Alas, it must be so!

Verse 1
Alas, it must be so!
I mournfully confess,
The only cause of pain and woe
Is sin and wickedness:
Constrain’d at last I am
To yield my full belief,
And own “that vice ingenders shame,
And folly broods o’er grief.”

Verse 2
The righteous God and true
Hath made his justice known;
Because his will I would not do,
He leaves me to my own.
His long-rejected grace
At last he takes away,
And now I cannot seek his face,
And now I cannot pray.

Verse 3
Without a gracious thought,
Without a wish of good,
I only have the thing I sought,
And reap what first I sow’d:
Pain in its cause I chose,
The sorrow and distress,
And all the misery that flows
From wilful wickedness.

Verse 4
Why then should I complain
Beneath my penal load,
Or kick against the pricks in vain,
Or murmur against God?
To his vindictive will,
At last I meekly stoop,
And eat the bitter roll, and fill
My mournful measure up.

Verse 5
The heaviness of soul,
The pining want of rest,
The thoughts that in my bosom roll,
And tear my troubled breast,
The temporal despair
That gnaws my heart within,
’Tis less than I deserve to bear,
’Tis all the fruits of sin.

Verse 6
Sorrow, and loss, and shame,
And soul-distracting fear
May justly now their captive claim,
And seize and keep me here:
My strugglings all are past,
My hopes of comfort cease—
But let them, Lord, revive at last,
But let me die in peace.

Hymnal/Album: Introduced in Hymns and Sacred Poems Vol. 1, published by Charles Wesley (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 4 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1869), page 436.
Publishing: Public Domain