Source and Fount of All Creation
SATB and Organ. Source and Fount of All Creation was written by Peter Baelz (1923-2000), priest, philosopher, academic, and one-time dean of Durham Cathedral in England. This stirring tribute to the winning love of God and reconciliation with humanity has been set in four-parts with a soaring descant by Robert Benson in the quintessential high-Anglican style.
Source and fount of all creation,
Pour thy Spirit from above
On the bearers of thine image,
Offspring of a human love.
Human hopes and human graces
Break beneath the weight of sin;
Fear and envy wrench asunder
World without and self within.
Human love is unavailing
Counter-weight to sin and strife;
Love of God alone can hold us
On the way that leads to life.
Praised be God, whose Son our Saviour
Human nature has restored,
Living, dying, raised in glory,
to the likeness of its Lord.
Trace, O Christ, salvation's pattern,
God and sinner reconciled,
In an all-embracing story:
New creation, new-born child.
Word incarnate, world's Redeemer,
Here in us thy work repeat,
Signed and sealed thine own for ever,
Till the pattern stands complete.
Christ our universal Saviour,
Nature's poet, nature's priest,
Through life's troubled waters bring us
to the eucharistic feast,
Where rejoicing saint and sinner
Praise the Lord of time and space,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Fount of being, source of grace.