No human eyes Thy face may see;
No human thought Thy form may know;
But all creation dwells in Thee,
And Thy great life through all doth flow!
And yet, O strange and wondrous thought!
Thou art a God who hearest prayer,
And every heart with sorrow fraught
To seek Thy present aid may dare.
And though most weak our efforts seem
Into one creed these thoughts to bind,
And vain the intellectual dream,
To see and know the Eternal Mind,—
Yet Thou wilt turn them not aside,
Who cannot solve Thy life divine,
But would give up all reason’s pride
To know their hearts approved by Thine.
And Thine unceasing love gave birth
To our dear Lord, Thy holy Son,
Who left a perfect proof on earth,
That Duty, Love, and Truth are one.
So, though we faint on life’s dark hill,
And Thought grow weak, and Knowledge flee,
Yet Faith shall teach us courage still,
And Love shall guide us on to Thee!
Source: A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (15th ed.) #76
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, M.A., was born at Cambridge, U.S.A., Dec. 22, 1823, and educated at Harvard. From 1847 to 1850 he was Pastor of an Unitarian Church at Newburyport, and from 1852 to 1858 at Worcester. In 1858 he retired from the Ministry, and devoted himself to literature. During the Rebellion he was colonel of the first negro regiment raised in South Carolina. In addition to being for some time a leading contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, he published Outdoor Papers, 1863; Malbone, 1869; and other works. During his residence at the Harvard Divinity School he contributed the following hymns to Longfellow and Johnson's Book of Hymns, 1846:—
1. No human eyes Thy face may see. God known through love.
2. The land our fathe… Go to person page >
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