Uphold Us With Your Free Spirit

ALMIGHTY FATHER! we give Thee thanks for the words of the men of old, which are still so. true. While outward forms have passed away, still sin and evil have held their sway, and so we pray the prayer of old: "Uphold us with Thy free Spirit." Our spirit faints when we think of our broken vows, our feebleness and faintness in good, our swiftness to do evil.

Uphold us; the burden of the mystery is still upon us. Why this war and tumult, why the widow and the orphan, the desolate hearth, the broken hearts? Why do we still hear the cry of oppression, why are the poor still so poor, and why does life seem so little worth the having? O Lord! Thou knowest; let that be enough for us; let us trust in Thee, asking nothing, but that Thou shouldst uphold us with Thy free Spirit. And when death comes on, and all these threescore years and ten seem closed in a moment, when conscience is heavy and burdened, and our hearts do fail, uphold us with Thy free Spirit.

Lord, we need Thy Spirit everywhere, and Thou hast made it free to the proud and the poor, free to harlot and beggar, free to lord and king, free to publican and sinner.

O Lord, uphold us with Thy free Spirit that we faint not, nor fall, so that in the darksome night it may tell us of the coming morning, and in the blazing day of the sweet cool shades of night.

Lord, let it be with us Thy weak ones so, that at last we may come, not of our own merit, but through Thy great goodness, through death into the Eternal years, to abide with Thee for Evermore.—AMEN.