… to page 746 in Our Own Hymn-Book as we sing about the sweetness of gracious meditations on God’s goodness. (Sung to the tune of “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”)
When languor and disease invade
This trembling house of clay,
‘Tis sweet to look beyond the cage,
And long to fly away.
Sweet to look inward and attend
The whispers of His love:
Sweet to look upward to the place
Where Jesus pleads above.
Sweet to look back and see my name
In life’s fair book set down;
Sweet to look forward and behold
Eternal joys my own.
Sweet to reflect how grace divine
My sins on Jesus laid;
Sweet to remember that His blood
My debt of sufferings paid.
Sweet in His righteousness to stand,
Which saves from second death;
Sweet to experience, day by day,
His Spirit’s quickening breath.
Sweet on His faithfulness to rest.
Whose love can never end;
Sweet on His covenant of grace.
For all things to depend.
Sweet in the confidence of faith,
To trust His firm decrees;
Sweet to lie passive in His hand,
And know no will but His.
Sweet to rejoice in lively hope,
That when my change shall come,
Angels will hover round my bed,
And waft my spirit home.
There shall my disimprison’d soul
Behold Him and adore;
Be with His likeness satisfied.
And grieve and sin no more.
Shall see Him wear that very flesh
On which my guilt was lain;
His love intense, His merit fresh.
As though but newly slain.
Soon, too, my slumbering dust shall hear
The trumpet’s quickening sound;
And by my Saviour’s power rebuilt
At His right hand be found.
These eyes shall see Him in that day,
The God that died for me;
And all my rising bones shall say,
Lord, who is like to Thee?
If such the sweetness of the stream,
What must the fountain be,
Where saints and angels draw their bliss,
Immediately from Thee!
Augustus M. Toplady, 1780.
