Sunday, March 7, 2010

Sunday Songs

How Sweet And Awful Is the Place
Isaac Watts, 1707

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
"Lord, why was I a guest?

"Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there's room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?"

'Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to come
And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the Earth to come!
Send thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home!

We long to see thy churches full
That all the chosen race
May,with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy redeeming grace.

2 comments:

Laura's Dad said...

Okay, so I'm crying from just reading the words. What hymn-tune does it go with?

Laura said...

It's usually put with St. Columba, but it's in CM (8686) so you can put it with any tune in common meter. Alas, And Did My Savior Bleed, On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand, O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing, All Hail the Pow'r, There Is a Fountain -- all those are in CM.