Placide Cappeau and John Sullivan Dwight: Let us worship the One who knows our needs

“O Holy Night”

1. O holy night! the stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth,
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn,
Fall on your knees! Oh hear the angels voices
O night divine! O night when Christ was born,
O night divine! O night, O night divine!

2. Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by his cradle we stand,
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here came the wise men from the Orient land.
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger,
In all our trials born to be our friend,
He knows our need, to our weakness no stranger;
Behold your King! before the lowly bend,
Behold your King! your King! before Him bend.

3. Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love, and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother;
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise his Holy name,
Christ is the Lord, then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory, ever more proclaim,
His power and glory, ever more proclaim.

Placide Cappeau (1808-1877) poet and John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893) translator. Updated by Cincinnati Opera Festival, 1882.

“When I turn my attention to God and face him, I turn my attention away from those things now behind me—things that are not God, things that restrict and bind me, keeping me from giving everything that I am to him who deserves all my love. When I turn like this I am penitent, turning from the old, “dead” way of life, to the new, life-giving existence that comes only from God.”

15 Days of Prayer with St. Bernadette of Lourdes by François Vayne (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2009) 51.

“All true needs–such as food, drink, and companionship–are satiable. Illegitimate wants–pride, envy, greed–are insatiable. By their nature they cannot be satisfied. In that sense, materialism is the opium of the people. Enough is never enough. Greater quantities are required for satisfaction, and each increment proves inadequate the next time. That is the horror of the giant in John Bunyan and the wicked witch in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia who give their victims food that causes even greater hunger. The idolatries that promise wealth without end draw adherents as the tavern draws alcoholics…That is the sense in which the love of money is the root of all evils (1 Tim 6:10).”

Herbert Schlossberg in Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990) 107-108.

“That man is of a noble and elevated spirit who mercifully and generously scatters his gifts upon all, and rejoices when he has an opportunity of doing good and giving pleasure to everybody without thinking of being rewarded for it.”

St. John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) in My Life in Christ (London: Cassell and Company, 1897) 105.

“It is because Christians do not know their own relation to God of absolute poverty and helplessness that they have no sense of the need of absolute and unceasing dependence, or the unspeakable blessedness of continual waiting on God.”

Andrew Murray in Waiting on God (Renaissance Classics, 2012) 7.

“Sir, the nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance, we cannot evade it, it is now an object placed before us, we cannot pass it. We may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we cannot turn aside so as to avoid seeing it; for it is brought now so directly before our eyes that this House must decide, and must justify to all the world, and to their own consciences, the rectitude of the grounds and principles of their decision.”

From William Wilberforce’s speech on abolition of the slave trade, including his 12 resolutions, delivered before the House of Commons in London – May 12, 1789.

“I trust, therefore, I have shown that upon every ground the total abolition ought to take place.”

From William Wilberforce’s speech on abolition of the slave trade, including his 12 resolutions, delivered before the House of Commons in London – May 12, 1789.

You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. Acts 10:37-38

“Wherever the sun shines, let us go round the world with him, diffusing our beneficence; but let us not traffic, only that we may set kings against their subjects, subjects against their kings, sowing discord in every village, fear and terror in every family, setting millions of our fellow-creatures a hunting each other for slaves, creating fairs and markets for human flesh, through one whole continent of the world, and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the baseness and iniquity of such a traffic.”

From William Wilberforce’s speech on abolition of the slave trade, including his 12 resolutions, delivered before the House of Commons in London – May 12, 1789.

“Let us put an end at once to this inhuman traffic. Let us stop this effusion of human blood. The true way to virtue is by withdrawing from temptation. Let us then withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud, violence, cruelty, and injustice, which the slave trade furnishes.”

From William Wilberforce’s speech on abolition of the slave trade, including his 12 resolutions, delivered before the House of Commons in London – May 12, 1789.

“It is a trade in its principle most inevitably calculated to spread disunion among the African princes, to sow the seeds of every mischief, to inspire enmity, to destroy humanity. And it is found in practice, by the most abundant testimony, to have had the effect in Africa of carrying misery, devastation, and ruin wherever its baneful influence has extended.”

From William Wilberforce’s speech on abolition of the slave trade, including his 12 resolutions, delivered before the House of Commons in London – May 12, 1789.