A HYMN TO ALL-FATHER GOD.
WHO, then, may sing Thee praise of
Thee, or praise to Thee ?
WHITHER, again, am I to turn my eyes
to sing Thy praise ; above, below, within,
without ?
There is no way, no place is there about
Thee, nor any other thing of things that are.
All are in Thee ; all are from Thee; THE
Thou Who givest all and takest naught,Â
for Thou hast all and naught is there HERMES.
Thou hast not.
And WHEN, Father, shall I hymn
Thee ? For none can seize Thy hour or
time.
FOR WHAT, again, shall I sing hymn ?
For things that Thou hast made, or things
Thou hast not ? For things Thou hast
made manifest, or things Thou hast
concealed ?
How, further, shall I hymn Thee? As
being of myself? As having something
of mine own ? As being other ?
For that Thou art whatever I may be ;
Thou art whatever I may do ; Thou art
whatever I may speak.
For Thou art all, and there is nothing
else which Thou art not.
Thou art all that which doth exist, and
Thou art what doth not exist, Mind when
Thou thinkest, and FatJier when Thou
makest, and God when Thou dost energize,
and Good and Maker of all things (ii., 105).
Who is capable of singing God s praises, when it requires the whole universe of
Being, and the countless universes of all the beings that are, to sing the praises
of God in any truly adequate manner ?
Who, then, what man, has the under standing wherewith to praise God fitly, when though in his separated conscious ness he knows he knows not who he is, he yet begins to realize that the “who he really is” must inevitably be God and no other?
In what manner can the Divine sing praises of itself as of some
other than itself, when “I” and “Thou” must essentially be one, and the utter
ance of praise as of some other one seems to be a departure from the blessed state
of that Divine intuition.
Is God again to be limited by space and spatial considerations ?
Is there a “whither”; in respect to God ?
Certainly there cannot be any special place where the Divine may be said to be, for He is in all places, and all places and spaces are in Him.
He cannot be said to be in the heart more than in any other organ or limb of the body, for He is in all
things and all things are in Him.
Equally so is there no special direction in which the eyes of the mind can turn, for He is to be seen in every direction of thought in which the mind can proceed ; and if
we say there are evil turnings of the mind, evil thoughts, he who has experienced this change of gnostic ten dency” will reply that the only evil he now knows is not to be conscious that God is in all things, and that with the dawning of this true self-consciousness the right side of every thought presents itself with the wrong side in the joy of pure thinking.
The idea of the next praise-giving is perhaps somewhat difficult to follow, as it appears to be a contradiction in terms.
But in these sublime heights of human thought all is seeming contradiction and paradox, because it is the state of reconciliation of all opposites.
It might be said that if God is He who gives all things equally so must He be He who receives all things; but the antithesis can be equally well declared by the thought of all and nothing as by the idea of giving and receiving, for God manifestly takes nothing, in that He has no need of anything, seeing that He already has all things.
And if God cannot be limited by space, equally so is it impossible that He can
be conditioned by time.
Therefore the true Gnostic Te Deum cannot be sung at any one time only, but must be sung eternally; the man must transform him self into a perpetual song of praise in every thought and word and deed.
Nor can the Deity be hymned for one thing, rather than for another, for all things are equally from God, and he who would make himself like unto God should have no preferences, but should view all things with equal eye, and embrace them all with equal love.
On account of what, again, as regards himself in distinction from the world, shall the Gnostic praise God ?
Shall he hymn the Divine for the fact of his own self-existence, or because of the
powers and faculties and possessions that are his, or because he is other than, presumably, the many who are not in Gnosis ?
The uselessness of all such distinctions becomes apparent in the doubt that the very asking of such questions awakens, and the devotee of Wisdom brushes them all aside in splendid outburst : " For that Thou art whatever I may be ; Thou art whatever I may do ; Thou art whatever I may speakThere is no separation in the reality of things.
What ever the man is in this ecstatic state, it is the Being of God in him ; whatever
the man does, it is the Working of God in him ; whatever the man speaks, it is the Word of God in him.
Nay, more than this ; to such a consciousness God is in very truth all things both manifest and hidden.
God is Mind when we think of Him as thinking, devising and planning; God is Father wnen we conceive Him as willing and OF creating and bringing all things into existence ; and God is Good when we regard Him as energizing or inworking
or breathing in all things to give them Light and Life.
He is the Good or End of all things, even as He is the Beginning or Maker of all.
~G.R.S. Mead, The Hymns of Hermes, Page 44-50
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