Devotional for the Ninth Day of Christmas

Salisbury Cathedral

Let earth and heaven combine, 

Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs Divine 

The incarnate Deity,

Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made man.

He laid His glory by, 

He wrap’d Him in our clay,

Unmark’d by human eye 

The latent Godhead lay;

Infant of days He here became,

And bore the mild Immanuel’s name.

See in that Infant’s face 

The depths of Deity,

And labour while ye gaze 

To sound the mystery:

In vain; ye angels, gaze no more,

But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love 

That hath the Saviour brought,

The grace is far above 

Or man or angel’s thought;

Suffice for us, that God we know,

Our God is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh to appear, 

Widest extremes to join,

To bring our vileness near, 

And make us all Divine;

And we the life of God shall know,

For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love, 

And sanctified by grace,

We shall from earth remove, 

And see His glorious face;

His love shall then be fully show’d,

And man shall all be lost in God. 

~ Charles Wesley