Prayer of St. Chrysostom.
“Granting us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come, life everlasting.”
—Prayer Book.
Oh! that our World became one choral hymn
Chanted as by incarnate Seraphim,
Which, pausing never,
And deepening ever,
Mounted and mingled with those strains that roll
Round the heaven-Throne of Him, of all the Spring and Soul.
Oh! that accordant Earth, by Common Prayer
Her loving Oneness in the world could share,
And thus defy
That master-lie,—
That Creeds are choice, and Churches chance-made things,
Featured, and form'd alone from Man's imaginings!
Union is life, and life in union dwells;
Each works on each, by love's re-active spells:
But discord—death!
Whose serpent-breath
Envenoms with contaminating guile
The moral powers within, and makes them vain and vile;
Since deep in Godhead
true foundations lie
For that dread Sacrament of Unity,
Which binds us all
To Him we call
Head of the “Body,” in Whose life
each tone
Seems like an echoing throb, which thus repeats His Own.
Heaven is all Love, and Harmony, and Law,
Symmetric Holiness without a flaw;
And, did we yearn
By love to learn,—
Intenser concord would each soul inspire
As flame meets answ'ring flame, and so, augments the fire!
All thrilling foretastes of millenial joy
Sectarian novelties at once destroy;
And where they reign
In harsh disdain,
Mangled and marr'd, just unities depart,
And heathen Self becomes the Satan of the heart.
Thee we invoke, then, Lord of grace, and gift!
And far above the heavens our prayer uplift,
That, more and more
We may adore
Father, and Son, and sempiternal Spirit,
And feel the Church is One, by Jesu's dying merit.
Blest Paraclete! from Whom pure unions flow,
More than Thy Self not mercy can bestow;
And less than Thee
Will never be
Enough, to fill the vast abyss which lies
In famish'd hearts that need what Christ alone supplies.
