Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Sabaoth

44 1st P. M. 6 lines 83.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Sabaoth

INFINITE God, to thee We raise
   Our hearts in solemn songs of praise;
   By all thy works on earth adored,
   We worship thee, the common Lord;
   The everlasting Father own,
   And bow our souls before thy throne.

2 Thee all the choir of angels sings,
   The Lord of hosts, the King of kings;
   Cherubs proclaim thy praise aloud,
   And seraphs shout the triune God
   And Holy, holy, holy, cry,
   Thy glory fills both earth and sky.

3 Father of endless majesty,
   All might and love we render thee;
   Thy true and only Son adore,
   The same in dignity and power;
   And God the Holy Ghost declare,
   The saints’ eternal Comforter.
                  Charles Wesley
                  Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
hymnary.org inserts two verses after verse 2:

3. God of the patriarchal race,
   The ancient seers record Thy praise,
   The goodly apostolic band
   In highest joy and glory stand;
   And all the saints and prophets join
   To extol Thy majesty divine.

4. Head of the martyrs’ noble host,
   Of Thee they justly make their boast;
   The church, to earth’s remotest bounds,
   Her heavenly Founder’s praise resounds;
   And strives, with those around the throne,
   To hymn the mystic Three in One.
</idle musing>

Jesus the very thought of thee

1 Jesus, the very thought of thee
   with sweetness fills the breast;
   but sweeter far thy face to see,
   and in thy presence rest.

2 O hope of every contrite heart,
   O joy of all the meek,
   to those who fall, how kind thou art!
   How good to those who seek!

3 But what to those who find? Ah, this
   nor tongue nor pen can show;
   the love of Jesus, what it is,
   none but his loved ones know.

4 Jesus, our only joy be thou,
   as thou our prize wilt be;
   Jesus, be thou our glory now,
   and through eternity.
                  St. Bernard of Clairvaux (?)
                  United Methodist Hymnal, 1989

Rejoice, the Lord is King!

1 Rejoice the Lord is King,
   Your God and king adore;
   Mortals give Thanks and sing,
   And triumph ever-more.
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.

2 Jesus the Saviour Reigns,
   The God of Truth and Love;
   When he had purg'd our Stains,
   He took his Seat above;
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.

3 His Kingdom cannot fail,
   He rules o'er Earth and Heav'n;
   The Keys of Death and Hell
   Are to our Jesus giv'n.
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.

4 He sits at God's Right-Hand
   Till all his Foes submit,
   And bow to his Command,
   And fall beneath his Feet.
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.

5 He all his Foes shall quell,
   Shall all our sins destroy,
   And ev'ry Bosom swell
   With pure seraphic Joy.
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.

6 Rejoice in glorious Hope;
   Jesus the Judge shall come,
   And take his Servants up,
   To their eternal Home.
   Lift up your Hearts, lift up your Voice,
   Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice.
                  Charles Wesley
                  #899 Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
OK, verses 4 & 5 are new to me. Some hymnals will include verse 5, but in order to find verses 4 & 5 together, you have to go back to 1791 on the hymnary.org site. (I really wish they had a digital version of the 1890 hymnal I'm using!)
</idle musing>

A blessing from God's presence

32 C. M.
A blessing from God’s presence.

GREAT Shepherd of thy people, hear;
   Thy presence now display;
   We kneel within thy house of prayer;
   O give us hearts to pray.

2 The clouds which veil thee from our sight,
   In pity, Lord, remove;
   Dispose our minds to hear aright
   The message of thy love.

3 Help us, with holy fear and joy,
   To kneel before thy face;
   O make us, creatures of thy power,
   The children of thy grace.
                  John Newton
                  Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
This one is interesting in that there seems to be a wide variety of versions out there. At hymnary.org there is one version with seven verses, only the first of which agrees with this version. In fact, when I did a search there, I didn't see any that agreed with this version; in fact, a search for the first line of the second verse came up empty. Makes you wonder what the original really looked like…
</idle musing>

Tozer for Tuesday

Religious education at best is training men and women to think right and act right. Certainly, it is not to be decried, but rather desired. But without the secret and mysterious internal change, all of this outside change ultimately will be found only wasted.—A.W. Tozer, Living as a Christian, 65

Now that's a new verse!

