Frederick Willaim Faber (1814 – 1863)
English hymn writer and theologian.
Hark! Hark! my soul, angelic songs are swelling
O’er earth’s green fields and ocean’s wave-beat shore;
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling
Of that new life when sin shall be no more.
O majesty unspeakable and dread!
Wert thou less mighty than Thou art,
Thou wert, O Lord, too great for our belief,
Too little for our heart.
There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face, but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stoop not to decipher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the.least half of the lesson earth has to give.
Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.
Labour itself is but a sorrowful song,
The protest of the weak against the strong.
Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains
Thou hast the largest share,
And that which is unbearable,
Tis Thine, not ours to bear.
What another being is life when we have found out our Father ; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encouragement of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radiance, and the stars of night as if the beginning of the beatific vision; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so reposeful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.
If our love were but more simple,
We should take Him at His word;
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the sweetness of the Lord.
The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone,
Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan.
For right is right, since God is God,
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
They always win who side with God.
I have no cares, O blessed Will!
For all my cares are Thine;
I live in triumph, Lord, for Thou
Hast made Thy triumph mine.
Labor is sweet, for Thou hast toiled,
And care is light, for Thou hast cared;
Let not our works with self be soiled,
Nor in unsimple ways ensnared.
Through life's long day and death's dark night,
O gentle Jesus! be our light.
O Paradise! O Paradise!
Who doth not crave for rest?
Who would not seek the happy land
Where they that love are blest?
Faith is letting down our nets into the transparent deeps at the Divine command, not knowing what we shall take.
Is the scrupulous attention I am paying to the government of my tongue at all proportioned to that tremendous truth revealed through St. James, that if I do not bridle my tongue, all my religion is vain?
See! he sinks
Without a word; and his ensanguined bier
Is vacant in the west, while far and near
Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks,
Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry
Amid thy cloud-built streets.
Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory.
Love's secret is to be always doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such little ones.
The world is growing old;
Who would not be at rest and free
Where love is never cold?