5 Great God! to thee we consecrate
Our voices and our skill;
We bid the pealing organ wait
To speak alone thy will.
6 O teach its rich and swelling notes
To lift our souls on high;
And while the music round us floats,
Let earth-born passion die.
1 SURE, to the mansions of the blest
When infant innocence ascends,
Some angel brighter than the rest
The spotless spirit's flight attends.
2 On wings of ecstasy they rise,
Beyond where worlds material roll,
Till some fair sister of the skies
Receives the unpolluted soul.
3 There, at the Almighty Father's hand,
Nearest the throne of living light,
The choirs of infant seraphs stand,
And dazzling shine, where all are bright.
4 That inextinguishable beam,
With dust united at our birth,
Sheds a more dim, discolored gleam,
The more it lingers upon earth.
5 Closed in this dark abode of clay,
The stream of glory faintly burns,
Nor unobscured the lucid ray
To its own native fount returns.
6 But when the Lord of mortal breath Decrees his bounty to resume,
And points the silent shaft of death, Which speeds an infant to the tomb,
7 No passion fierce, no low desire,
Has quenched the radiance of the flame;
Back to its God the living fire
Returns, unsullied, as it came.
The Spread of the Gospel.
1 THE morning light is breaking,
The darkness disappears,
The sons of earth are waking
To penitential tears;
Each breeze that sweeps the ocean
Brings tidings from afar,
Of nations in commotion,
Prepared for Zion's war.
2 Rich dews of grace come o'er us,
In many a gentle shower,
And brighter scenes before us
Are opening every hour;
Each cry to heaven going
Abundant answers brings,
And heavenly gales are blowing,
With peace upon their wings.
3 Blest river of salvation,
Pursue thy onward way;
Flow thou to every nation,
Nor in thy richness stay:
Stay not, till all the lowly
Triumphant reach their home;
Stay not, till all the holy
Proclaim the Lord has come.
1 FROM Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand, From many an ancient river, From many a palmy plain, They call us to deliver
Their land from error's chain.
2 What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,-
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile?
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone.
3 Shall we, whose souls are lighted
By wisdom from on high,
Shall we to mnen benighted
The lamp of life deny?
Salvation! O salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till earth's remotest nation
Has learnt Messiah's name.
1 HERE to the High and Holy One
Our fathers early reared
A house of prayer, a lowly one,
Yet long to them endeared
By hours of sweet communion
Held with their covenant God,
As oft, in sacred union,
His hallowed courts they trod.
2 Gone are the pious multitudes
That here kept holy time,
In other courts assembled now
For worship more sublime.
Their children, we are waiting
In meekness, Lord, thy call;
Thy love still celebrating,
Our hope, our trust, our all.
3 These time-worn walls, the resting-place
So oft from earthly cares
To righteous souls now perfected,
We leave with thanks and prayers;
With thanks, for every blessing
Vouchsafed through all the past,
With prayers, thy throne addressing
For guidance to the last.
4 Though from this house, so long beloved, We part with sadness now,
Yet here we trust with gladness soon
In fairer courts to bow:
So when our souls forsaking
These bodies, fallen and pale,
In brighter forms awaking,
With joy the change shall hail.
1 THE perfect world, by Adam trod, Was the first temple,-built by God; His fiat laid the corner-stone,
And heaved its pillars one by one.
2 He hung its starry roof on high, — The broad, illimitable sky;
He spread its pavement green and bright, And curtained it with morning light.
3 The mountains in their places stood,-
The sea, the sky, and "all was good";
And, when its first pure praises rang,
The "morning stars together sang."
4 Lord! 't is not ours to make the sea,
And earth, and sky a house for thee;
But in thy sight our offering stands,
A humbler temple, "made with hands."
The House our Fathers built to God.
1 We love the venerable house
Our fathers built to God;
In heaven are kept their grateful vows,
Their dust endears the sod.
|