For the Beauty of the Earth

Folliott S. Pierpoint, 1864

This week’s hymn is the much loved “For the Beauty of the Earth,” a song of grateful praise to God for the natural beauties around us, and for the beautiful works of His grace as made manifest in the Church. As for that natural beauty, I think there is no season quite like this one, the late summer, when it is still warm, and many a tree is bearing fruit, and the birds are still happily singing and gathering their food from God’s plenty, but there’s also sometimes a crispness in the early morning, and in cooler places you may see the first leaves turning yellow or red. And such beauties are as a stage for still greater things, the beauty of human love, and the beauty of God’s work within the hearts of men and women and children when they respond to His grace with gratitude.
I’m providing the entire hymn that the author, a young man named Folliott Pierpont, wrote in 1864, when he was inspired by the lovely countryside around him. It isn’t a sentimental immersion in trees an…