Happy the souls that follow’d Thee

Verse 1
Happy the souls that follow’d thee
Lamenting to th’ accursed wood,
Happy who underneath the tree
Unmoveable in sorrow stood.

Verse 2
When nature felt the deadly blow
By which thy soul to God was driven,
Which shook with sympathetick woe
Temple, and graves, and earth, and heaven.

Verse 3
O what a time for offering up
Their souls upon thy sacrifice!
Who would not with thy burthen stoop,
And bow the head when Jesus dies!

Verse 4
Not all the days before or since
An hour so solemn could afford
For suffering with our bleeding prince,
For dying with our slaughter’d Lord.

Verse 5
Yet in this ordinance divine
We still the sacred load may bear;
And now we in thy offering join,
Thy sacramental Passion share.

Verse 6
We cast our sins into that fire
Which did thy sacrifice consume,
And every base and vain desire
To daily crucifixion doom.

Verse 7
Thou art with all thy members here,
In this tremendous mystery
We jointly before God appear
To offer up ourselves with thee.

Verse 8
True followers of our bleeding Lamb
Now on thy daily cross we die,
And mingled in a common flame
Ascend triumphant to the skie.

Hymnal/Album: Introduced in a hymnal jointly credited to John and Charles Wesley; it is likely though not fully certain that Charles wrote it. Introduced in Hymns on the Lord's Supper, published by John and Charles Wesley (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1745).Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 3 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1869), page 322.
Publishing: Public Domain