Introduction
Words: Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems 1739.
Music: Angels’ Song Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) (🔊 pdf nwc).
I am the light of the world.
John 8:12
Words: Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems 1739.
Music: Angels’ Song Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) (🔊 pdf nwc).
George Eliot makes Dinah Morris sing this hymn as she sweeps and dusts the room in which Adam Bede had been writing the night before.
‘She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweetbriar, and the bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very low tone—like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very closely—one of Charles Wesley’s hymns, Eternal Beam of light divine.’
Telford, p. 292
Eternal beam of light divine,
Fountain of unexhausted love,
In whom the Father’s glories shine
Through earth beneath, and Heaven above;
Jesu, the weary wanderer’s rest,
Give me Thy easy yoke to bear,
With steadfast patience arm my breast,
With spotless love, and lowly fear.
Thankful I take the cup from Thee,
Prepared and mingled by Thy skill,
Though bitter to the taste it be,
Powerful the wounded soul to heal.
Be Thou, O Rock of ages, nigh!
So shall each murmuring thought be gone,
And grief, and fear, and care, shall fly,
As clouds before the mid-day sun.
Speak to my warring passions, Peace!
Say to my trembling heart, Be still!
Thy power my strength and fortress is,
For all things serve Thy sovereign will.
O death! where is thy sting? Where now
Thy boasted victory, O grave?
Who shall contend with God? or who
Can hurt whom God delights to save?