A child, a youth, a man

A child, a youth, a man

Author: James Montgomery
Published in 1 hymnal

Representative Text

A child, a youth, a man,
The whole of life below!
Our time a breath, our course a span;
Whence come we? whither go?

Whence come we?--From the womb
Of dark eternity;
And thither go we, through the tomb,--
Behold a mystery!

217
For though with worms and dust
His mortal relics lie,
Death may not hold or harm the just;
The spirit cannot die.

On angels' wings afar,
'Tis, by a path unknown,
Beyond the range of sun or star,
Caught up before the throne:--

At rest in Paradise,
With Him in bliss to live,
Who bought it with so great a price,
Heaven could no higher give:--

Till at the trumpet's sound,
When soul and body meet,
They twain are one again, and found
In Christ, a saint complete.

By His good Spirit taught,
While train'd on earth, may we
Be thus by grace to glory brought,
And immortality.

Sacred Poems and Hymns

Author: James Montgomery

James Montgomery (b. Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, 1771; d. Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, 1854), the son of Moravian parents who died on a West Indies mission field while he was in boarding school, Montgomery inherited a strong religious bent, a passion for missions, and an independent mind. He was editor of the Sheffield Iris (1796-1827), a newspaper that sometimes espoused radical causes. Montgomery was imprisoned briefly when he printed a song that celebrated the fall of the Bastille and again when he described a riot in Sheffield that reflected unfavorably on a military commander. He also protested against slavery, the lot of boy chimney sweeps, and lotteries. Associated with Christians of various persuasions, Montgomery supported missio… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: A child, a youth, a man
Author: James Montgomery
Meter: 6.6.8.6
Language: English

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Sacred Poems and Hymns #217

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