How Sweet and Awful (ST COLUMBA)
Text: Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
Tune: Ancient Irish Melody
How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.
“Why was I made to hear Thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”
‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly forced us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.
Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send Thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.
