A Psalm of the HBB

 

My heart thinketh and considereth the past,

And my spirit is moved within me.

 

Blessed be the heritage of my descent,

and the ancestry from which I am born.

For my legacy is a precious one,

yea, it is more valuable than much gold or silver.

 

For I am come from a line of people

that gave their lives for the Gospel,

and art descended from a church

That sealed its witness with blood. Selah.

 

Behold, how glorious is this inheritance!

and how precious is this endowment.

 

Yet I look and behold, and my heart is grieved

For behold, my people, they were born in fire,

Yet their hearts are as water.

Yea, their fathers were tempered like as steel,

Yet their backbones are as wax.

 

My fathers separated themselves from the world

and laid down their lives,

yet they obtained eternal life.

 

But their children are joined to the world,

and their hearts follow after its ways.

Behold, the church of my fathers is no more,

And its spirit of devotion fadeth. Selah.

 

Yet they say within themselves,

Are we not Anabaptists?

Did not our fathers’ blood flow for our faith?

 

Yet realize they not that if they were sons of the Anabaptists,

that they too should be separate from the evil world?

And know they not that if they were truly children of the faith

that they should free from its entanglements?

 

For they honor this faith and this heritage with their lips,

Yet their lives embrace not the truth,

Nor their actions its paths of sacrifice.

 

Up, O Israel! Arise, O Jacob, thou beloved of the Lord!

For thou art His church,

And thy people his chosen vessels,

And forget not the paths of thy fathers,

But reject the world,

Scorning the price,

And stand separate from its entrapment,

And touch not the unclean thing,

but honor the faith of thy fathers,

Thy holy forefathers who died to preserve its truth.

 

Amen.