How weak the thoughts and vain

Verse 1
How weak the thoughts and vain,
Of self-deluding men!
Men, who fix’d to earth alone,
Think their houses shall endure,
Fondly call their lands their own,
To their distant heirs secure.

Verse 2
Let us in God confide,
They for themselves provide,
Lasting settlements they make,
Prudently their views extend,
Thought for future ages take,
Live, as time would never end.

Verse 3
How soon may God rebuke
Their folly with a look!
Caus’d by the Almighty’s frown,
When the sudden earthquake comes,
Then their hopes are tumbled down,
Then their houses are their tombs.

Verse 4
Their lands alas! And they,
Are swept at once away,
Gaping earth receives them all,
Swallows up the nation’s boast;
See the pride of ages fall,
In a fatal moment lost!

Verse 5
How happy then are we,
Who build, O Lord, on thee!
What can our foundation shock?
Though the shatter’d earth remove,
Stands our city on a Rock,
On a Rock of heavenly love.

Verse 6
An house we call our own,
Which cannot be overthrown,
In the general ruin sure,
Storms and earthquakes it defies,
Built immoveably secure,
Built eternal in the skies.

Verse 7
High on Immanuel’s land,
We see the fabrick stand,
From a tottering world remove,
To our stedfast mansions there:
Our inheritance above,
Cannot pass from heir to heir.

Verse 8
Those amaranthine bowers,
Inalienably ours,
Bloom, our infinite reward,
Rise, our permanent abode,
From the founded world prepar’d,
Purchas’d by the blood of God.

Verse 9
O might we quickly find
The place for us design’d;
See the long-expected day
Of our full redemption here!
Let the shadows flee away,
Let the new-made world appear.

Verse 10
High on thy great white throne,
O King of saints, come down;
In the New Jerusalem,
Now triumphantly descend,
Let the final trump proclaim
Joys begun which ne’er shall end!

Hymnal/Album: Introduced in Charles Wesley, Hymns Occasioned by the Earthquake, March 8, 1750, Part II (London: Strahan, 1750).Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 6 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 43.
Publishing: Public Domain