Thursday, July 14, 2011

gather us in

We don't sing this one. Wonder why...


Gather us in


Gather us in, O Love that fillest all;
Gather our rival faiths within thy fold;
Rend each one’s temple veil, and bid it fall,
That we may know that thou hast been of old.

Gather us in —- we worship only thee;
In varied names we stretch a common hand;
In diverse forms a common soul we see;
In many ships we seek one spirit land.

Each sees one color of thy rainbow light,
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven;
Thou art the fullness of our partial sight;
We are not perfect till we find the seven.

Some seek a parent in the heav’ns above;
Some wish a human image to adore;
Some crave a spirit vast as life and love;
Within thy mansions we have all and more.


George Matheson

4 comments:

  1. Huh? Is he really saying all paths lead to heaven? Very Scary

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  2. Yeah. Matheson was a funny guy. Compelling preacher, apparently. Went blind. Got more and more liberal as he grew old.

    Wrote some really good hymns. This isn't one of them.

    [I have a lot of traffic coming to my blog to find out about George Matheson. If you google him, two of my posts are on the first page.]

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  3. I'm pretty sure I sang that hymn at school!

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  4. So weird. From the first verse I almost thought he was offering a prayer of sorts for the conversion of those in other faiths, but then it all went south from there ...

    Ali (something is wrong with my blogger thing in letting me comment lately).

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