MORNING HYMN by Charles Fenno Hoffman

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 31, 1879

MORNING HYMN

By Charles Fenno Hoffman

“LET THERE BE LIGHT.” The Eternal spoke, And from the abyss where darkness rode, The earliest dawn of nature broke, And light around creation flowed. The glad earth smiled to see the day, The first-born day come blushing in; The young day smiled to shed its ray Upon a world untouched by sin.

“Let there be light.” O’er heaven and earth, The God who first the day-beam poured, Uttered again his fiat forth, And shed the gospel’s light abroad; And, like the dawn, its cheering rays On rich and poor were meant to fall, Inspiring their Redeemer’s praise, In lowly cot and lordly hall.

Then come, when in the orient first Flushes the signal-light for prayer; Come with the earliest beams that burst From God’s bright throne of glory there; Come kneel to him who through the night Hath watched above thy sleeping soul, To him whose mercies, like his light, Are shed abroad from pole to pole.

—Charles Fenno Hoffman.