CANON OAKELEY'S HYMN.

297

The foregoing lines are conceived in the spirit of Synesius, a famous and rather mystical Greek hymnographer, who died A.D. 430, and who crowded his hymns with epithet, if not with epigram. Somewhat of the manner of the same writer may be discovered in the first part of the following hymn on "The Most Holy Trinity;" whilst further on its author, Canon Oakeley, proceeds, in addition to praising the essential glory of the Deity in repose, to praise It as manifested in the joint or several activities of Its Persons.

God! of life, and light, and motion,
Cause and Centre, Fount and Home;
Limitless and tideless Ocean;
Past and present and to come;

Unbeginning as Unending,
Uncontrolled by time or space;
Undefined, yet Unextending;
Boundless, yet in every place.

Self-existent; Uncreated,
Underived, evolved of none;
In sublimest peace instated,
Perfect in Thyself alone;
With unclouded vision seeing,
Spread o'er one eternal page,
All the mysteries of Being,
Traversing the course of age;
Every art of man detecting;
Sketched in form or shaped in fact;
All his cherished plans inspecting,
Locked in heart or bared in act;

Loving all and all befriending
With a love as deep as wide;
And to meanest creatures bending
Low, as if were none beside.

God the Father whose relation

With the sole-begotten Son,

By a mystic generation,

Stood ere Time had learned to run;

God the Son! by tie supernal
Ever with the Father bound;
In the glorious folds eternal
Of one single Nature wound;

God the Spirit! Stream Vivific
Ceaselessly by Both outpoured,
And in Union Beatific

Equally with Both adored:

God the Father, Son, and Spirit!
Three in One, and One in Three,
Thine united glories merit
Thanks and praise continually;

Praise to Thee and adoration
On Thy Festival be done,
For the blessed Incarnation
Of the co-eternal Son.

For the coming of the Spirit,
For the grace of saintly life!

For the joys that saints inherit
When they cease from earthly strife.

More than all the praise unending
Paid throughout the Church to Thee,
For the Majesty transcending
Of thy Triune Deity!

Sun of splendour, never waning,
Fount of sweetness, never dry,
Staff of comfort, all sustaining,
Ever Blessed Trinity.

It is almost impossible to find a hymn which does not suggest, or contain, even if at the same time it appears to conceal, a prayer. It is not only that it is the Infinite, and the infinitely happy, holy, and perfect Being, who is adored; but the beings who offer their adoration are either, as men, poor and blind, sinful and miserable, or, at best, as angels, are chargeable "with folly," the dwellers in a heaven which is unclean. When, therefore, the Divine nature is thought of by men afflicted with the burden of their own, it is intelligible that even the purest adoration

CHARLES WESLEY'S HYMN.

299

of the Trinity should attract and assume a colour from the sorrows and the sins of earth. The men who have celebrated in hymns the glorious attributes of the Deity, have, through the instant and simultaneous conviction of their own weakness and guilt, degraded, almost of necessity, to the less glorious occupation of prayer. Every ascription of praise has contained, at least implicitly, a supplication. It is thus that we read the incidental, but regretful allusion to the sin-caused disabilities of mankind, in that sublime hymn of Bishop Heber's which stands at the head of this paper.

But there are other and more cheerful circumstances to which Heber gives prominence; and which are brought out in the verses almost immediately to follow, from the pen of Charles Wesley. Man is not the only worshipper in the synagogue of earth, or in the temple of the universe. Once he was the priest as well as the lord of the world; and once again, as a king and priest unto God, he becomes the mouth-piece of nature in the world-wide liturgy. Not man alone, but all the works of the Lord, praise the Lord, in all worlds, and under all regimes and dispensations. From the darkest speck of matter, or from the heaviest clod, up to the most huge and resplendent of suns or the most ethereal and brilliant of intelligences-all confess articulately or not, the Thrice Holy :

Holy, holy, holy, Lord,

God the Father, God the Word,
God the Comforter, receive
Blessings more than we can give :
Mixed with those beyond the sky,
Chanters to the Lord Most High,
We our hearts and voices raise,
Echoing Thy eternal praise.

One, inexplicably Three,
One, in simplest Unity,
God, incline Thy gracious ear,
Us, Thy lisping creatures, hear:

Thee while man, the earth-born, sings,
Angels shrink within their wings;
Prostrate Seraphim above

Breathe unutterable love.

Happy they who never rest,
With Thy heavenly presence blest!
They the heights of Glory see,
Sound the depths of Deity!

Fain with them our souls would vie;
Sink as low, and mount as high;
Fall o'erwhelmed with love, or soar;
Shout, or silently adore!

"It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Almighty, Everlasting God; Who art one God, one Lord; not one only Person, but Three Persons in one Substance. For that which we believe of the glory of the Father, the same we believe of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, without any difference or inequality. Therefore, with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory: Glory be to Thee, O Lord Most High."

St. Andrew's Day.

NOVEMBER 30.

HE earlier religious life of this Apostle affords a proof of the perfect adaptation of the preaching of John the Baptist to the task of training his disciples to the recognition of Jesus as "The Lamb of God."

66

St. Andrew was a native of Bethsaida, a city of Galilee, and was the son of Jonas, and the brother of Simon Peter, though whether he was older or younger than that apostle has never been fully ascertained. The probabilities, however, may be said, on the whole, to favour the supposition that he was junior to St. Peter. He is commonly spoken of by the Fathers and ancient writers as the first-called Disciple," though he can have no exclusive right to such a title, to the prejudice of that unnamed disciple-believed to be St. John-by whom he was accompanied when the Baptist drew their joint attention to the passing Saviour. A distinction which may be more readily substantiated for St. Andrew is that he was the first of all the Apostles to commence the work of evangelization :— "He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ" (John