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JESUS, SON OF MARY, FOUNT OF LIFE ALONE

Scripture Verse

We who have believed do enter into rest. Hebrews 4:3

Introduction

Words: Ed­mund S. Pal­mer, 1902. Pal­mer was on the staff of the Uni­ver­si­ties Miss­ion in Zan­zi­bar, 1893–1901, and wrote the hymn while there. It was in­clud­ed as (Ye­su, Bin Mar­ia­mu) in the Mis­sion’s Swa­hi­li Hymn Book. Pal­mer trans­lat­ed the words from Swa­hi­li to Eng­lish in 1902, when they were first print­ed pri­vate­ly.

Music: Ado­ro De­vo­te Be­ne­dic­tine plain­song, Mode V, 13th Cen­tu­ry (🔊 ).

Alternate Tune:

  • Corpus Do­mi­ni G. E. W. Ma­let, in The Eng­lish Hym­nal (Lon­don: Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 1906), num­ber 356 (🔊 )

If you know where to get a good pho­to of Pal­mer (head & shoul­ders, at least 200×300 pix­els), would you send us an e-mail?

Lyrics

Jesus, Son of Ma­ry, fount of life alone,
Here we hail Thee pre­sent on Thine al­tar throne.
Humbly we ad­ore Thee, Lord of end­less might,
In the mys­tic sym­bols veiled from earth­ly sight.

Think, O Lord, in mer­cy on the souls of those
Who, in faith gone from us, now in death re­pose.
Here ’mid stress and con­flict toils can nev­er cease;
There, the war­fare ended, bid them rest in peace.

Often were they wound­ed in the dead­ly strife;
Heal them, good Phy­si­cian, with the balm of life.
Every taint of ev­il, frail­ty and de­cay,
Good and gra­cious Sav­ior, cleanse and purge away.