Supreme High Priest, the pilgrim's light

Representative Text

1 Supreme High-priest, the pilgrim's light,
My heart for thee prepare;
Thine image stamp, and deeply write
Thy superscription there.

2 Ah, let my forehead bear thy seal,
My arm thy badge retain,
My heart the inward witness fell
That I am born again.

3 Into thy humble mansion come,
Set up thy dwelling here.
Possess my heart, and leave no room
For sin to harbour there:

4 Ah, give me, Lord, the single eye,
Which aims at naught but thee:
I fain would live, and yet not I--
Let Jesus live in me.

5 O that the penetrating sight
And eagle's eye were mine!
Undazzled at the boundless light,
Of majesty divine;

6 That with the armies of the sky
I too may sit and sing,
Add, Saviour, to the eagle's eye,
The dove's aspiring wing.

Source: Hymns, Selected and Original: for public and private worship (1st ed.) #300

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Author: Augustus Toplady

Toplady, Augustus Montague, the author of "Rock of Ages," was born at Farnham, Surrey, November 4, 1740. His father was an officer in the British army. His mother was a woman of remarkable piety. He prepared for the university at Westminster School, and subsequently was graduated at Trinity College, Dublin. While on a visit in Ireland in his sixteenth year he was awakened and converted at a service held in a barn in Codymain. The text was Ephesians ii. 13: "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." The preacher was an illiterate but warm-hearted layman named Morris. Concerning this experience Toplady wrote: "Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should b… Go to person page >

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Text Information

Text Information

First Line:	Supreme High Priest, the pilgrim's light
Author:	Augustus Toplady
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

Supreme High Priest, the Pilgrim's Light. A. M. Toplady. [Christ the High Priest, or Lent.] First published in his Poems on Sacred Subjects, Dublin, 1759, p. 20, in 12 stanzas of 4 lines, and again in Sedgwick's reprint of Toplady's Poetical Works, 1860. In Drummond and Greville's Church of England Hymn Book, 1838, st, v.-viii. were given, unaltered, as "Ah, give me, Lord, the single eye." These stanzas have passed into later collections.

-- John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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