Messiah, Joy of Every Heart

Messiah

joy of ev­ery heart

Thou

thou the King of Glo­ry art!

The Fa­ther’s ev­er­last­ing Son!

Thee it de­lights Thy Church to own;

For all our hopes on Thee de­pend

Whose glo­ri­ous mer­cies nev­er end.

Bent to re­deem a sin­ful race

Thou

Lord

with un­ex­am­pled grace

Into our low­er world didst come

And stoop to a poor vir­gin’s womb;

Whom all the heav­ens could not con­tain

Our God ap­peared a child of man!

When Thou hadst ren­dered up Thy breath

And dy­ing drawn the sting of death

Thou didst from earth tri­umph­ant rise

And ope the por­tals of the skies

That all who trust in Thee alone

Might fol­low

and par­take Thy throne.

Seated at God’s right hand again

Thou dost in all His glo­ry reign

Thou dost

Thy Fa­ther’s im­age

shine

In all the at­trib­utes di­vine;

And Thou with judg­ment clad shalt come

To seal our ev­er­last­ing doom.

Wherefore we now for mer­cy pray;

O Sav­ior

take our sins away!

Before Thou as our judge ap­pear

In dread­ful ma­jes­ty severe

Appear our ad­vo­cate with God

And save the pur­chase of Thy blood.

Hallow

and make Thy serv­ants meet

And with Thy saints in glo­ry seat;

Sustain and bless us by Thy sway

And keep to that tre­men­dous day

When all Thy church shall chant ab­ove

The new eter­nal song of love.