Christ My Song - 1037
Lord, to be with thee in thine own abode - Before the Presence of His Glory (Hannah K. Burlingham/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
Before the Presence of His Glory.
John 17,24.
1. Lord, to be with thee in thine own abode,
the place prepared, where thou wilt have us dwell;
brought home unto thy Father and thy God,
where harpers harping shall thy triumphs tell,
sons of his love, heirs of his festal joy,
what bliss! how full! how pure beyond alloy! PDF - Midi
2. To gaze around in that effulgent light,
with not a mist from earth to intervene;
thy majesty, thy beauty, full in sight,
thy glory flooding all the boundless scene:
thy love in its perfection known at last:
'twill solve the long enigma of the past.
3. To read anew the story of the Cross,
conned dimly but with growing wonder now;
to hear thee tell what agonies and loss
where thine, what thorns were woven for thy brow.
How thou didst lay thy royal garments by,
and, having nothing, didst heart-broken die!
4. To hear thee leading in our midst high praise
to him whom thou hast glorified on earth:
to trace the sorrows of thy pilgrim days,
thou stranger to thy brethren from thy birth;
to know, in myriads ransomed by thy blood,
the dearest purpose of thy heart made good.
5. To search the chronicles of sovereign grace,
of wondrous mercy, of victorious love,
stored for perusal in the ordered place,
graved on the portals and the walls above;
to find, detailed in characters divine,
the whole result of God's profound design.
6. To see eternal righteousness brought in,
all hostile works of darkness done away:
to learn how thou hast made an end of sin;
to watch the Universe thy mind obey;
no longer to perceive and know "in part,"
but be like thee, and see thee as thou art.
7. To view angelic legions lowly bend
before thee, owning God's august decree,
bright messengers whom God most high doth send
to do his bidding, all adoring thee.
To worship him who sitteth on the throne,
thine incorruptibility our own.
8. To range through all the spheres of thy domain,
in life, in mind, in aim, in Spirit one;
to find thee still ineffably our gain,
in whom, through whom, the Father's will is done:
THIS – through Eternity's eventful days,
our joy, shall be, Lord Jesus Christ, thy praise.
Hannah K. Burlingham, Wayside Songs, 1901, 70-72.