Read an Excerpt
The Christian Book of Mystical Verse
By A. W. Tozer Wing Spread Publishers
Copyright © 1991 Zur Ltd.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60066-039-9
CHAPTER 1
Adoration of the Godhead
Eternal Power!
Eternal Power, whose high abode
Becomes the grandeur of a God:
Infinite lengths beyond the bounds
Where stars revolve their little rounds:
Thee while the first archangel sings,
He hides his face behind his wings:
And ranks of shining thrones around
Fall worshipping, and spread the ground.
Lord, what shall earth and ashes do?
We would adore our Maker too;
From sin and dust to Thee we cry,
The Great, the Holy, and the High.
Earth, from afar, hath heard Thy fame,
And worms have learned to lisp Thy Name;
But Oh the glories of Thy mind
Leave all our soaring thoughts behind.
God is in heaven, and men below:
Be short our tunes; our words be few:
A solemn reverence checks our songs,
And praise sits silent on our tongues.
ISAAC WATTS, 1674-1748
Lord of All Being
Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near.
Sun of our life, Thy quickening ray
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, Thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.
Our midnight is Thy smile withdrawn;
Our noontide is Thy gracious dawn;
Our rainbow arch, Thy mercy's sign;
All, save the clouds of sin, are Thine.
Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before Thy ever blazing throne
We ask no luster of our own.
Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1809-1894
Adoration
Almighty One! I bend in dust before Thee;
Even so veiled cherubs bend;
In calm and still devotion I adore Thee,
All-wise, all-present Friend!
Thou to the earth its emerald robes hast given,
Or curtained it in snow;
And the bright sun, and the soft moon in heaven,
Before Thy presence bow.
Thou Power sublime! whose throne is firmly seated
On stars and glowing suns;
O, could I praise Thee, could my soul, elated,
Waft Thee seraphic tones,
Had I the lyres of angels, could I bring Thee
An offering worthy Thee,
In what bright notes of glory would I sing Thee,
Blest notes of ecstasy!
Eternity! Eternity! how solemn,
How terrible the sound!
Here, leaning on thy promises, a column
Of strength, may I be found,
O, let my heart be ever Thine, while beating,
As when twill cease to beat!
Be Thou my portion, till that awful meeting
When I my God shall greet!
SIR JOHN BOWRING, 1792-1872
The Unity of God
One God! one Majesty!
There is no God but Thee!
Unbounded, unextended Unity!
Awful in unity,
O God! we worship Thee
More simply one, because supremely Three!
Dread, unbeginning One!
Single, yet not alone,
Creation hath not set Thee on a higher throne.
Unfathomable Sea!
All life is out of Thee,
And Thy life is Thy blissful Unity.
All things that from Thee run,
All works that Thou hast done,
Thou didst in honour of Thy being One.
And by Thy being One,
Ever by that alone,
Couldst Thou do, and doest, what Thou hast done.
We from Thy oneness come,
Beyond it cannot roam,
And in Thy oneness find our one eternal home.
Blest be Thy Unity!
All joys are one to me,—
The joy that there can be no other God than Thee!
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, 1814-1863
The Holy Trinity
O Blessed Trinity!
Thy children dare to lift their hearts to Thee,
And bless Thy triple Majesty!
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
Holy, unfathomable, infinite,
Thou art all Life and Love and Light.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
God of a thousand attributes! we see
That there is no one good but Thee.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
In our astonished reverence we confess
Thine uncreated loveliness.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
O simplest Majesty! O Three in One!
Thou art for ever God alone.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
The Fountain of the Godhead, in repose,
For ever rests, for ever flows.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
O Unbegotten Father! give us tears
To quench our love, to calm our fears.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
Bright Son! who art the Father's mind displayed,
Thou art begotten and not made.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
Coequal Spirit! wondrous Paraclete!
By Thee the Godhead is complete.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
We praise Thee, bless Thee, worship Thee as one.
Yet Three are on the single Throne.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
In the deep darkness of prayer's stillest night
We worship Thee blinded with light.
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
O Blessed Trinity!
Oh would that we could die of love for Thee,
Incomparable Trinity!
Holy Trinity!
Blessed Equal Three,
One God, we praise Thee.
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, 1814-1863
Majesty Divine!
Full of glory, full of wonders,
Majesty Divine!
Mid Thine everlasting thunders
How Thy lightnings shine!
Shoreless Ocean! who shall sound Thee?
Thine own eternity is round Thee,
Majesty Divine!
Timeless, spaceless, single, lonely,
Yet sublimely Three,
Thou art grandly, always, only
God in Unity!
Lone in grandeur, lone in glory,
Who shall tell Thy wondrous story,
Awful Trinity?
Speechlessly, without beginning,
Sun that never rose!
Vast, adorable, and winning,
Day that hath no close!
Bliss from Thine own glory tasting,
Everliving, everlasting,
Life that never grows!
Thine own Self for ever filling
With self-kindled flame,
In Thyself Thou art distilling
Unctions without name!
Without worshipping of creatures
Without veiling of Thy features,
God always the same!
In Thy praise of Self untiring
Thy perfections shine;
Self-sufficient, self-admiring,
Such life must be Thine;
Glorifying Self, yet blameless
With a sanctity all shameless
It is so divine!
'Mid Thine uncreated morning,
Like a trembling star
I behold creation's dawning
Glimmering from afar;
Nothing giving, nothing taking,
Nothing changing, nothing breaking,
Waiting at time's bar!
I with life and love diurnal
See myself in Thee,
All embalmed in love eternal,
Floating in Thy sea:
'Mid Thine uncreated whiteness
I behold Thy glory's brightness
Feed itself on me.
Splendours upon splendours beaming
Change and intertwine;
Glories over glories streaming
All translucent shine!
