ODE 16.

The beauty of God's creation.

1 As the work of the husbandman is the ploughshare: and the work of the steersman is the guidance of the ship:
2 So also my work is the Psalm of the Lord: my craft and my occupation are in His praises:
3 Because His love bath nourished my heart, and even to my lips His fruits He poured out.
4 For my love is the Lord, and therefore I will sing unto Him:
5 For I am made strong in His praise, and I have faith in Him.
6 I will open my mouth and His spirit will utter in me the glory of the Lord and His beauty; the work of His hands and the operation of His fingers:
7 The multitude of His mercies and the strength of His word.
8 For the word of the Lord searches out all things, both the invisible and that which reveals His thought;
9 For the eye sees His works, and the ear hears His thought;
10 He spread out the earth and He settled the waters in the sea:
11 He measured the heavens and fixed the stars: and He established the creation and set it up:
12 And He rested from His works:
13 And created things run in their courses, and do their works:
14 And they know not how to stand and be idle; and His heavenly hosts are subject to His word.
15 The treasure-chamber of the light is the sun, and the treasury of the darkness is the night:
16 And He made the sun for the day that it may be bright, but night brings darkness over the face of the land;
17 And their alternations one to the other speak the beauty of God:
IS And there is nothing that is without the Lord; for He was before any thing came into being:
19 And the worlds were made by His word, and by the thought of His heart. Glory and honour to His name. Hallelujah.