Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
1 Corinthians 15:20
Words: Benjamin T. Tanner, in the African Methodist Episcopal Hymn and Tune Book (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: African Methodist Episcopal Book Concern, 1898), number 752.
Music: Metropolitan John T. Layton, Sr., 1898 (🔊 pdf nwc).
If you know where to get a good photo of Layton (head & shoulders, at least 200×300 pixels),
From out the tomb the Savior comes,
The first of all the dead;
From out the tomb the Sav-ior comes,
To be our living head.
What is the stone His foes have placed
To make secure the grave?
And what the great Sanhedrin seal
The priests so freely gave?
He must wake, He must arise,
For have not prophets said,
God’s Holy One shall never share
Corruption with the dead?
Now see, in shimmering light, He leaves
The dead, no more to die.
Conqueror of sin, and death and hell,
He re-ascends the sky.