Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

"Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise" is a Christian hymn with words by Walter Chalmers Smith, usually sung to the tune, "St. Denio", originally a Welsh ballad tune, which became a hymn (under the name "Palestrina") in Caniadau y Cyssegr (1839) edited by John Roberts of Henllan (1807-1876).[1] Of this hymn, musicologist Erik Routley has written:

"[Immortal, Invisible] should give the reader a moment's pause. Most readers will think they know this hymn, the work of another Free Kirk minister. But it never now appears as its author wrote it, and a closer look at it in its fuller form shows that it was by no means designed to be one of those general hymns of praise that the parson slams into the praise-list when he is in too much of a hurry to think of anything else but a hymn about the reading of Scripture. Just occasionally editorial tinkering changes the whole personality of a hymn; it has certainly done so here."[2]

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
Walter Chalmers Smith
GenreHymn
Written1867
TextWalter Chalmers Smith
Based on1 Timothy 1:17
Meter11.11.11.11
Melody"St. Denio"

Lyrics

gollark: The borrow checker.
gollark: I do, personally, believe in causality.
gollark: Well, not to ignore, to just say "this is fine".
gollark: Which is just not a particularly sensible belief system, or one which you can actually seriously follow for serious lengths of time.
gollark: Okay, I'm here.Basically, I consider stoicism stupid because it's saying "everything is fine, let's just ignore it and hope it goes away".

References

  1. Jacqui James, Between the Lines: Sources for Singing the Living Tradition, 2nd edition (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2001), 35.
  2. Erik Routley, A Panorama of Christian Hynmnody (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1979), 132. When first published in Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life (1867), the hymn had six verses. https://archive.org/details/hymnschristandc00smitgoog (pp. 210–211).
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