For this is really to believe in God. Not merely to believe that
there is a God, but to know what God is like, and to know that He is
worthy to be believed in; worthy to be trusted, honoured, loved with
heart and mind and soul, because we know that He is worthy of our
love.

And this, we have a right to say, these three young men did, or
whosoever wrote this hymn; and that as a reward for their faith in
God, there was granted to them that deep insight into the meaning of
the world about them, which shines out through every verse of this
hymn.

Deep? I tell you, my friends, that this hymn is so deep, that it is
too deep for the shallow brains of which the world is full now-a-
days, who fancy that they know all about heaven and earth, just
because they happen to have been born now, and not two hundred years
ago. To such this old hymn means nothing; it is in their eyes merely
an old-fashioned figure of speech to call on sun and stars, green
herb and creeping thing, to praise and bless God. Nevertheless, the
old hymn stands in our prayer-books, as a precious heir-loom to our
children; and long may it stand. Though we may forget its meaning,
yet perhaps our children after us will recollect it once more, and
say with their hearts, what we now, I fear, only say with our lips
and should not say at all, if it was not put into our months by the
Prayer-book.

Do you not understand what I mean? Then think of this:-

If we were writing a hymn about God, should we dare to say to the