Poem by Richard Watson Gilder

The Celestial Passion. Part 2. 4. Cost

Because Heaven's cost is Hell, and perfect joy
⁠     Hurts as hurts sorrow; and because we win
⁠     Some boon of grace with the dread cost of sin,
⁠     Or suffering born of sin; because the alloy
Of blood but makes the bliss of victory brighter;
     ⁠Because true worth hath surest proof herein,
⁠     That it should be reproached, and called akin
     ⁠To evil things—black making white the whiter;
Because no cost seems great near this—that He
     ⁠Should pay the ransom wherewith we were priced;
⁠     And none could name a darker infamy
Than that a god was spit upon,—enticed
⁠     By those he came to save, to the accursèd tree,—
⁠     For this I know that Christ indeed is Christ. 

1. The New Day. Part 3. 19. Thistle-Down
2. The New Day. Part 4. 17. “He Knows Not the Path of Duty”
3. The New Day. Part 3. 12. Denial
4. The New Day. Part 4. 4. Song (Not from the whole wide world I chose thee)
5. The Celestial Passion. Part 2. 7. On a Portrait of Servetus

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