O the Depth of Love Divine

332 O the Depth of Love Divine

1. O the depth of love divine, th’unfathomable grace!
   Who shall say how bread and wine God into us conveys!
   How the bread His flesh imparts, how the wine transmits His blood,
   Fills His faithful people’s hearts with all the life of God!

2. Let the wisest mortals show how we the grace receive;
   Feeble elements bestow a power not theirs to give.
   Who explains the wondrous way, how through these the virtue came?
   These the virtue did convey, yet still remain the same.

3. How can spirits heavenward rise, by earthly matter fed,
   Drink herewith divine supplies and eat immortal bread?
   Ask the Father’s wisdom how: Christ who did the means ordain;
   Angels round our altars bow to search it out, in vain.

4. Sure and real is the grace, the manner be unknown;
   Only meet us in thy ways and perfect us in one.
   Let us taste the heavenly powers, Lord, we ask for nothing more.
   Thine to bless, ’tis only ours to wonder and adore.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Hymnal, 1964 edition

<idle musing>
Not exactly one of Wesley's better known hymns—it only occurs in six hymnals and they are all Methodist ones as far as I could tell.

It's also obvious that Charles wasn't a Zwinglian! For him, and for John, Christ was present in some special and unique way during communion. As far as I've been able to discover, they never tried to explain it; they were content to allow it to remain a mystery.

That's pretty much where I come down, too. But, I've only ever felt that special presence when sharing communion in groups smaller than fifteen—and not always or even frequently then. A lot of it depends on the group and their openness to the ways of the Spirit. And I don't mean they have to lean Charismatic/Pentecostal! Some of the most meaningful experiences of the presence of God in communion happened in a Plymouth Brethren body—and they were very strong cessationists!
</idle musing>

Beyond humanism

If Enlightenment humanism is itself a mode of “transcending” humanity, then it’s not surprising to see in modernity a reaction to this internal to immanence — that is, reactions that have no interest in affirming transcendence but are nonetheless responding to the pressures of humanism. So, Taylor suggests, this is not simply a binary debate between belief and unbelief; it is a triangular debate between (1) secular humanists, (2) neo-Nietzschean antihumanists, and (3) “those who acknowledge some good beyond life” (p. 636).—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 110 (emphasis original)

Jesus Spreads His Banner o'er Us

331 Jesus Spreads His Banner o'er Us

1. Jesus spreads his banner o’er us,
   Cheers our famished souls with food;
   He the banquet spreads before us,
   Of His mystic flesh and blood.
   Precious banquet, bread of heaven,
   Wine of gladness, flowing free;
   May we taste it, kindly given,
   In remembrance, Lord, of Thee.

2. In Thy holy incarnation,
   When the angels sang Thy birth;
   In Thy fasting and temptation,
   In Thy labors on the earth,
   In Thy trial and rejection,
   In Thy sufferings on the tree,
   In Thy glorious resurrection,
   May we, Lord, remember Thee.
                         Rowell Park
                         Methodist Hymnal, 1964 edition

<idle musing>
I'm certainly on a roll for not picking popular hymns. This one occurs in under 100 hymnals. According the Cyberhymnal, the usually omitted first verse is

While the sons of earth retiring,
From the sacred temple roam;
Lord, Thy light and love desiring,
To Thine altar fain we come.
Children of our heavenly Father,
Friends and brethren we would be;
While we round Thy table gather,
May our hearts be one in Thee.

</idle musing>