Proclaim the year of Jubilee

Proclaim the year of Jubilee;
New songs of glory sing;
From shore to shore, from sea to sea,
Your gratulations bring.

293
Through fifty years the constant sun,
On his untiring race,
Round the blue firmament hath run,
Since that first day of grace:--

When tracts, on embassies of love,
By our forefathers sent,
Charged with glad tidings from above,
Into all nations went.

Now, by the Spirit of the Lord,
With bounty unconfined,
The eternal riches of His Word
Are dealt to all mankind.

Tracts have the gift of tongues; they preach
Through every peopled land,
In all the forms of human speech,
What all may understand:--

Salvation in that Holy Name,
Which heaven and earth adore,
Christ Jesus, yesterday the same,
To-day, and evermore.

Tracts have the wings of angels, spread
To waft the joyful sound
Of resurrection ftoni the dead,
Where'er the curse is found:--

The primal curse from Adam's fall,
Sin's wages, and sin's doom,
The bitterness of life, and all
The terrors of the tomb,

293
What scale of numbers, grasp of thought,
What power of words could speak
The miracles of mercy wrought
By instruments so weak?

Weak, but almighty at His will,
Who speaks, and it is done;
With whom, to purpose and fulfil,
The Will and power are one.

In the Lamb's Book of Life, alone
Those annals lie, in sight
Of Him who sits upon the throne,
--Whose deeds can bear that light?

Can ours, who, where our fathers trod,
Along this narrow way,
Would work like them, the works of God,
Like them, would watch and pray?

Bound in the same sure covenant,
Let us, their children, be;
And, Lord, that we may keep it, grant
The mind which was in Thee.

Sacred Poems and Hymns