LET earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.
He laid his glory by,
He wrapped him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days he here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s name.
See in that infant’s face
The depths of deity
And labour while ye gaze
To sound the mystery;
In vain; ye angels gaze no more,
But fall, and silently adore.
Unsearchable the love
That hath the Saviour brought;
The grace is far above
Or man or angels thought;
Suffice for us that God, we know,
Our God, is manifest below.
He deigns in flesh to appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know,
For God is manifest below.
Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see his glorious face:
Then shall his love be fully showed,
And man shall then be lost in God.
Charles Wesley
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
fatprophet 12.28.08 at 8:53 am
I am using this hymn this morning at one of the biggest churches in our circuit - I wanted to have a Wesley hymn that was appropriate for today and this was the one
Richard 12.28.08 at 1:49 pm
I used it myself in Mold. One of C. Wesley’s finest!
fatprophet 12.28.08 at 1:59 pm
Went very well sung by a congreagtion of around 80 people which was quite surprising for the Sunday between Christmas and New year
Richard 12.28.08 at 2:04 pm
They must have looked at the Plan and seen who was preaching
I had the opposite effect…
fatprophet 12.28.08 at 10:38 pm
You are soooo kind - seriously there are always some people who do that and at this particular church there is one person who always seems to be missing when I am there, although today they were preaching at another church in the circuit.
I suppose the old saying about pleasing some of the people some of the time is always applicable to those of us who take services. I had three carols in the service this morning and had a very interesting conversation afterwards with a lady who said that she was really pleased as normally they only get carols on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I said I had adopted the view that as the plan said Christmas 1 carols were still OK.