When Jesus first pronounced the word

Verse 1
When Jesus first pronounc’d the word,
They found the Resurrection come,
Dead bodies heard their quickning Lord,
And Lazarus forsook the tomb:
Dead souls He every day doth raise:
They hear his voice, and faith receive,
And live the sinless life of grace,
And soon the life of heaven shall live.

Verse 2
Jesus, the only God and true,
The Father’s co-eternal Son,
Life mortal, and immortal too
Thy gift unspeakable we own:
The Word of life, the Life reveal’d
And manifest to man Thou art;
And conscious of my pardon seal’d,
I find Thee in my faithful heart.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.’—[John 5,] v. 25." This hymn appears in the 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 236. Verse 1 was originally published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 371.

Publishing: Public Domain