Читать книгу Best Loved Hymns and Readings - Martin Manser - Страница 26

This hymn was the work of a curate at Windsor who intended it as a tribute to his contemporary Bishop Gray of Capetown. Gray had attracted Stone’s admiration after speaking out against the liberal Bishop Colenso of Natal, who stood accused of questioning the church’s traditional stand on a number of issues – hence the reference to schisms in the third verse. The original hymn included an extra verse (long since dropped) that included the lines ‘Though there be those who hate her/And false sons in her pale/Against or foe or traitor/She ever shall prevail.’

The Church’s one foundation

Is Jesus Christ, her Lord;

She is His new creation

By water and the word:

From heaven He came and sought her

To be His holy bride;

With His own blood He bought her,

And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,

Yet one o’er all the earth,

Her charter of salvation

One Lord, one faith, one birth:

One holy name she blesses,

Partakes one holy food,

And to one hope she presses

With every grace endued.

Though with a scornful wonder

Men see her sore oppressed,

By schisms rent asunder,

By heresies distressed;

Yet saints their watch are keeping,

Their cry goes up, ‘How long?’

And soon the night of weeping

Shall be the morn of song.

‘Mid toil and tribulation,

And tumult of her war,

She waits the consummation

Of peace for evermore;

Till with the vision glorious

Her longing eyes are blest,

And the great Church victorious

Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union

With God the Three in One,

And mystic sweet communion

With those whose rest is won:

O happy ones and holy!

Lord, give us grace that we

Like them, the meek and lowly,

On high may dwell with Thee.

Samuel John Stone (1839-1900)