Verse 1
Glory to the Redeemer give,
The glory of a soul brought home!
Our friend, for whom we joy and grieve,
Is to th’ eternal garner come:
Like a ripe shock of corn laid up,
In season due, for God mature;
He kept the faith, held fast his hope,
And made his crown through suff’rings sure.

Verse 2
Let infidels and heathens mourn,
Hopeless to see their dead restor’d;
We feel him from our bosom torn,
But calmly say,—“It is the Lord!”
In pity of his creature’s pain,
Whom God had to th’ afflicted given;
He justly asks his own again,
And takes to his reward in heav’n.

Verse 3
Let us the shining path pursue,
And, following him to God ascend,
His bright example keep in view,
His useful life, and blessed end:
He liv’d a life of faith unfeign’d,
His rigid virtue unsubdu’d;
His strict integrity maintain’d,
And boldly own’d he fear’d a God.

Verse 4
O where shall we his equal find!
To all so just, to all so dear;
The pious son, the husband kind,
The father good, the friend sincere:
Not David lov’d his friend so well,
Loth from his Jonathan to part;
Or serv’d him with so warm a zeal,
Or held him in so fond a heart.

Verse 5
Yet in no narrow bounds confin’d,
His undisguis’d affection flow’d;
His heart, enlarg’d to all mankind,
Render’d to all the love it ow’d:
But chiefly those who lov’d his Lord,
Who most of Jesu’s mind exprest,
Won by their lives, without the word,
He cherish’d in his gen’rous breast.

Verse 6
Cover’d with honourable shame,
He mark’d the poor afflicted FEW,
The faithful followers of the Lamb,
In life and death to Jesus true:
Rejected and despis’d of men,
He heard the saints departing sing;
He saw them smile in mortal pain,
And trample on the grizzly king.

Verse 7
Not biass’d by a party-zeal,
Their unsought advocate he stood:
“The men, who live and die so well,
Howe’er decri’d, they must be good.”
Happy his tend’rest help to afford,
A servant of salvation’s heirs,
He look’d on earth for no reward,
He ask’d no payment—but their pray’rs.

Verse 8
In part, before he reach’d the sky,
“He found his loving labours paid;”
He found their pray’rs return from high,
In blessings on his hoary head:
Warn’d of his dissolution near,
He miss’d that witness from above;
Or felt him in distressing fear,
And not in sweet forgiving love.

Verse 9
The God unknown his servant knew,
Long in the school of Moses tri’d;
The sin-convincing Spirit blew,
And wither’d all his virtuous pride:
With publicans and harlots now
He comes the sinner’s friend to meet;
By grace subdu’d, and taught to bow,
“A leper poor at Jesu’s feet.”

Verse 10
While weeping there the sinner lay,
Asunder sawn with hopes and fears,
He cast his filthy rags away,
The right’ousness of seventy years!
Loathsome, and foul, and self-abhorr’d,
Full of all sin, void of all good,
His soul, at the last gasp, implor’d
“One drop of that atoning blood.”

Verse 11
Nor yet the peaceful answer came;
His spirit to the utmost tri’d,
Must suffer all its guilty shame,
Condemn’d, and scourg’d, and crucifi’d,
Must all his Saviour’s sorrows share,
And cry, as bleeding on the tree,
As in the depths of self-despair—
“My God hath quite forsaken ME.”

Verse 12
“Not so,” repli’d the Father’s love,
And Jesus in his heart reveal’d;
He felt the comfort from above,
The gospel-grace, the pardon seal’d,
How strange that instantaneous bliss!
While to the brink of Tophet driv’n,
Caught up, as from the dark abyss,
He mounted to the highest heav’n.