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 Saviour comes! no outward pomp bespeaks his presence nigh; No earthly beauty shines in him to draw the carnal eye. | Fair as a beauteous tender flow’r amidst the desert grows, So slighted by a rebel race the heav’nly Saviour rose. | Rejected and despised of men, behold a man of woe! Grief was his close companion still through all his life below. | 133 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 es 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 off’ring, when complete, shall terminate his woe. | For, saith the Lord, my pleasure then shall prosper in his hand; His shall a num’rous offspring be, and still his honours 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. | |