All Saints Episcopal Church
213 Madison Ave, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3316
732-367-0933

Our Liturgy

We worship according to the Book of Common Prayer, 1979 edition as well as services in Spanish for our Hispanic parishioners. On special occasions we have bi-lingual services. Being Episcopalians, we are also members of the wider Anglican communion which now numbers approximately fifty million members world-wide. Locally we are members of the Diocese of New Jersey with our cathedral located in Trenton.

Our Music

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I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

Lesbia Lesley Locket was born in Willesden (a suburb of London) in 1898. She married John Mortimer Scott, a naval officer, who later became an Anglican priest and served a parish near Dartmoor. Active in amateur theatre and religious drama, Mrs Scott did considerable writing, especially of religious drama. She died in 1986 at Pershore, England.

Lesbia Scott wrote "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" for her three children, and not for publication. This delightful hymn was intended for use on Saints' Days to reinforce the fact that saints not only lived in the distant past but may also live and work in everyday lives.

Her interest was not just to glory in the past deeds of saints, but to teach that sainthood is our calling also. She recalls that those who loved and died for Christ came from many walks of life: medicine, royalty, shepherd, the military, and the church. At the end of each of the three verses she comes back to herself (and thus the singer), declaring her intention to become one too. There is a delightful touch of her English breeding in the last verse, when she declares that there are "hundreds of thousands still" brightening our world who can be seen at church or on our travels, or "at tea."

This hymn were first published in England in 1929 and then in the United States in the Episcopal Church Hymnal.

"I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" was also published as a children's book in 1991 by Morehouse Publishing and was illustrated by Judith Gwyn Brown.

1 I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.
 
2 They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right for Jesus' sake
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there's not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn't be one too.
 
3 They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes or at sea,
in church, or in trains or in shops or at tea,
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.