A pause once more of rapt communion; then This added in a chastened other strain: "But we such treasure have in urns of clay Fragile and nothing worth that all in all The exceeding greatness of the power may be Not of ourselves but ever only God's! Constrained I find myself in every way, But straitened not; perplexed, but not dismayed; Hunted, but not forsaken; smitten down, But not destroyed; forever bearing round Within the body wheresoever driven The dying of the Lord, that the Lord's life May also in my body forth be shown. Therefore I faint not; let my outward man Fail, if it must, my inward man meantime Is day by day in fadeless youth renewed. How light affliction sits upon my heart! It is but for a moment, and it works The while for me an ever-growing weight Of glory fixed forever to be mine! I look no longer on the things about Me, seeming to be real, since they are seen, But far away instead, far, far away Beyond these, at the things that are not seen. These for a season, Rachel, the things seen! But those, the things not seen, eternal they! "When I saw Stephen upward into heaven Gaze, and behold there what no eye might see, The glory of the Ever-living God, And Jesus standing by His Father's side; When afterward I saw Hirani stand Before the anger of the Sanhedrim, His eyes not seeing what their faces looked, His ears not hearing what the voices round Were saying and forswearing to his harm, But steadfastly his vision fixed afar And all his hearkening bent for sounds unheard, Sights, sounds, sent couriers from the world to come, The real world, the eternal, and the blest-- How little knew I then what now I know! O Rachel, why was I not then disturbed With doubts and fears, and guesses of the true? The darkness of that hour before the dawn! The brightness of this full-accomplished day! The glory of that other day that waits! The Jacob's ladder and the shining rounds! The moving pomps of angels up and down Ascending and descending the degrees Betwixt the heights of heavenly and my feet! "Now unto Him that in such darkness died, But rose amid such brightness from the tomb And reascended where He was before To glory inaccessible with God, And there expects until He thither bring Us also both to witness and to share His exaltation to the almighty throne-- To our Lord Christ, Redeemer by His blood, Worthy, and only worthy, to receive Ascription without measure of men's praise, Be honor, worship, thanks, obedience, paid, And love, even love like His, forevermore!"