m omnis terra veneratur
Tibi omnes angeli, tibi coeli et universae potestates,
Tibi cherubim et seraphim inaccessibili voce proclamant
Sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth.

In the whole hymn there are thirty lines. The saying that the early
Roman hymns were echoes of Christian Greece, as the Greek hymns were
echoes of Jerusalem, is probably true, but they were only echoes. In
A.D. 252, St. Cyprian, writing his consolatory epistle[2] during the
plague in Carthage, when hundreds were dying every day, says, "Ah,
perfect and perpetual bliss! [in heaven.] There is the glorious company
of the apostles; there is the fellowship of the prophets rejoicing;
there is the innumerable multitude of martyrs crowned." Which would
suggest that lines or fragments of what afterwards crystalized into the
formula of the "Te Deum" were already familiar in the Christian church.
But it is generally believed that the tongue of Ambrose gave the anthem
its final form.

[Footnote 2: [Greek: Peri tou thnetou], "On the Mortality."]

Ambrose was born in Gaul about the middle of the fourth century and
raised to his bishopric in A.D. 374. Very early he saw and appreciated
the popular effect of musical sounds, and what an evangelical instrument
a chorus of chanting voices could be in preaching the Christian faith;
and he introduced the responsive singing of psalms and sacred cantos in
the worship of the church. "A grand thing is that singing, and nothing
can stand before it," he said, when the critics of his time complained
that his innovation was sensational. That such a charge could be made
against the Ambrosian mode of music, with its slow movement and
unmetrical lines, seems strange to us, but it was _new_--and
conservatism is the same in all ages.

The great bishop carried all before him. His school of song-worship
prevailed in Christian Europe more than two hundred years. Most of his
hymns are lost, (the Benedictine writers credit him with twelve), but,
judging by their effect on the powerful mind of Augustine, their
influence among the common people must have been profound, and far more
lasting than the author's life. "Their voices sank into mine ears, and
their truths distilled into my heart," wrote Augustine, long afterwards,
of these hymns; "tears ran down, and I rejoiced in them."

Poetic tradition has dramatized the story of the birth of the "Te Deum,"
dating it on an Easter Sunday, and dividing the honor of its composition