Christ My Song - 792
On, O beloved children - Pilgrim song (Gerhard Tersteegen/Frances Bevan/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)
Pilgrim song.
Deuteronomy 31,8.
1. On, O beloved children,
the evening is at hand,
and desolate and fearful
the solitary land.
Take heart! the rest eternal
awaits our weary feet;
from strength to strength press onwards,
the end, how passing sweet! (PDF - Midi)
2. Lo, we can tread rejoicing
the narrow pilgrim road;
we know the voice that calls us,
we know our faithful God.
Come, children, on to glory!
with every face set fast
towards the golden towers
where we shall rest at last.
3. It was with voice of singing
we left the land of night,
to pass in glorious music
far onward out of sight.
O children, was it sorrow?
Though thousand worlds be lost,
our eyes have looked on Jesus,
and thus we count the cost.
4. The praising and the blaming,
the storehouse and the mart,
the mourning and the feasting,
the glory and the art,
the wisdom and the cunning,
left far amid the gloom;
we may not look behind us,
for we are going home.
5. Across the will of nature
leads on the path of God;
not where the flesh delighteth
the feet of Jesus trod.
O bliss to leave behind us
the fetters of the slave,
to leave o u r s e l v e s behind us,
the grave-clothes and the grave!
6. To speed, unburdened pilgrims,
glad, empty-handed, free;
to cross the trackless deserts,
and walk upon the sea;
as strangers among strangers,
no home beneath the sun;
how soon the wanderings ended,
the endless rest begun!
7. We pass the children playing,
for evening shades fall fast;
we pass the wayside flowers –
God's Paradise at last!
If now the path be narrow
and steep and rough and lone,
if crags and tangles cross it,
praise God! we will go on.
8. We follow in his footsteps;
what if our feet be torn?
Where he has marked the pathway
all hail the briar and thorn!
Scarce seen, scarce heard, unreckoned,
despised, defamed, unknown,
or heard but by our singing,
On, children! ever on!
Frances Bevan, Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso and others 1, 1899, 3-6. After Gerhard Tersteegen.