1 How sweet and awful is the place
with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays
the choicest of her stores.
2 While all our hearts and all our songs
join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongue,
"Lord, why was I a guest?
3 "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?"
4 'Twas the same love that spread the feast
that sweetly drew us in;
else we had still refused to taste,
and perished in our sin.
5 Pity the nations, O our God,
constrain the earth to come;
send Thy victorious Word abroad,
and bring the strangers home.
6 We long to see Thy churches full,
that all the chosen race
may, with one voice and heart and soul,
sing Thy redeeming grace.
Source: Psalms and Hymns to the Living God #312
First Line: | How sweet and aweful is the place |
Title: | Divine Love Making a Feast |
Author: | Isaac Watts |
Meter: | 8.6.8.6 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | Spanish translation: See "Cuán solemne y dulce aquel lugar" by Priscilla Piñero |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
How sweet and awful is the place. I. Watts. [The Great Supper.] First published in his Hymns and Sacred Songs, 1707 (edition 1709, Book iii., No. 13), in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, and based upon St. Luke xiv. 17, &c. It is given, sometimes in an abbreviated form, in several modern collections in Great Britain and America. In Dr. Alexander's Augustine Hymn Book, 1849, and later editions it is given as "How sweetly awful is the place;" and in the Baptist Hymnal, 1879, "How sweet and sacred is the place."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)