Saturday, September 10, 2022

333. Hymn for Epiphany 6 (Series A)

The texts for this installment in "Hymns for the Sundays of the LSB 3-year Lectionary" (fit 13 of 174) are Deuteronomy 30:15-20 (which I just heard this past Sunday with "Proper 18" of Series C), 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 and Matthew 5:21-37 – another Gospel lesson that I'm going to ignore because I just wrote this, and at any rate, this, this, and this also apply.

Dear brethren, are you fleshly,
At war with flesh and blood?
Or are you weaned but freshly,
Still shunning solid food?
Like men, not babes, be walking;
In God's full counsel run.
Bear no divisive talking,
But in the Lord be one.

For God sent some to plant you
And some to fertilize;
But growth is His to grant you
Through means that He supplies.
You work as God, within you,
Lends pow'r and acts as Guide;
Then He perfects it, when you
Stray daily from His side.

Therefore, be not so mulish,
Set in your fleshly ways;
Repent of habits foolish,
That God might bless your days.
With two ways set before you—
One saintly, one for knaves—
Choose Him whose blood lies o'er you;
Go, follow Him who saves!

The tune is HORA NOVISSIMA (above) by Samuel S. Wesley (†1876), which I have been privately calling "Pseudo-Aurelia" for many years because my only source for it was Lutheran Hymnary 612, "Brief life is here our portion," and LHy misidentifies it as AURELIA. Thank God for hymnary.org, which came through with a result when I typed in the tune's incipit, revealing that it was also paired with "The world is very evil" (a different cento of the same hymn), and correctly identifed, in The Evangelical Hymnal of 1880.

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