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Hymn score of: Oh, oneness beyond all that words can tell! - One Body (Horatius Bonar/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)

Christ My Song - 497

Oh, oneness beyond all that words can tell! - One Body
(Horatius Bonar/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)

One Body.

1. Oh, oneness beyond all that words can tell!
  Oneness all human, and yet all divine;
oneness which doth all onenesses excel,
  which cannot be expressed by earthly sign. PDF - Midi

2. These bodies are the members of the Lord:
  ours, and yet his, for use and honour too;
in sympathy and love and sweet accord
  so one, that nought that oneness can undo.

3. In us that Spirit dwells that dwells in him,
  the Spirit of the Father and the Son;
though poor the temple, and the glory dim,
  still does that Spirit claim it for his own.

4. Oh, holy oneness between earth and heaven,
  each is the other, and yet not the same.
Not fellowship alone to us is given,
  but unity of nature and of name!

5. He still the Son of God on yonder throne,
  and we the sons of earth, yet dwelling here;
yet we with him, he with us truly one,
  as if one heart were ours, one home, one sphere.

6. In all our sorrows doth he sorrow still,
  in all our joys he doth rejoice the more;
he with his fulness doth our being fill,
  and we our sighs into his bosom pour.

7. These bodies then are his: he doth them use;
  so let him use them as it seemeth good.
These members all are his; shall we abuse,
  for earthly vileness, vessels cleansed with blood?

8. These eyes are his, these ears, these lips, this tongue:
  they are all his far more than they are ours;
shall we pollute them with earth's sin and wrong,
  or waste in vain delights these God-given powers?

9. These hands are his; shall they not do his work?
  These feet are his; let them his errands run.
Shall, in this frame, the foe of goodness lurk?
  Shall he usurp the consecrated throne?

10. These members now are weak and pained and poor;
  they cannot shun corruption's silent gloom:
deformed and sickly, past all earthly cure;
  before them lie the deathbed and the tomb.

11. Yet full before them spreads the quickening hope
  of glad deliverance from this mortal clay;
when, from the darkness of the grave brought up,
  they share the splendour of celestial day.

12. And shall the members of a risen Lord
  forget the height of their celestial kin?
Join fellowship with what they once abhorred,
  take on the yoke and wear the chain of sin?

13. Upon his holy throne these members yet
  shall all be seated in that day when he,
the Head of the great Unity, shall sit
  with them to share one common royalty.

14. Be ye then holy; so the Master wills!
  He speaketh; let us hear his gracious voice.
Us with his holy life he daily fills,
  so in that holiness let us rejoice!

Horatius Bonar, Hymns of the Nativity, 1879, 93-95.

            PDF - Midi