At the end of Perelandra, the second novel in C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Tor, the king and “Adam” of the planet Venus, comes to meet and to honor the hero Ransom, from our own earth. Ransom is a professor of philology, and that of course warms my heart. Though prone to all the weaknesses of fallen man, he has done his part to avert from the woman Tinidril, the “Eve” of Venus, the calamity that befell our primal parents. When Ransom sees Tor for the first time, he is abashed by the beauty and royalty of the man, and for a moment it seems to him that he is beholding the face of the Beloved — and then he looks again and sees that it is not so, but the impression persists in his mind. The face of Jesus strikes terror into the demons, not despite his beauty but because of it. And yet the people of Galilee when Jesus walked the earth did not see it. Or maybe they did see it, and turned their eyes, and taught themselves not to make note of it. Had Jesus been only handsome in the way that any well-tanned carpenter might be, it would surely have been remarked, just as we know from their contemporaries that Socrates was a homely old fellow, that Demosthenes had a limp, that Cicero was bald, that Nero had curly copper-colored hair and tended to fat, and so forth. But how do you capture the beauty of the Son of God in words? The writers of the gospels do not even try.
Even in our fallen state, I believe with Milton that of all the objects in this physical universe, the most beautiful is not daylight, or the skies at dawn and sunset, or spring blossoms and summer flowers, or flocks grazing the hillside, but the “human face divine.” The eyes of a newborn child seem to gaze up at you as if from another world, and they are alive with all the original first flashes of thought, swifter and livelier than they may ever be again. It’s a profound mystery, the human face, the self-appearing and self-presenting of a world, the world of the person, that only God can fathom, and only love can truly search. And when we say, “Lord, make me new,” or, “A clean heart create in me, O God,” we are saying, even if we’re not thinking about it, “Let me in some small and mysterious way begin to resemble the One whose face I long to see.”
Our Hymn of the Week was but a simple poem of two stanzas, written in German for a seventeenth century Catholic hymnal. A third stanza, which is now the second in the hymn, was added in Leipzig in 1842; evidently the song was quite popular. Beginning in the 1700’s, it was sung to a Silesian melody, and when the elderly Franz Liszt used both the melody and the hymn in his oratorio, The Legend of Saint Elizabeth, that melody acquired its common name: “St. Elisabeth.” But the melody “Fairest Lord Jesus,” in F minor, is also quite moving. (Liszt was Hungarian, and the Elizabeth whose legend he composed his music for was a Hungarian princess, who as a young widow became a third-order Franciscan, as Liszt himself was, after years of high living and incredible fame. Elizabeth devoted the few years she had left to works of remarkable charity, and to give Liszt his due, he was free with his great wealth and gave on a grand scale.)
But we’re not here to talk about Hungarian princesses or pianists. In this hymn, whose English translation follows the German quite faithfully, we sing, simply, to the beloved Lord. Go to a meadow blooming with wild flowers, and listen to the birds in the distance, and watch as the wisp of clouds float across a quiet blue sky. Jesus is fairer than that. Stand at night, when there is neither the electric light nor the sound of a far-off highway to distract your eyes or puzzle your ears, and behold the heaven “sowed with stars thick as a field.” The eyes of Jesus are more beautiful than that. Think even of those spiritual beings we call angels, and think of their intellectual sublimity; they are but puddles on the shore, reflecting the beauty of the infinite Lord, whose brilliance is brighter and purer than all of them in all their numberless hosts. And yet he is here, if we seek him, and his eyes, though they see with no mistake what we are, are filled with calm, and love.
Here is a simply wonderful example of heart-felt congregational singing from The Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.
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Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, O thou of God and man the Son; Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown. Fair are the meadows, Fairer still the woodlands, Robed in the blooming garb of spring; Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer, Who makes the woeful heart to sing. Fair is the sunshine, Fairer still the moonlight, And all the twinkling, starry host: Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer Than all the angels heaven can boast.
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When I was in second grade this was the first song we learned to harmonize, although we sang it as Beautiful Savior
One of my all time favorites! So simple, so profound, always moving.