Description
This vibrant festival anthem by Eleanor Daley combines her own music with the traditional tune AURELIA. After three choral verses (two with organ and one unaccompanied), the final stanza invites the congregation to join in singing AURELIA under a choral descant.
Text
The church's one foundation
is Jesus Christ her Lord;
she is his new creation
by water and the word;
from heav'n he came and sought her
to be his holy bride;
with his own blood he bought her,
and for her life he died.
Elect from ev'ry nation,
yet one o'er all the earth,
her charter of salvation
one Lord, one faith, one birth,
one holy name she blesses,
partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses,
with ev'ry grace endued.
'Mid toil and tribulation
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace forevermore,
till with the vision glorious
her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious
shall be the church at rest.
Yet she on earth hath union
with God the Three in One,
and mystic sweet communion
with those whose rest is won.
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
like them, the meek and lowly,
on high may dwell with thee.
--Samuel J. Stone, 1866
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