God made thee mightily, my love

God made thee mightily, my love,
He stretched his hands out of his rest
And lit the star of east and west
Brooding o’er darkness like a dove.
God made thee mightily, my love.

God made thee patiently, my sweet,
Out of all the stars he chose a star;
He made it red with sunset bar
And green with greeting for thy feet.
God made thee mightily, my sweet.

Published in: on April 27, 2011 at 3:18 pm  Leave a Comment  

“The first day of a new creation”

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body. There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars.  For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human.  The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages.  In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

The Everlasting Man (1925).

Published in: on April 20, 2011 at 7:34 am  Comments (1)  

“The child unborn”

As Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child could be hidden from Herod — so the child unborn is still hidden from the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is left; and they seek his life to take it away.

Eugenics and Other Evils (1922).

Published in: on April 13, 2011 at 8:13 am  Leave a Comment