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Sunday Hymn: “Lo! He comes with clouds descending”
by Scott Gilbreath ~ November 30th, 2008
This morning’s recessional hymn on the First Sunday in Advent at Christ Church, Windsor. Hymn #60 in The Book of Common Praise (1938), official hymn book for the whole of The Church of England in Canada (later Anglican Church of Canada).
Lo! he comes, with clouds descending,
Once for favoured sinners slain;
Thousand thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!
Christ appears on earth again.Every eye shall now behold him,
Robed in dreadful majesty;
Those who set at nought and sold him,
Pierced, and nailed him to the tree,
Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,
Shall the true Messiah see.Those dear tokens of his Passion
Still his dazzling body bears,
Cause of endless exultation
To his ransomed worshipers;
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars!Now redemption, long expected,
See in solemn pomp appear;
All his saints, by man rejected,
Now shall meet him in the air:
Alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!
See the day of God appear!Yea, amen, let all adore thee,
High on thine eternal throne;
Saviour, take the power and glory;
Claim the kingdom for thine own:
Alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!
Thou shalt reign, and thou alone.
Words: John Cennick, 1752;
as altered by Charles Wesley 1758; and then by Martin Madan, 1760.
Music: Helmsley.
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