The Great Unknown

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Why dost Thou pass unheeded

Author: C. P. C.; Translator: Frances Bevan (1899)
Published in 1 hymnal

Representative Text

Why dost Thou pass unheeded,
Treading with piercèd feet
The halls of the kingly palace,
The busy street?
Oh marvellous in Thy beauty,
Crowned with the light of God,
Why fall they not down to worship
Where Thou has trod?
Why are Thy hands extended
Beseeching whilst men pass by
With their empty words and their laughter,
Yet passing on to die?
Unseen, unknown, unregarded,
Calling and waiting yet—
They hear Thy knock and they tremble—
They hear, and they forget.
And Thou in the midst art standing
Of old and for ever the same—
Thou hearest their songs and their jesting,
But not Thy Name.
The thirty-three years forgotten
Of the weary way Thou hast trod—
Thou art but a name unwelcome,
O Saviour God!
Yet amongst the highways and hedges,
Amongst the lame and the blind,
The poor and the maimed and the outcast,
Still dost Thou seek and find—
There by the wayside lying
The eyes of Thy love can see
The wounded, the naked, the dying,
Too helpless to come to Thee.
So art Thou watching and waiting
Till the wedding is furnished with guests—
And the last of the sorrowful singeth,
And the last of the weary rests.

Source: Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others (Second Series) #68

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Author: C. P. C.

(no biographical information available about C. P. C..) Go to person page >

Translator: Frances Bevan

Bevan, Emma Frances, née Shuttleworth, daughter of the Rev. Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, Warden of New Coll., Oxford, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, was born at Oxford, Sept. 25, 1827, and was married to Mr. R. C. L. Bevan, of the Lombard Street banking firm, in 1856. Mrs. Bevan published in 1858 a series of translations from the German as Songs of Eternal Life (Lond., Hamilton, Adams, & Co.), in a volume which, from its unusual size and comparative costliness, has received less attention than it deserves, for the trs. are decidedly above the average in merit. A number have come into common use, but almost always without her name, the best known being those noted under “O Gott, O Geist, O Licht dea Lebens," and "Jedes Herz will etwas… Go to person page >

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