Israel’s God and Strength, arise

Verse 1
Israel’s God and Strength, arise
To scatter all thy foes,
Human, hellish enemies
Who Thee and Thine oppose!
Blast the world’s malicious aim,
Who watch to see us halt, or fall,
For the sin of One to blame
And pour reproach on all.

Verse 2
Shall the haters of the Lord
Thy hallow’d Name prophane?
No: the honor of thy word
And Church Thou wilt maintain;
God of truth and jealousy,
Thou wilt thy righteous Cause defend:
Sure of this, we trust in Thee
And calm expect the end.

Verse 3
Pity to the Tempted show
Who wanders far from home:
Save her from the threaten’d woe,
Nor let the scandal come:
Lest from Thee she farther stray,
And fall the Tempter’s easy prize,
Hide her from the evil day
Secure in paradise.

Verse 4
But Thou canst redeem her here
From sin and Satan’s wiles,
Ignorant, yet still sincere,
And strugling in the toils:
Speak, and she shall now be freed,
From passion’s fascinating power
Saints shall wonder at the deed,
And all thy hosts adore!

Hymnal/Album: This hymn appears in the 1786 manuscript “MS Helen Durbin.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/583/26, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 4). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 3 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1992), page 241.
Publishing: Public Domain