Thy pathway lay through suffering, shame, and human woe,
‘Mid sorrows deep that none beside could ever know;
Gethsemane’s anticipative earnest prayers,
The bloody sweat, the agony, the cries, and tears,
That deeper indignation, and that fiercest wrath,
And all the terrors that God’s judgment hath,
The draining of that bitter cup which none could share,
Which God alone could give, and Thou alone couldst bear;
All these were thine. And Thou, beneath the awful weight
Of this world’s load of sin, on darkened Calvary’s height,
Hung on the cross; where mocking men could satiate,
In league with hell, their cruel scorn and fiendish hate;
Thou there didst bend beneath the overflowing surge
Of human enmity, with Satan there to urge
In hellish haste—malignant prompter of the world,
Of all the scorn that at thy sacred head was hurled.
Such, Lord, thy wondrous path to life. Forsaken, lone,
Uncheered through death’s dark path where light had never shone,
Bereft of all. Whose eye but thine could surely see
Right through the grave to resurrection—victory?
Whose power but thine could then have borne sin’s heavy load
And not be crushed, but, conquering find thy way to God?
Who else but Thou could now a mighty Victor stand,
With glory, honor crowned, Thou man of God’s right hand?
Thy path of life to pleasures led divinely given,
To joys which form and tune the highest joys of heaven.
For angels sing thy mighty deeds on earth below,
And all the ranks of heaven with heightened rapture glow.
The spacious plains of earth shall soon take up the song,
And answering shouts the joyful chorus shall prolong.
From hill and dale shall rise throughout the wide domain,
Thy thrice repeated worthy, worthy, worthy name.
And Thou for me the darksome power of death hast quelled—
The grave is light, its pitchy darkness all dispelled.
I follow on, if Thou shouldst call, triumphant sing,
Where now thy victory, Ο grave? Ο death, thy sting?
R. B.