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Clement of Alexandria
Serene light of the Holy Glory
Of the Father Everlasting,
Jesus Christ:
Having come to the setting of the sun,
And seeing the evening light,
We praise the Father and the Son,
And the Holy Spirit of God.
It behooveth to praise Thee,
At all times with holy songs,
Son of God, who hast given life;
Therefore the world glorifieth Thee.
The modern Italians, at sunset, recite the Ave Maria, which has been imposed upon them by mediæval Rome. Nothing but the coincidence of the hour reminds us of the ancient hymn which it has superseded; and a healthy mind, one would think, would note the contrast. This pure “hymn to Christ as God,” and to the Godhead in unity, gives place to an act of worship addressed to the creature, more than to the Creator. One might indeed call this Ave Maria the eventide hymn of modern Italy; but the scatter-brain processes of Dr. Bunsen come out in the strange reversal of thought, by which he would throw back the utterly incongruous title of its Italian substitute upon a primitive hymn to the Trinity,—“the Ave-Maria hymn, as we might call it from the present Italian custom,” etc. The strange confusion of ideas which constantly characterizes this author, whenever some association, however remote, strikes his fancy, is well illustrated by this instance. Let it serve as a caution in following his lead. See Hippolytus (vol. iii. pp. 68, 138, etc.) and also Routh (Reliquiæ, vol. iii. pp. 515–520). Concerning the morning hymn, Gloria in Excelsis, which Dr. Bunsen gives from the Alexandrian ms., and to which reference is made in his Analecta Ante-Nicæna (iii. 86), see Warren’s Celtic Liturgy (p. 197, and index references. Ed. Oxford, 1881).
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