We have been haunted, these past few weeks, by an hymnic earworm, consisting largely of the phrase "and at Cana Wedding-Guest blah blah blah palsied limb and fainting soul." These are not the worst lyrics to have in mind while preaching through the Sundays following the Epiphany, but the mental hodgepodge created by those blah blah blahs almost demands that we return to the source, and think about the lovely song they have muddled in our minds. All the more so since the song, when we sang it in worship lat Sunday, didn't quite match our memory. Has the earworm turned?
The hymn is Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, by the Rt. Rev. Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885), late Bishop of Lincoln and, not incidentally, nephew of the poet. Those of us burdened with Evangelical Lutheran Worship may find it there as # 310. The hymn in question was not written during his episcopate, but years earlier. Having been booted from the headmastership of Harrow on accusations of high-churchiness and suspicions of Popery, Wordsworth was made a canon of Westminster Abbey and vicar of the brilliantly named parish of Stanford-in-the-Vale cum Goosey.
It was at Goosey that Wordsworth wrote and published The Holy Year; or Hymns for Sundays and Holydays [sic] throughout the year, and for other Occasions in 1863. The title explains quite nicely what are the contents of the book. Our hymn is appointed for the Sixth Sunday following Pentecost, and we offer you a transcription of its original text.
1. SONGS of thankfulness and praise,
Jesu, Lord, to Thee we raise ;
Manifested by the Star
To the Sages from afar ;
Branch of Royal David's stem
In Thy Birth at Bethlehem.
Anthems be to Thee addrest,
God in Man made manifest.
2. Manifest at Jordan's stream,
Prophet, Priest, and King supreme ;
And at Cana Wedding-Guest
In Thy Godhead manifest ;
Manifest in power Divine,
Changing Water into Wine ;
Anthems be to Thee addrest,
God in Man made manifest.
3. Manifest in making whole
Palsied limbs and fainting soul ;
Manifest in valiant fight,
Quelling all the Devil's might ;
Manifest in gracious will,
Ever bringing good from ill :
Anthems be to Thee addrest,
God in Man made manifest
4. Sun and Moon shall darken’d be,
Stars shall fall, the heavens shall flee ;
Christ will then like lightning shine.
All will see His glorious Sign :
All will then the Trumpet hear;
All will see the Judge appear.
Thou by all wilt be confest,
God in Man made manifest.
5. Grant us grace to see Thee, Lord,
Mirror'd in Thy holy Word;
May we imitate Thee now,
And be pure, as pure art Thou ;
That we like to Thee may be
At Thy great Epiphany ;
And may praise Thee, ever blest,
God in Man made manifest.
Amen.
This is quite close to the text found in modern hymnals. The most obvious difference is Stanza 4, which -- in many decades of singing the hymn -- we had never before encountered. It does not appear in ELW, LBW or SBH, nor in the PECUSA's Hymnal 1940.
Wordsworth himself explains the function of the hymn in a prefatory note. It is a
[R]ecapitulation of the successive Manifestations of Christ which have already been presented in the Services of the former weeks ...; and Anticipation of of that future great and glorious Epiphany, at which Christ will be manifested to all, when he will appear again to Judge the World.
That is to say, his intent is to sum of the various manifestations presented by the Gospel readings up to and including the Sixth Sunday.
However, it should be noted that Wordsworth does not touch on certain of the Gospels. Present are the Appearance to the Magi (Feast of Epiphany); Wedding at Cana (Second Sunday); healing the leper and the centurion's servant (Third Sunday); "quelling all the Devil's might" refers to the wheat and the tares (Fifth); and the Matthean "Little Apocalypse" on the Sixth Sunday, which was present in Wordsworth's lectionary but is not in ours. Missing, however, are the Presentation in the Temple (which was read on the Second Sunday in Wordsworth's BCP), and any discernible reference to stilling the storm (Fourth).
Curiously, the final stanza, about discerning Christ in the words of Scripture, would fit quite nicely with the story of Jesus reading in the Nazareth synagogue, which is read on the fourth Sunday after Epiphany in the RCL, but did not appear among the seasonal readings of the old BCP lectionary.
Apart from the deletion of a stanza, the other changes to this hymn are easy to understand. "Jesus" for the archaic "Jesu" is scarcely noticeable. "God in Man," while not wrong -- Jesus was indisputably a man -- is neither exhaustive, nor true to the Nicene formula , nor fit for contemporary tastes, and the LBW-era "God in Flesh" is a meet substitution. Wordsworth himself changed "mirror'd" to "present" in a later revision.
But what about those palsied limbs? They have been changed, in ELW, to a "weakened body." The idea is certainly the same, and there's no apparent theological matter at stake. But as a matter of poetry, we think "palsied limb"s is considerably more specific.
"Palsy," a medical term for partial or complete paralysis -- a weakening, sure enough -- is an old word, coming into English by way of Old French, which got it from the Latins, who (in typical fashion) lifted it from the Greeks. Those stout Hellenes used a word for "loosening" (para + lyein) to indicate disability or enfeebling, and their use has remained strikingly consistent through the ages. It's not a bad word, and not so far as we can discern a pejorative one. It is old, familiar, and clinically apt.
As for "body," it is simply less specific than "limb." Like "weaken," it isn't wrongly used here -- but it does help to make the expression a bit more vague. We think it is an unnecessary and ever so slightly unhelpful change to a fine and carefully-wrought hymn.
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