How Sweet and Awful Is the Place

How sweet and aw­ful is the place

With Christ with­in the doors

While ev­er­last­ing love dis­plays

The choic­est of her stores!

Here ev­ery bow­el of our God

With soft com­pass­ion rolls;

Here peace and par­don bought with blood

Is food for dy­ing souls.

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 forced us in;

Else we had still re­fused to taste

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.