Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1884 — Origin of the Te Deum. [ARTICLE]

Origin of the Te Deum.

When Augustine, he who was afterwards bishop of Hippo, and who is known alike by Protestants and Catholics as St. Augustine, was in the Baptistry ol Milan, in the year 336, and Ambrose, bishop of Milan, was pouring over him the purifying water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Ambrose in his great joy over the conversion of such a notable sinner as was Augustine, broke forth into the jubilant cry—“We pi a so Thee, O God!” Whereupon Augustine replied—"We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord." .And so the grand hymn to the Trinity which we now call the Te Deum was antiphonally extemporized by these two. Such is the beautiful traditon of the origin of the Te Duem; but alas! it is based upon a very slight foundation. The authorities which set forth this view of the authorship have been impeached, and the stronger opinion is that the Te Deum antedates Ambrose ' and Augustine. There is a Greek morning hymn in the Alexandrine MS. of the Bible. This morning hymn is made up of parts of the Te Deum and the Gloria Excelsis, and is still in daily use in the Greek Church. St. Cypripian, in his treaties “On the Mortality,” etc:, then (A. D. 352,j afllietincr. 1 Carthage, refers to quotations strikingly similar to the language of the Te Deum. Blunt, in his “Annotated Pravi-r Book,” concludes that it represents the ancient Greek morning hymn of the Alexandrine manusciint and that in its present form it is a composition of the fourth or fifth century; while Mr. Hersli, in Ids “Church Dictionary," gives it a Galicap origin. It has been variously assigned to Abondius. Nicetrns, Bishop of Triers, Hilary of Poict eries and Hilary of Aries. But whether its composition be assigned to Ambrose and Augnstine, or to any of the foregoing, or whether it be founded on the Greek morning hymn, or whether its origin be ante-Nic-ene or post-Nicene, it accords exactly with the Niceo-Constantinopoli-tan creel' The same spirit is breathed forth from both, and the Te Denm is as truly a hymn to the Holy Trinity as the creed is a .dogmatic statement of the belief in that same Trinity.—Leslie's Magazine. For troublesome cold in the head the following suggestion may be good: Put a teaßpoonfui of powdered camphor in a pitcher of boiling water and inhale from the pitcher. Practice this for ten minutes at a time, and once an hour if convenient. FLATrERV is the .destruction of all f;ood fellowship; it is like a qualmish iqnor in the midst of a bottle o l good wine.— Beaconsfield. ,