1 Come, thou Almighty King,
   Help us thy name to sing,
   Help us to praise!
   Father all-glorious
   O'er all victorious,
   Come, and reign over us,
   Ancient of days.

2 Jesus our Lord, arise,
   Scatter our enemies,
   And make them fall!
   Let thine almighty aid,
   Our sure defence be made,
   Our souls on thee be stay'd:
   Lord hear our call.

3 Come, thou incarnate Word,
   Gird on thy mighty sword,
   Our pray'r attend:
   Come, and thy people bless,
   And give thy word success;
   Spirit of holiness,
   On us descend.

4 Come, holy Comforter,
   Thy sacred witness bear
   In this glad hour:
   Thou who almighty art,
   Now rule in ev'ry heart,
   And ne'er from us depart.
   Spirit of pow'r.

5 To the great One in Three,
   Eternal praises be,
   Hence — evermore!
   His sov'reign Majesty
   May we in glory see,
   And to eternity
   Love and adore.
                Unknown
                Methodist Episcopal Hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
I love this hymn, a wonderful trinitarian one. But, I had never seen the second verse before. In fact, when I went to hymnary.org, I had to go back to a 1791 hymnal to find it. (For some reason they don't have the 1870 edition of the Methodist Episcopal Hymnal.)

I can understand why it got dropped; with it you have two verses for Jesus; without it, there is symetry. And, to be honest the theology of the third verse is better than that of the second verse.

Anyway, it's another one of those hymns, such as "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," where some of the verses originally sung with it have dropped out. In the case of "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," the orignal was something like eighteen verses and the ones we sing today are definitely the best.

In the case of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," I like two of the verses tha dropped out and regularly sing them. Usually, when people hear them they are intrigued. It's easy to see why they dropped out, though, because they express the Wesleyan/Methodist belief in holiness in this life—not a popular theme in our Calvinistically dominated culture.

Here they are, in case you are interested:

4. Come, Desire of nations, come,
   Fix in us Thy humble home;
   Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
   Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
   Now display Thy saving power,
   Ruined nature now restore;
   Now in mystic union join
   Thine to ours, and ours to Thine. [Refrain]

5. Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
   Stamp Thine image in its place:
   Second Adam from above,
   Reinstate us in Thy love.
   Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
   Thee, the Life, the inner man:
   O, to all Thyself impart,
   Formed in each believing heart. [Refrain]

</idle musing>

So-called benefactors

On the Anxious Bench the other day, but I just finished reading it now (I’ve taken it in chunks), reflection on the the mature Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This paragraph sums up what I’ve thought:

It was perhaps King’s commitment to the alleviation of poverty that got him killed. The night before his assassination, he was working with striking sanitation workers because it would expose the need for economic equality. King’s Poor People’s Campaign was meant to do precisely that work because after he moved his ministry from the South to the North, he was reminded that the fight against racism necessarily included a fight against poverty.

Yep. The one thing that the oligarchy has always feared is that the various groups of exploited people would see that actually they have more in common with each other than they do w/the oligarchs—the ones Jesus said call themselves “benefactors.” (As an interesting experiment, search that term in the books of the Maccabees for some context.)

A footnote in the book I’m editing sums up the benefactors pretty well:

Yale Daily News, November 10, 2021. A study by Philp Mousavizadeh found that the administration had expanded an incredible 44.7 percent since 2003, and that Yale had the highest manager-to-student ratio in the Ivy League and the fifth highest in the nation among four-year colleges. Thus the administration was larger than the faculty and cost $2.7 billion annually, with a 5 percent increase in only one year. An article by Isaac Yu, Yale Daily News, September 9, 2021, noted that over the same period, some key administrative units had grown 150 percent in staffing, as opposed to a 10.6 percent in faculty growth, and that Yale had gone from five vice presidents to thirty-one. The salaries of the president had increased 17.2 percent, of the General Counsel 6.2 percent, but of the faculty 3.6 percent.

I’m sorry to say that a recent survey found that Harvard has now surpassed Yale in the highest manager-to-student ratio…

Everybody needs to read ch. 1 of Heschel’s The Prophets at least once a year…

Just an
</idle musing>