Eternal Light! Eternal Light!

Eternal Light! Eternal Light!
How pure that soul must be,
When, placed within thy searching sight,
It shrinks not, but with calm delight
Can live, and look on thee.

The spirits that surround thy throne
May bear the burning bliss;
But surely that is theirs alone
Who, undefiled, have never known
A fallen world like this.

O how shall I, whose native sphere
Is dark, whose mind is dim,
Before the Ineffable appear,
And on my naked spirit bear
The uncreated beam?

There is a way for man to rise
To that sublime abode:
An offering and a sacrifice,
A Holy Spirit's energies,
An Advocate with God:

These, these prepare us for the sight
Of holiness above:
The sons of ignorance and night
May dwell in the eternal Light,
Through the eternal Love!

Eternal Light, eternal Light. T. Binney. [Sunday.] Mr. Binney's account of this hymn, supplied in 1866 to Miller's Singers and Songs, &c, p. 457, is, "It was written about 40 years ago, and was set to music and published by Power, of the Strand, on behalf of some charitable object to which the profits went. It was some little time since set to music also by Mr. Burnett, of Highgate. It has appeared, I believe, in one or two books of sacred poetry, and in a mutilated state in a hymn-book in America." It was given in the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858, No. 103, and again in several others, in 5 stanzas of 5 lines. The hymn—"O Thou Who art enrob'd in Light," in the Oberlin, U.S., Manual of Praise, 1880, No. 77, is an altered form of this hymn, with the omission of stanza ii. Original text in Lyra Britannica, 1807, p. 63.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)