Angels and ministers, spirits of grace

1 Angels and ministers, spirits of grace,
Friends of the children, beholding God’s face,
Moving like thought to us through the beyond,
Molded in beauty, and free from oud bond!

2 Messengers clad in the swiftness of light,
Subtle as flame, and creative in might,
Helmed with the truth and with charity shod,
Wilding the wind of the purpose of God!

3 Earth’s myriad creatures live after their kind,
Dumb, in the life of the body confined;
You are pure spirit, but we here below,
Linked in both orders, are tossed to and fro.

4 You do God’s bidding, unshaken and strong;
We are distraught ‘twixt the right and the wrong;
Yet would we soar as the bird from the mesh,
Freed from the weakness and wonder of flesh.

5 We too shall join you as comrades in grace,
Here but a little below you in place;
Then, when we climb from our lowness in worth,
We too shall herald good will upon earth.


Source: The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America 1940 #122