I thought I'd
share with readers this amazing short passage published in the year 1613 in a
long book in London.
Rev Samuel Purchas wrote this
amazing vision of the unity of all peoples in the worship of God.
His incomprehensible unite, which the Angells with covered
faces in their Holy, holy, holy hymnes resound and Laude in Trinitie,
hath pleased in this varietie to diversifie his workes, all serving one humane
nature, infinitely multiplyed in persons, exceedingly varied in accidents, that
wee also might serve that one-most God; the tawney Moore, black Negro,
duskie Libyan, Ash-coloured Indian, olive-coloured American, should with the
whiter Europaean become one sheepe-fold, under one great shepheard, till
this mortalitie being swallowed up of life, wee may all be one, as he
and the father are one; and (all this varietie swallowed up into an
ineffable unitie) only the language of Canaan be heard, only the
Fathers name written in their foreheads, the Lambs song in their mouths, the
victorious Palmes in their hands, and their long robes being made white in the
bloud of the Lambe, whom they follow whithersoever he goeth, heaven and
earth with their everlasting Halleluiahs, without any more distinction
of colour, Nation, language, sexe, condition, all may bee One in him
that is ONE, and only blessed for ever.
Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimage (London, 1613), 655-56.
We could write a thousand books about what we do or don't like about this passage, but it is amazing in any case. In some ways so modern, and in other ways from so very long ago.
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