How few receive with cordial faith The tidings which we bring? How few have seen the arm revealed Of Heav’n’s eternal King? The Savior comes! no outward pomp Bespeaks His presence nigh; No earthly beauty shines in Him To draw the carnal eye. Fair as a beauteous tender flower Amidst the desert grows, So slighted by a rebel race The heav’nly Savior rose. Rejected and despised of men, Behold a Man of woe! Grief was His close companion still Through all His life below. Yet all the griefs He felt were ours, Ours were the woes He bore: Pangs, not His own, His spotless soul With bitter anguish tore. We held Him as condemned by Heav’n, An outcast from His God, While for our sins He groaned, He bled, Beneath His Father’s rod. His sacred blood hath washed our souls From sin’s polluted stain; His stripes have healed us, and His death Revived our souls again. We all, like sheep, had gone astray In ruin’s fatal road: On Him were our transgressions laid; He bore the mighty load. Wronged and oppressed how meekly He In patient silence stood! Mute, as the peaceful harmless lamb, When brought to shed its blood. Who can His generation tell? From prison see Him led! With impious show of law condemned, And numbered with the dead. ’Midst sinners low in dust He lay; The rich a grave supplied: Unspotted was His blameless life; Unstained by sin He died. Yet God shall raise His head on high, Though thus He brought Him low; His sacred offering, when complete, Shall terminate His woe. For, saith the Lord, My pleasure then Shall prosper in His hand; His shall a numerous offspring be, And still His honors stand. His soul, rejoicing, shall behold The purchase of His pain; And all the guilty whom He saved Shall bless Messiah’s reign. He with the great shall share the spoil, And baffle all His foes; Though ranked with sinners, here He fell, A Conqueror He rose. He died to bear the guilt of men, That sin might be forgiv’n: He lives to bless them and defend, And plead their cause in Heav’n. |