay,
Of clouds through which the setting day
Flung a slant glory far away.
It glittered on the wet sea-sands,
It flamed upon the city’s panes,
Smote the white sails of ships that wore
Outward or in, and glided o’er
The steeples with their veering vanes!
Awhile my friend with rapid search
O’erran the landscape. “Yonder spire
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire;
What is it, pray?”–“The Whitefield Church!
Walled about by its basement stones,
There rest the marvellous prophet’s bones.”
Then as our homeward way we walked,
Of the great preacher’s life we talked;
And through the mystery of our theme
The outward glory seemed to stream,
And Nature’s self interpreted
The doubtful record of the dead;
And every level beam that smote
The sails upon the dark afloat
A symbol of the light became,
Which touched the shadows of our blame,
With tongues of Pentecostal flame.
Over the roofs of the pioneers
Gathers the moss of a hundred years;
On man and his works has passed the change
Which needs must be in a century’s range.
The land lies open and warm in the sun,
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run,–
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the plain,
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!
But the living faith of the settlers old
A dead profession their children hold;
To the lust of office and greed of trade
A stepping-stone is the altar made.
The church, to place and power the door,
Rebukes the sin of the world no more,
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.
Everywhere is the grasping hand,
And eager adding of land to land;
And earth, which seemed to the fathers meant
But as a pilgrim’s wayside tent,–
A nightly shelter to fold away
When the Lord should call at the break of day,–
Solid and steadfast seems to be,
And Time has forgotten Eternity!
But fresh and green from the rotting roots
Of primal forests the young growth shoots;
From the death of the old the new proceeds,
And the life of truth from the rot of creeds
On the ladder of God, which upward leads,
The steps of progress are human needs.
For His judgments still are a mighty deep,
And the eyes of His providence never sleep
When the night is darkest He gives the morn;
When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn!
In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought,
Shaping his creed at the forge of thought;
And with Thor’s own hammer welded and bent
The iron links of his argument,
Which strove to grasp in its mighty span
The purpose of God and the fate of man
Yet faithful still, in his daily round
To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,
The schoolman’s lore and the casuist’s art
Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart.