Shall I, for fear of feeble man,

Thy Spirit’s course in me restrain?

Or, undismay’d in deed and word,

Be a true witness for my Lord?



Awed by a mortal’s frown, shall I

Conceal the Word of God Most High?

How then before thee shall I dare

To stand, or how thy anger bear?



Give me thy strength, O God of power!

Then let winds blow, or thunders roar.

Thy faithful witness will I be:

‘Tis fixed! I can do all through thee.

Zion stands by hills surrounded,

Zion kept by power divine;

All her foes shall be confounded,

Though the world in arms combine:

Happy Zion,

What a favour’d lot is thine!

Zion’s Friend in nothing alters,

Though all others may, and do;

His is love that never falters,

Always to its object true.

Happy Zion!

Crown’d with mercies ever new.

God is our refuge, tried and proved,

Amid a stormy world:

We will not fear though earth be moved,

And hills in ocean hurl’d.

When earth and hell against us came,

He spake, and quell’d their powers;

The Lord of hosts is still the same,

The God of grace is ours.

Jesus our Lord is love,

All gentle are his ways,

And since he suffered in our stead,

No fear our heart dismays.



No fiery vengeance now,

No burning wrath comes down;

If justice call for sinner’s blood,

The Saviour shows his own.



Before his Father’s eye

Our humble suit he moves;

The Father lays his thunder by,

And looks, and smiles, and loves.

Our soaring spirits upward rise

To the celestial throne,

Fain would we see the blessed Three,

And the Almighty One.

Lord, how our souls are all on fire

To see thy bless’d abode;

Our tongues rejoice in tunes of praise

To our incarnate God!

And while our faith enjoys this sight,

We long to leave our clay,

And wish thy fiery chariots, Lord,

To fetch our souls away.

Straiten’d in God we cannot be,

No bounds his power and bounty know,

His grace is an exhaustless sea,

Which flows, and shall for ever flow;

And if its course suspended seem,

The hindrance is in us, not Him.



Long as our faith’s capacity

Is stretch’d to admit the blessing given,

We drink the streaming Deity,

And gasp for larger draughts of heaven!

But when we lose our emptiness,

The oil, the joy, the Spirit stays!



Empty us, then, most gracious Lord,

And keep us always empty here,

Till thee, according to thy word,

We see upon the clouds appear,

Thy glorious fulness to reveal,

And all thy saints for ever fill.

Since like the weeping Shunammite,

For many dead in sin we grieve;

Now, Lord, display thine arm of might,

Cause them to hear thy voice and live.



Thy preachers bear the staff in vain,

Though at thine own command they go;

Lord, they have tried and tried again,

They find them dead, and leave them so.



Come, then, thyself to ev’ry heart,

The glory of thy name make known;

The means are our appointed part,

The pow’r and grace are thine alone.