Beauty of Holiness

What glories surrounding my Savior I see

Author: James Relly
Published in 5 hymnals

Representative Text

1 What glories surrounding my Saviour I see!
What beauties triumphant, my Jesus in thee!
What glory or power may with thee compare,
Or thy generation, what tongue can declare?
The heavens are silent and cannot decide,
This myst'ry only belongs to the bride.

2 Thou hast, my dear Saviour, in glory and truth,
From th' womb of the morning, the dew of thy youth:
The morning of love, eternal and bright,
With honour bedew'd thee, and nourish'd thee right;
When secretly thou wast existing above,
In God, as the word, and the son of his love.

3 Thine offspring for number as sands on the shore,
Or morning dew drops on the earth scatter'd o'er,
Were then as thy mystery, fulness, and truth,
All gather'd in thee as the dew of thy youth:
In thee as thy splendor of youth did we shine;
In beauties of holiness, godlike, divine.

4 And when we had fallen from heaven to earth,
And could not return there, but thro' a new birth;
Our nature as spoiled in Adam who fell,
As sunk in our reason and senses to hell,
We then were in myst'ry preserved in thee;
Our earthy tho' fallen, our heav'nly was free.

5 As the second Adam, then didst thou appear,
The Lord from on high for to banish our fear;
Thou foundest us sunk in the earthy lost man,
And him thou assumedst to finish the plan,
That plan where 'twas fix'd that transgression should cease,
And all our creation restor'd to thy peace.

6 This hast thou effected by shedding thy blood,
Hast brought back our nature in union with God.
From the earthy man thou hast set us free,
Has brought us to live and to triumph in thee.
'Tis here we receive our intelligence sure,
Of our preservation in thee always pure.


Source: Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs: selected and original, designed for the use of the Church Universal in public and private devotion #XLI

Author: James Relly

James Relly was born about 1722 at Jeffreston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and died in 1778. He was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening ushered in by George Whitefield. He worked under George Whitefield as a Calvinistic Methodist preacher and missionary. However, Whitefield and Relly separated ways over Relly's seemingly universalist teaching that all humanity was elect (i.e. saved) when Christ took the punishment for all sin when he died. He also departed from both the Calvinists and Methodists by taking the doctrine of Justification further, in teaching that believers no longer sin and the Law's sole purpose is to condemn humanity and point them to Christ. He was the mentor of John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Ch… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: What glories surrounding my Savior I see
Title: Beauty of Holiness
Author: James Relly
Meter: 11.11.11.11.11.11
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

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Instances

Instances (1 - 5 of 5)

Devotional Melodies, Adapted to Social Worship #d108

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Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs #19

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Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs #XLI

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Christian Hymns, Poems, and Spiritual Songs #I.XXXVII

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