1 Great God! did pious Abram pray
For Sodom’s vile abandoned race?
And shall not now Thy Church arouse
Our nation to implore Thy grace?
2 Base as we are, does not Thine eye
Its chosen thousands here survey?
Whose souls, deep humbled, mourn the crowds,
Who walk in sin’s destructive way?
3 O Judge supreme, let not Thy sword
The righteous with the wicked smite;
Nor bury in promiscuous heaps
Rebels and saints, Thy chief delight.
4 For these Thy children, spare the land;
Avert the thunders big with death;
Nor let the seeds of latent fire
Be kindled by Thy flaming breath.
5 O! be not angry, mighty God,
While dust and ashes seek Thy face;
But gently bending from Thy throne,
Renew, and still increase Thy grace.
6 Jesus the Intercessor hear,
And for His sake Thy grace impart
Which, while it stops the fiery stream,
Dissolves the most obdurate heart.
7 Sodom shall change to Zion then,
And heavenly dews be scattered round,
That plants of paradise may spring,
Where baleful poisons cursed the ground.
Source: The Cyber Hymnal #8191
Philip Doddridge (b. London, England, 1702; d. Lisbon, Portugal, 1751) belonged to the Non-conformist Church (not associated with the Church of England). Its members were frequently the focus of discrimination. Offered an education by a rich patron to prepare him for ordination in the Church of England, Doddridge chose instead to remain in the Non-conformist Church. For twenty years he pastored a poor parish in Northampton, where he opened an academy for training Non-conformist ministers and taught most of the subjects himself. Doddridge suffered from tuberculosis, and when Lady Huntington, one of his patrons, offered to finance a trip to Lisbon for his health, he is reputed to have said, "I can as well go to heaven from Lisbon as from Nort… Go to person page >
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