Witness to the Coming Light

Another important part of the Advent season is the story of John the Baptist, the second cousin of Jesus. John's was an unexpected birth, as told in Luke 1:5-24. His father Zechariah received a visit from the angel Gabriel to announce the birth and foretell some of the child's destiny. Elizabeth, his mother, was in the midst of her pregnancy when her kinswoman Mary came for a visit, to tell of her own angelic visit and another coming child. In Luke 1: 39-45, we hear that Elizabeth's yet-unborn child “leapt in her womb” at hearing Mary's greeting.

These aspects of John's story, are incorporated into this Latin hymn from the eighth century (Praecursor altus luminis) written by the Venerable Bede, a scholar and writer known more for his historical and theological writings than his handful of hymns. It was translated by John Mason Neale and first appeared in his Hymnal Noted. (1854).

The great forerunner of the morn,
The herald of the Word, is born:
And faithful hearts shall never fail
With thanks and praise his light to hail.

With heavenly message Gabriel came,
That John should be that herald’s name,
And with prophetic utterance told
His actions great and manifold.

John, still unborn, yet gave aright
His witness to the coming Light;
And Christ, the Sun of all the earth,
Fulfilled that witness at his birth.

But why should mortal accents raise
The hymn of John the Baptist’s praise?
Of whom, or e’er his course was run,
Spake God unto the Promised One?

“Behold, my herald, who shall go
Before thy face thy way to show,
And shine, as with the day-star’s gleam,
Before thine own eternal beam.”

All praise to our Creator be,
All praise, eternal Christ, to thee,
Whom with the Spirit we adore
Forever and forevermore.

the Venerable Bede, 8th cent.
tr. John Mason Neale, 1854; alt.
Tune: HERONGATE (L.M.)
English traditional melody
arr. Ralph Vaughan WIlliams, 1906

The window below is in St. Thomas's Church in Colnbrook, Berkshire, showing Elizabeth and her young son John. The banner around her depicts her most famous quotation, spoken to Mary at the great news: Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Little John is carrying the sign Vox clamantis in deserto (a voice crying in the wilderness).




One (Liturgical) Year Ago: Our Refuge and Our Great Reward

One (Calendar) Year Ago: William Walsham How

Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Elizabeth Rundle Charles (January 2, 1828 - March 28, 1896) was a popular author in Victorian England. Nicholas Smith, in Songs From the Hearts of Women (1903) writes that her books "covered a wide field, including fiction, travels, history, biography, general religious literature, translations from the Latin, Greek, Swedish, and German languages, poetry, and hymnology." Though she was an Anglican by birth, her interests and her education pursued broader Christian themes.

One of her greatest successes was a novel (published anonymously) about Martin Luther and the Reformation, The Chronicles of the Schön­berg-Cot­ta Fam­i­ly (1863); many of her other books were published as "by the author of" that novel, such as the one pictured above, Christian Life in England in the Olden Time (1866).

She translated hymns from several languages (and therefore several denominations), many of them appearing in The Voice of Christian Life in Song (1859). She writes in the introduction of that book:

"It is trusted that the treasures of sacred song, faintly reflected in these translations, may serve to illustrate that unity of faith which binds one age to another through the Communion of Saints."

Her translated hymns seem to have survived into modern times better than her original ones (e.g., three to none in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982), but I find her original texts very intriguing, such as this one.

Around a table, not a tomb,
Christ willed our gathering place to be;
When, going to prepare our home,
Our Savior said,"Remember me."

We kneel around no sculptured stone,
To mark the place where Jesus lay;
Empty the tomb, the angels gone,
The stone forever rolled away.

No, sculptured stones are for the dead!
The three sad days of death are o'er;
Thou art the Life, our living Head,
Our living Light forevermore!

Thus round thy table, not thy tomb,
We keep the sacred feast with thee;
Until within our promised home
Our endless gathering place shall be.

Elizabeth Rundle Charles, 1862; alt.
Tune: HERONGATE (L.M.)
English traditional melody;
arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906

Probably one reason I like Charles is that she also wrote verse and prose about the women of the Bible. I've talked before about how so many of those women went unnamed, perhaps due to the unconscious sexism of the time the scriptures were written. In Songs Old and New (1887), she advances a different theory in this excerpt from her poem The Unnamed Women:

He would not have the sullied name
Once fondly spoken in a home,
A mark for strangers' righteous blame,
Branded through every age to come.

And thus we only speak of them
As those on whom His mercies meet --
"She whom the Lord would not condemn,"
And "She who bathed with tears His feet"

I don't actually agree with her (the motive is still somewhat sexist, though chivalrous instead of unthinking) but the theory is interesting nonetheless.