O God of God! O Light of Light!

O God of God! O Light of Light!

Author: John Julian (1883)
Published in 50 hymnals

Printable scores: PDF, MusicXML
Audio files: MIDI

Representative Text

1 O God of God! O Light of Light!
Thou Prince of Peace, Thou King of kings,
To Thee, where angels know no night,
The song of praise forever rings:
To Him Who sits upon the throne,
The Lamb once slain for sinful men,
Be honor, might; all by Him won;
Glory and praise! Amen, Amen.

2 Deep in the Prophets' sacred page,
Grand in the poets' wingèd word,
Slowly in type, from age to age,
Nations beheld their coming Lord;
Till through the deep Judean night
Rang out the song, "Good-will to men!"
Hymned by the first-born sons of light,
Re-echoed now, "Good-will!" Amen.

3 That life of truth, those deeds of love,
That death of pain, 'mid hate and scorn;
These all are past, and now above,
He reigns our King! once crowned with thorn.
Lift up your heads, ye heavenly gates;
So sang his hosts, unheard by men;
Lift up your heads, for you He waits.
We lift them up! Amen, Amen!

4 Nations afar, in ignorance deep;
Isles of the sea, where darkness lay;
These hear His voice, they wake from sleep,
And throng with joy the upward way.
They cry with us, "Send forth Thy light,"
O Lamb, once slain for sinful men;
Burst Satan's bonds, O God of might;
Set all men free! Amen, Amen!

5 Sing to the Lord a glorious song,
Sing to His Name, His love forth tell;
Sing on, heaven's hosts, His praise prolong;
Sing, ye who now on earth do dwell;
Worthy the Lamb for sinners slain,
From angels, praise; and thanks from men;
Worthy the Lamb, enthroned to reign,
Glory and power! Amen, Amen!

The Hymnal: revised and enlarged as adopted by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America in the year of our Lord 1892

Author: John Julian

Born: Jan­u­a­ry 27, 1839, St. Ag­nes, Corn­wall. Died: Jan­u­a­ry 22, 1913, Thirsk, York­shire, Eng­land. Educated pri­vate­ly, Ju­li­an grad­u­at­ed from Dur­ham Un­i­ver­si­ty (MA 1887), Lam­beth (DD 1894), and How­ard Un­i­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC (LLD 1894). He took Ho­ly Or­ders in 1866, and served as Vi­car of Win­co­bank (1876-1905) and Vi­car of Top­cliff, York­shire (1905-). How­ev­er, he is best known as a hymn­ol­o­gist. The stand­ard ref­er­ence work in this field is his ma­ssive Dic­tion­ary of Hym­nol­o­gy: Or­i­gin and His­to­ry of Chris­tian Hymns and Hymn­writ­ers of All Ag­es and Na­tions, To­ge­ther with Bi­o­graph­ic­al and Cri­ti­cal No­tic… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: O God of God! O Light of Light!
Author: John Julian (1883)
Meter: 8.8.8.8 D
Language: English
Copyright: Public Domain

Notes

O God of God, O Light of Light. J. Julian. [Praise of Jesus.] Written to Sir John Goss's tune Peterborough in Mercer's Church Psalter and Hymn Book for the Sheffield Church Choirs Union Festival, April 16, 1883, and first printed in the Festival book. In 1884 it was included in Horder's Congregational Hymns, and subsequently in other collections.

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Tune

ST AGNES SCHOOL


O GROSSER GOTT (53455)


JORDAN (Barnby)

One of the 246 hymn tunes by Joseph Barnby (PHH 438), JORDAN was published in The Hymnary (1872) as a setting for "Sing to the Lord a Joyful Song." JORDAN contains several repeated phrases. Barnby originally composed the tune to be sung in harmony with phrases 5 and 7 sung in unison, although the fu…

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Timeline

Media

The Cyber Hymnal #4882
  • Adobe Acrobat image (PDF)
  • Noteworthy Composer score (NWC)
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Instances

Instances (1 - 6 of 6)
TextPage Scan

Christian Worship (1993) #85

TextPage Scan

Christian Worship #629

TextPage Scan

Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #170

TextPage Scan

Lutheran Service Book #810

Text

Lutheran Worship #83

TextScoreAudio

The Cyber Hymnal #4882

Include 44 pre-1979 instances
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