Quotes from Cecil Frances Alexander

All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.

He gave us eyes to see them, And lips that we might tell How great is God Almighty, Who has made all things well.

God hath his mysteries of grace, Ways that we cannot tell, He hides them deep, like the secret sleep Of him he loved so well.

He guides us into pastures green, He leads to bowers of bliss, Our Father lives, the God unseen, and Christ our Shepherd is.

When the friends we love the best Lie in their churchyard bed, We must not cry too bitterly Over the happy dead.

The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And order'd their estate.

Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He.

There is a green hill far away, outside a city wall, where our dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all. We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear, but we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there. He died that we might be forgiven, he died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood.

So when the friends we love the best lie in their churchyard bed, we must not cry too bitterly over the happy dead; because, for our dear Saviour's sake, our sins are all forgiven; and Christians only fall asleep to wake again in Heaven.

We praise Thee, Lord, of all the earth, for love and joy, for light and mirth, for every charm of sense and right, and blessings boundless as Thy might.... But most we praise the love that gave thine own dear Son to seek and save, for joy all other joys excelling, for purest light and life indwelling.

Do no sinful action, speak no angry word; ye belong to Jesus, children of the Lord.

How rarely boyhood loves to paint in glowing tints his future bright, a picture where no line is faint--whose very clouds are touch'd with light. And girlhood hails a world unknown and reads it in her own glad dreams, as lilies see themselves alone reflected in their azure streams. But rosy clouds that morning brings, ere noon may deepen into thunder--and life's dark stream has sterner things than silver lilies growing under.

Now the dreary night is done, Comes again the glorious sun, Crimson clouds, and silver white, Wait upon his breaking light.

When Jesus came to earth of old, He came in weakness and in woe; He wore no form of angel mould, But took our nature poor and low. But when he cometh back once more, Then shall be set the great white Throne; And earth and heaven shall flee before The face of Him that sits thereon.

God, whose earth is touch'd with beauty / Christ, who praised the lilies gay / Sweet the service, fair the duty / That we offer here today.

O Son of God, in glory crown'd, The Judge ordain'd of quick and dead; O Son of Man, so pitying found For all the tears Thy people shed; Be with us in this darken'd place, This weary, restless, dangerous night; And teach, O teach us by Thy grace, To struggle onward into light.

There's not a child so small and weak but has his little cross to take, his little work of love and praise that he may do for Jesus' sake.

He guides us into pastures green, He leads to bowers of bliss, Our Father lives, the God unseen, and Christ our Shepherd is.

For He is our childhood's pattern, day by day like us He grew, He was little, weak, and helpless, tears and smiles like us He knew.

Because to us in Baptism, a new life He hath given, a better birth than that of earth, and made us heirs of Heaven.

The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And order'd their estate.

Once in royal David's cityStood a lowly cattle shed,Where a mother laid her babyIn a manger for his bed:Mary was that mother mild,Jesus Christ her little child.