Tum us again, our Saviour God

Verse 1
Turn us again, our Saviour-God,
And let thy righteous anger cease;
Be satisfied with seas of blood,
Spilt for our nation’s wickedness:
But seas of blood cannot atone
For sins which cost thee all thine own.

Verse 2
Thine own, thine own, for respite cries,
When smote a sinner turns to thee;
And dares not lift his guilty eyes,
But sighs—“Be merciful to me!”
O that with hearts, not garments, rent,
We all might, as one man, repent!

Verse 3
In vain alas, thy patience spares,
Unless thy grace our hearts convince,
In vain are all our fasts and prayers,
Unless we cast away our sins,
(Of all our woes the bitter root,)
And bear the penitential fruit.

Verse 4
O that at last the faithful seed,
Who day and night besiege thy throne,
The just who for our Sodom plead,
Might pray the contrite Spirit down,
On those, who harden’d from thy fear,
Defy eternal judgments near.

Verse 5
Behold them with that pitying eye,
Which wept the bloody city’s doom;
Who wouldst not let thy murtherers die:
Who wouldst not let the flames consume,
When urg’d by fiends implacable,
We hung as o’er the mouth of hell.

Verse 6
Hence, by a glimmering ray of hope,
Chear’d, we presume to sue for grace;
That sin which fills the measure up,
That sin which saints and prophets slays,
That only sin, through grace alone
Restrain’d, thou know’st, we have not done.

Verse 7
Then let thy people’s suit succeed,
For those that have thy people spar’d,
And save them at their greatest need,
By general penitence prepar’d,
The humbled prodigals receive,
And for thy own dear sake forgive.

Verse 8
Cut short thy work in righteousness,
That all thy gracious work may see;
Born in a day our nation bless,
With pure, primeval piety:
Born in a day, from heaven above,
The day of thine almighty love.

Hymnal/Album: Introduced in Charles Wesley, Hymns for the Nation in 1782, Part II (London: J. Paramore, 1781). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 8 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 297.
Publishing: Public Domain