support in conflict) we shall not be confounded. This is not the place to enter upon a discussion of its authorship. There is something touching in the very uncertainty that attends it, showing the carelessness of human praise of the great poet whose burning words it is. And all the theories have got their own interest about them; so that whether it was composed, as the common tradition of the Church would incline us to believe, at the baptism of S. Augustine by S. Ambrose, a joint composition of the two blessed saints; or whether it is, as would seem more probable, the work of the latter only; or whether it be the work, as some believe, of an unknown Abondius, who, save in this hymn, has no memorial; or whether it be that of S. Hilary of Arles, or of some of the famous Lerinensian religious, to whom we owe the celebrated Commonitory, and the still greater blessing of the crushing of the Pelagian heresy in this country by SS. Germanus and Lupus; or whether it is the work of Nicetius, Bishop of Treves, or Hilary of Poictiers, thus connecting it with the Gallican Church, with which, even to very late times, we have had the most interesting relations; or whether, as some suppose, it is of a Greek ori. ginal, thus giving it an additional degree of Catholicity; we have, on any supposition, an antecedent interest in its composition and character. As a fact, it has been the voice of joy and gladness in the dwellings of the righteous since the fifth century. It is men 1 Those who wish to go into the subject of the authorship of the Te Deum, should read the learned notice in Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus, vol. ii. p. 276. tioned in the rules of S. Cæsarius of Arles, his successor, S. Aurelian, and in that of the great S. Benedict; and all over the west is now said or sung daily in the divine service. But besides this daily devotional use, it has also been used as a public acknowledgment of mercies vouchsafed, and victories won in the name of the LORD of Hosts; and the thanks which the mighty conquerors of the earth have rendered to Him Who was the Giver thereof, have ever been rendered, accompanied by the charm of the most heavenly of all arts, in the sublime language of the Te Deum. Commentary on the Te Deum. WE PRAISE THEE, O GOD: WE ACKNOWLEDGE THEE ΤΟ BE THE LORD. THE obligation of praising Almighty God arises from no necessity which He has for our worship of this kind, but from the duty which we, His creatures, owe to Him. We do it, not to express our thoughts with regard to Him, but to excite ourselves and others to worship and adore Him. We do not speak to Him as we do to man, to whom such address is neces B |