Yea, saith the Spirit: and their works do follow them; Habits, and thoughts, and deeds, are shadows and satellites of self. What! shall the claimant to a throne stand forward with a rabble rout,-- Meanness, impiety, and lust; riot and indolence and vanity? Nay, man! the train wherewith thou comest attend whither thou shalt go: A throne for a king's son, but an inner dungeon for the felon. For a man's works do follow him: bodily, standing in the judgment, Behold the false accuser, behold the slandered saint; The slave, and his bloody driver; the poor, and his generous friend; The simple dupe, and the crafty knave: the murderer, and--his victim! Yet all are in many characters; the best stand guilty at the bar; And he that seemed the worst may have most of real excuse. The talents unto which a man is born, be they few or many, Are dropped into the balance of account, working unlooked-for changes; And perchance the convict from the galleys may stand above the hermit in his cell, For that, the obstacles in one outweigh the propensions in the other. There be, who have made themselves friends, yea, by unrighteous mammon,-- Friends, ready waiting as an escort to those everlasting habitations; Embodied in living witnesses, thronging to meet them in a cloud, Charity, meekness and truth, zeal, sincerity and patience, There be, who have made themselves foes, yea, by honest gain, Foes, whose plaint must have its answer, before the bright portal is unbarred: Pride, and selfishness, and sloth, apathy, wrath and falsehood, Bind to their everlasting toil many that must weary in the fires. Love hath a power and a longing to save the gathered world, And rescue universal man from the hunting hell-hounds of his doings: Yet few, here one and there one, scanty as the gleaning after harvest, Are glad of the robes of praise which Mercy would fling around the naked; But wrapping closer to their skin the poisoned tunic of their works, They stand in self-dependence, to perish in abandonment of God. [Illustration] OF PRAYER.