The Stone

*** Revised Common Lectionary *** Lectionary Reading: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 CLASSIC POEM: The Stone Henry Vaughan I have it now: But where to act, that none shall know, Where I shall have no cause to fear An eye or ear, What man will show? If nights, and shades, and secret rooms, Silent as tombs, Will nor conceal nor assent to My dark designs, what shall I do? Man I can bribe, and woman will Consent to any gainful ill, But these dumb creatures are so true, No gold nor gifts can them subdue. Hedges have ears , said the old sooth , And ev’ry bush is somethings booth; This cautious fools mistake, and fear Nothing but man, when ambush’d there. But I (Alas!) Was shown one day in a strange glass That busie commerce kept between God and his Creatures, though unseen. They hear, see, speak, And into loud discoveries break, As loud as blood. Not that God needs Intelligence, whose spirit feeds All things with life, before whose eyes, Hell and all hearts stark naked lyes. But he that judgeth as he hears, He that accuseth none, so steers His righteous course, that though he knows All that man doth, conceals or shows, Yet will not he by his own light (Though both all-seeing and all right,) Condemn men; but will try them by A process, which ev’n mans own eye Must needs acknowledge to be just. Hence sand and dust Are shak’d for witnesses, and stones Which some think dead, shall all at once With one attesting voice detect Those secret sins we least suspect For know, wilde men, that when you erre Each thing turns Scribe and Register, And in obedience to his Lord, Doth your most private sins record. The Law delivered to the Jews , Who promis’d much, but did refuse Performance, will for that same deed Against them by a stone proceed; Whose substance, though ’tis hard enough, Will prove their hearts more stiff and tuff. But now, since God on himself took What all mankinde could never brook, If any (for he all invites) His easie yoke rejects or slights, The Gospel then (for ’tis his word And not himself shall judge the world) Will by loose Dust that man arraign, As one then dust more vile and vain. *** This poem is in the public domain, and may be read in a live-streamed worship service. CONTEMPORARY POEM: The Watchman of Ephraim Paul Hoover SNIPPET: … For my cosmos is contracted. My first world slips from my hands. Tell the people, my prophet Hosea, that I loved her more than love, and she gave not love in return. … [ READ THE FULL POEM ]