Blessings, praises adorations
Greet Thee from the trembling nations
Majesty Divine!
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, 1814-1863
The Vision of the Godhead
Unchanging and Unchangeable, before angelic eyes,
The Vision of the Godhead in its tranquil beauty lies;
And, like a city lighted up all gloriously within,
Its countless lustres glance and gleam, and sweetest worship win.
On the Unbegotten Father, awful well-spring of the Three,
On the Sole Begotten Son's coequal Majesty.
On Him eternally breathed forth from Father and from Son.
The spirits gaze with fixed amaze, and unreckoned ages run.
Chorus:
Myriad, myriad angels raise
Happy hymns of wondering praise,
Ever through eternal days,
Before the Holy Trinity,
One Undivided Three!
Still the Fountain of the Godhead giveth forth eternal being:
Still begetting, unbegotten, still His own perfection seeing,
Still limiting His own loved Self with His dear coequal Spirit,
No change comes o'er that blissful Life, no shadow passeth near it.
And beautiful dread Attributes, all manifold and bright,
Now thousands seem, now lose themselves in one self-living light;
And far in that deep Life of God, in harmony complete,
Like crowned kings, all opposite perfections take their seat.
And in that ungrowing vision nothing deepens, nothing brightens,
But the living Life of God perpetually lightens;
And created life is nothing but a radiant shadow fleeing
From the unapproached lustres of that Unbeginning Being;
Spirits wise and deep have watched that everlasting Ocean,
And never o'er its lucid field hath rippled faintest motion;
In glory undistinguished never have the Three seemed One,
Nor ever in divided streams the Single Essence run.
There reigns the Eternal Father, in His lone prerogatives,
And, in the Father's Mind, the Son, all self-existing, lives,
With Him, their mutual Jubilee, that deepest depth of love,
Lifegiving Life of two-fold source, the many gifted Dove!
O Bountiful! O Beautiful! can Power or Wisdom add
Fresh features to a life, so munificent and glad?
Can even uncreated Love, ye angels! give a hue
Which can ever make the Unchanging and Unchangeable look new?
The Mercy of the Merciful is equal to Their Might,
As wondrous as Their Love, and as Their Wisdom bright!
As They, who out of nothing called creation at the first,
In everlasting purposes Their own design had nursed,
As They, who in their solitude, Three Persons, once abode,
Vouchsafed of Their abundance to become creation's God,—
What They owed not to Themselves They stooped to owe to man,
And pledged Their glory to him, in an unimaginable plan.
See! deep within the glowing depth of that Eternal Light.
What change hath come, what vision new transports angelic sight?
A creature can it be, in uncreated bliss?
A novelty in God? Oh what nameless thing is this?
The beauty of the Father's Power is o'er it brightly shed,
The sweetness of the Spirit's Love is unction on its head;
In the wisdom of the Son it plays its wondrous part,
While it lives the loving life of a real Human heart!
A Heart that hath a Mother, and a treasure of red blood,
A Heart that man can pray to, and feed upon for food!
In the brightness of the Godhead is its marvellous abode,
A change in the Unchanging, creation touching God!
Ye spirits blest, in endless rest, who on that Vision gaze,
Salute the Sacred Heart with all your worshipful amaze,
And adore, while with ecstatic skill the Three in One ye scan,
The Mercy that hath planted there that blessed Heart of Man!
All tranquilly, all tranquilly, doth that Blissful Vision last,
And Its brightness o'er immortalized creation will it cast;
Ungrowing and unfading, Its pure Essence doth it keep,
In the deepest of those depths where all are infinitely deep;
Unchanging and Unchangeable as It hath ever been,
As It was before that Human heart was there by angels seen,
So is it at this very hour, so will it ever be,
With that Human Heart within It, beating hot with love of me!
Chorus:
Myriad, myriad angels raise
Happy hymns of wondering praise,
Ever through eternal days,
Before the Holy Trinity,
One Undivided Three!
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, 1814-1863
The Thought of God
The thought of God, the thought of Thee,
Who liest in my heart,
And yet beyond imagined space
Outstretched and present art,
The thought of Thee, above, below,
Around me and within,
Is more to me than health and wealth,
Or love of kith and kin.
The thought of God is like the tree
Beneath whose shade I lie,
And watch the fleets of snowy clouds
Sail o'er the silent sky.
'Tis like that soft invading light,
Which in all darkness shines,
The thread that through life's sombre web
In golden pattern twines.
It is a thought which ever makes
Life's sweetest smiles from tears,
And is a daybreak to our hopes,
A sunset to our fears;
One while it bids the tears to flow,
Then wipes them from the eyes,
Most often fills our souls with joy,
And always sanctifies.
Within a thought so great, our souls
Little and modest grow,
And, by its vastness awed, we learn
The art of walking slow.
The wild flower on the messy ground
Scarce bends its pliant form,
When overhead the autumnal wood
Is thundering like a storm.
So is it with our humbled souls
Down in the thought of God,
Scarce conscious in their sober peace
Of the wild storms abroad.
To think of Thee is almost prayer,
And is outspoken praise;
And pain can even passive thoughts
To actual worship raise.
O Lord! I live always in pain,
My life's sad undersong,
Pain in itself not hard to bear,
But hard to bear so long.
Little sometimes weighs more than much,
When it has no relief;
A joyless life is worse to bear
Than one of active grief.
And yet, O Lord! a suffering life
One grand ascent may dare;
Penance, not self-imposed, can make
The whole of life a prayer.
All murmurs lie inside Thy Will
Which are to Thee addressed;
To suffer for Thee is our work,
To think of Thee our rest.
FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, 1814-1863
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Christian Book of Mystical Verse by A. W. Tozer. Copyright © 1991 Zur Ltd.. Excerpted by permission of Wing Spread Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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