Sunday Hymn

On my heart this morning: This hymn was written by Frederick M. Lehman. He wrote this song in 1917 in Pas­a­de­na, Cal­i­fornia, and it was pub­lished inSongs That Are Dif­fer­ent, Vol­ume 2, 1919. 

1. The love of God is greater far
   Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
   It goes beyond the highest star,
   And reaches to the lowest hell;
   The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
   God gave His Son to win;
   His erring child He reconciled,
   And pardoned from his sin.
   • Refrain:
     Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
     How measureless and strong!
     It shall forevermore endure—
     The saints’ and angels’ song.
2. When years of time shall pass away,
   And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
   When men who here refuse to pray,
   On rocks and hills and mountains call,
   God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
   All measureless and strong;
   Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
   The saints’ and angels’ song.
3. Could we with ink the ocean fill,
   And were the skies of parchment made,
   Were every stalk on earth a quill,
   And every man a scribe by trade;
   To write the love of God above
   Would drain the ocean dry;
   Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
   Though stretched from sky to sky.

This last verse was originally a poem - penciled [in Aramaic] on the wall of a narrow room in an insane asylum by a man said to have been demented. He wrote these lines during a period of sanity. The profound words were discovered when they laid him in his coffin. These words became the Jewish poem Haddamut in 1050 - by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany; they have been translated into at least 18 languages. It is said that Lehman wrote the rest of the hymn to highlight this last verse.