106
" The number of Thine own complete,
Sum up and make an end;
Sift clean the chaff, and house the wheat—
And then, O Lord, descend. “Descend, and solve by that descent,
This mystery of life;
Where good and ill, together blent,
Wage an undying strife. “For rivers twain are gushing still,
And pour a mingled flood;
Good in the very depths of ill—
Ill in the heart of good. “The last are first, the first are last,
As angel eyes behold;
These from the sheepcote sternly cast,
Those welcomed to the fold. “No Christian home, no pastor’s eye,
No preacher’s vocal zeal,
Moved Thy dear martyr to defy
The prison and the wheel. “Forth from the heathen ranks she stepped
The forfeit throne to claim
Of Christian souls who had not kept
Their birthright and their name. “Grace formed her out of sinful dust;
She knelt a soul defiled;
She rose in all the faith and trust
And sweetness of a child. “And in the freshness of that love
She preached by word and deed,
The mysteries of the world above—
Her new-found glorious creed. “And running, in a little hour,
Of life the course complete,
She reached the throne of endless power,
And sits at Jesus’ feet. “Her spirit there, her body here,
Make one the earth and sky;
We use her name, we touch her bier,
We know her God is nigh. "
― John Henry Newman , Callista: A Sketch of the Third Century
107
" And turn no whither, but must needs decay And drop from out the universal frame Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, That utter nothingness, of which I came: This is it that has come to pass in me; Oh, horror! this it is, my dearest, this; So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)
112
" I can no more; for now it comes again, That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain, That masterful negation and collapse Of all that makes me man; as though I bent Over the dizzy brink Of some sheer infinite descent; Or worse, as though Down, down for ever I was falling through The solid framework of created things, And needs must sink and sink Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still, A fierce and restless fright begins to fill The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse, Some bodily form of ill Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps Its hideous wings, And makes me wild with horror and dismay. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)
120
" O Lord, how wonderful in depth and height, But most in man, how wonderful Thou art! With what a love, what soft persuasive might Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart, Thy tale complete of saints Thou dost provide, To fill the thrones which angels lost through pride! He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground, Polluted in the blood of his first sire, With his whole essence shatter'd and unsound, And coil'd around his heart a demon dire, Which was not of his nature, but had skill To bind and form his op'ning mind to ill. Then was I sent from heaven to set right The balance in his soul of truth and sin, And I have waged a long relentless fight, Resolved that death-environ'd spirit to win, Which from its fallen state, when all was lost, Had been repurchased at so dread a cost. "
― John Henry Newman , The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work (Spirituality of St. John Henry Newman Book 1)