Scripture Verse

There is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. John 5:2–4

Introduction

portrait
John Newton
1725–1807

Words: John New­ton, Ol­ney Hymns (Lon­don: W. Ol­iv­er, 1779), book 1, num­ber 113.

Music: Be­a­ti­tu­do John B. Dykes, in Hymns An­cient and Mo­dern, 1875 (🔊 pdf nwc).

illustration
The Pool of Bethesda
Bartolomé Murillo
1617–1682

Lyrics

Here at Bethesda’s pool, the poor,
The withered, halt, and blind;
With waiting hearts expect a cure,
And free admittance find.

Here streams of wondrous virtue flow
To heal a sin-sick soul;
To wash the filthy white as snow,
And make the wounded whole.

The dumb break forth in songs of praise,
The blind their sight receive;
The cripple runs in wisdom’s ways,
The dead revive, and live!

Restrained to no one case, or time,
These waters always move;
Sinners, in every age and clime,
Their vital influence prove.

Yet numbers daily near them lie,
Who meet with no relief;
With life in view they pine and die
In hopeless unbelief.

’Tis strange they should refuse to bathe,
And yet frequent the pool;
But none can even wish for faith,
While love of sin bears rule.

Satan their consciences has sealed,
And stupefied their thought;
For were they willing to be healed,
The cure would soon be wrought.

Do Thou, dear Savior, interpose,
Their stubborn wills constrain;
Or else to them the water flows,
And grace is preached in vain.