Music for the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, November 7 2021
Praise to the Holiest in the Height – Text: John Henry Newman (1801-1890) / Music: John Bacchus Dykes (1823-1876)
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Reflecting upon the death of an acquaintance, John Henry Newman wrote a poem entitled The Dream of Gerontius. Six stanzas from the poem, beginning “Praise to the holiest”, unaltered except for the repetition of stanza 1, were printed in the 1868 supplement to Hymns Ancient & Modern. Since then, nearly every hymnal has chosen it.
The son of a banker, Newman was educated at Ealing and at Trinity College, Oxford. He Became vicar at St Mary’s, Oxford, in 1828, and while there became associated with Keble, Pusey and others in the Oxford Movement. Despite the scathing attacks made upon his religious sincerity following his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Newman left the memory of a great saint, a master of English prose, and a very fine poet. The tune GERONTIUS was composed to Newman’s words by John Bacchus Dykes for Hymns Ancient & Modern.
PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise,
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways.
O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail;
And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s presence and his very self,
And essence all-divine.
O generous love! that he who smote
In Man for man the foe,
The double agony in Man
For man should undergo;
And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach his brethren, and inspire
To suffer and to die.
Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise,
In all his words most wonderful,
Most sure in all his ways.
Gerald Harder