I hear the words of love

In an ever changing world - never for the better - it’s good to remember Jesus is our only stability. The same yesterday and today and forever! God bless. Maranatha!

Horatius Bonar has had representatives among the clergy of the Church of Scotland during more than two centuries. His father James Bonar, second solicitor of excise in Edinburg, was a man of intellectual power, varied learning, and deep piety. Horatius Bonar was born in Edinburgh, December 19, 1808 and educated at the High School and the University of Edinburgh. After completing his studies, he was licensed to preach and became assistant to Reverend John Lewis, minister of Saint James, Leith. He was ordained minister of the North Parish, Kelso, on November 30, 1837. He left the established church at the Great Disruption also known as the Disruption of 1843; a schism in which 450 evangelical ministers broke away from the Church of Scotland. He was awarded the doctorate of divinity by the University of Aberdeen in 1853. In 1866 he was transferred to the Chalmers Memorial Church, the Grange, Edinburgh; and in 1883 he was chosen Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

Dr. Bonar’s hymns and poems were, he tells us, composed through varied personal circumstances; in many cases he cannot recall what those circumstances were; they also appeared in several publications, but nearly all have been published or re-published in the Songs of the Wilderness, 1843-44. The Bible Hymns Book, 1845. Hymns Original and Selected, 1846. Hymns of the Faith and Hope: first series, 1857; second series, 1861; third series, 1866. The Song of the New Creation, 1872. My Old Letters, a long poem, 1877. Hymns of the Nativity, 1879. Communion Hymns, 1881. In addition to numerous prose works, he has also edited the New Jerusalem; a Hymn of the Olden Time, 1852.

Dr. Bonar’s poems – – including many beautiful lyrics, several Psalm versions, and translations from the Greek and Latin, a large number of hymns, and a long meditative poem – – are very numerous. Dr. Bonar’s scholarship is thorough and extensive; and his poems show the grace of style and wealth of allusion (an indirect reference especially in literature) which were the fruit of his spiritual experiences. Affected somewhat by current literary moods, still less by the influence of other religious poetry, they reveal great susceptibility to the emotional power which the phases of natural and spiritual life exercise; the phases of natural and spiritual life used mainly for depicting spiritual life, and handled for this purpose with greater delicacy of touch more so than the Olney Hymns and with less conscious purpose that in the Christian Year. As a result of the susceptibility and from habitual looking at the Second Coming of Christ as the era of this world’s true bliss, his hymns and poems are distinguished by a tone of pensive reflection, which could be mistaken for pessimism. But they are more than the record of emotion; another element is supplied by his intellectual and personal grasp of divine truth, these truths particularly: – – the gift of a Substitute, our Blessed Savior; Divine grace, righteous yet free and universal in offer; immediate reliance upon the privilege of immediate assurance through that grace; communion with God, especially in the Lord’s Supper, the privilege of cherishing the highest conceptions which Scripture warrants; and finally the Second Coming of our Lord: by his celebration of these and other truths as a source and strength of spiritual life, his hymns are protected from the blight of unhealthy, sentimental introspection.

In Great Britain and America nearly 100 of Dr. Bonar’s hymns are in common use. They are found in almost all modern hymnals; four in Hymns Ancient & Modern to more than 20 in the American Songs of the Sanctuary, New York., 1865–72. The most widely known are, “A few more years shall roll;” “Come Lord and tarry not;” “Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face;” “I heard the voice of Jesus say;” “ The Church has waited long;” and “Thy way, not mine, O Lord.”

(Hymnary.org)

Words and message remaining wonderful Jesus our Source.

I change, He changes not; The Christ can never die; His love, not mine, the resting-place, His truth, not mine, the tie. What an Amazing God we serve! Thank You Lord!