1 Let the world lament their dead,
As sorrowing without hope;
When a friend of ours is freed,
We cheerfully look up,
Cannot murmur or complain,
For our dead we cannot grieve,
Death to them, to us, is gain;
In Jesus we believe.
2 We believe that Christ our head
For us resigned His breath,
He was numbered with the dead,
And dying conquered death;
Burst the barriers of the tomb:
Death could Him no longer keep,
He is the first-fruits become
Of those in Him that sleep.
3 God, who Him to life restored,
Shall all His members raise,
Bring them quickened with their Lord,
The children of His grace.
We who then on earth remain,
Shall not sooner be brought home;
All the dead shall rise again
To meet the general doom.
4 Jesus, faithful to His word,
Shall with a shout descend;
All Heaven’s host their glorious Lord
Shall pompously attend;
Christ shall come with dreadful noise,
Lightnings swift, and thunders loud,
With the great archangel’s voice,
And with the trump of God.
5 First the dead in Christ shall rise;
Then we who yet remain
Shall be caught up to the skies,
And see our Lord again;
We shall meet Him in the air,
All rapt up to Heaven shall be,
See, and love, and praise Him there
To all eternity.
6 Who can tell the happiness
This glorious hope affords!
Joy unuttered we possess
In these reviving words:
Happy while on earth we breathe,
Mightier bliss ordained to know,
Trampling upon sin and death,
To the third Heaven we go.
Source: The Cyber Hymnal #11101
Charles Wesley, M.A. was the great hymn-writer of the Wesley family, perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn-writer of all ages. Charles Wesley was the youngest son and 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, and was born at Epworth Rectory, Dec. 18, 1707. In 1716 he went to Westminster School, being provided with a home and board by his elder brother Samuel, then usher at the school, until 1721, when he was elected King's Scholar, and as such received his board and education free. In 1726 Charles Wesley was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1729, and became a college tutor. In the early part of the same year his religious impressions were much deepene… Go to person page >
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