The Brazen Serpent

Representative Text

1 When the chosen tribes debated
’Gainst their God, as hardly treated,
And complained their hopes were spilt,
God, for murmuring to requite them,
Fiery serpents sent to bite them;
Lively type of deadly guilt!

2 Stung by these, they soon repented;
And their God as soon relented;
Moses prayed; he answer gave:
“Serpents are the beasts that strike them;
Make of brass a serpent like them;
That’s the way I choose to save.”

3 Vain was bandage, oil, or plaster;
Rankling venom killed the faster;
Till the serpent Moses took,
Reared it high, that all might view it;
Bid the bitten look up to it;
Life attended every look.

4 Jesus, thus for sinners smitten,
Wounded, bruisèd, serpent-bitten,
To his cross directs their faith.
Why should I, then, poison cherish?
Why despair of cure, and perish?
Look, my soul, though stung to death.

5 Thine’s alas! a lost condition;
Works cannot work thee remission,
Nor thy goodness do thee good.
Death’s within thee, all about thee;
But the remedy’s without thee;
See it in thy Saviour’s blood.

6 See the Lord of glory dying!
See him gasping! Hear him crying!
See his burdened bosom heave!
Look, ye sinners, ye that hung him;
Look how deep your sins have stung him;
Dying sinners, look and live.

Source: A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship. In four parts (10th ed.) (Gadsby's Hymns) #876

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Author: J. Hart

Hart, Joseph, was born in London in 1712. His early life is involved in obscurity. His education was fairly good; and from the testimony of his brother-in-law, and successor in the ministry in Jewin Street, the Rev. John Hughes, "his civil calling was" for some time "that of a teacher of the learned languages." His early life, according to his own Experience which he prefaced to his Hymns, was a curious mixture of loose conduct, serious conviction of sin, and endeavours after amendment of life, and not until Whitsuntide, 1757, did he realize a permanent change, which was brought about mainly through his attending divine service at the Moravian Chapel, in Fetter Lane, London, and hearing a sermon on Rev. iii. 10. During the next two years ma… Go to person page >

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