True mirth resides not in the smiling skin:
The sweetest solace is to act no sin.
The sweetest solace is to act no sin.
Robert Herrick
'Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
Him, as He is, is labour without end.
9. GOD'S PART.
Prayers and praises are those spotless two
Lambs, by the law, which God requires as due.
10. AFFLICTION.
God ne'er afflicts us more than our desert,
Though He may seem to overact His part:
Sometimes He strikes us more than flesh can bear;
But yet still less than grace can suffer here.
11. THREE FATAL SISTERS.
Three fatal sisters wait upon each sin;
First, fear and shame without, then guilt within.
12. SILENCE.
Suffer thy legs, but not thy tongue to walk:
God, the Most Wise, is sparing of His talk.
13. MIRTH.
True mirth resides not in the smiling skin:
The sweetest solace is to act no sin.
14. LOADING AND UNLOADING.
God loads and unloads, thus His work begins,
To load with blessings and unload from sins.
15. GOD'S MERCY.
God's boundless mercy is, to sinful man,
Like to the ever-wealthy ocean:
Which though it sends forth thousand streams, 'tis ne'er
Known, or else seen, to be the emptier;
And though it takes all in, 'tis yet no more
Full, and fill'd full, than when full fill'd before.
16. PRAYERS MUST HAVE POISE.
God, He rejects all prayers that are slight
And want their poise: words ought to have their weight.
17. TO GOD: AN ANTHEM SUNG IN THE CHAPEL AT WHITEHALL BEFORE THE KING.
_Verse. _ My God, I'm wounded by my sin,
And sore without, and sick within.
_Ver. Chor.
