Turn ye even to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.
Joel 2:1
Words: Anne Steele, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional 1760: On the Public Fast, Feb. 6, 1756,
alt.
Music: Bangor William Tans’ur, 1734 (🔊 pdf nwc).
If you know where to get a good picture of Steele (head & shoulders, at least 200×300 pixels),
See, gracious God, before Thy throne
Thy mourning people bend!
’Tis on Thy sovereign grace alone,
Our humble hopes depend.
Tremendous judgments from Thy hand,
Thy dreadful power display:
Yet mercy spares this guilty land,
And yet we live to pray.
Great God, and why this nation spare,
Ungrateful as we are?
O be these awful warnings heard,
While mercy cries, Forebear.
What numerous crimes increasing rise,
Where Satan shows his smile?
What land so favored of the skies,
And yet what land so vile?
How changed, alas! are truths divine,
For error, guilt and shame!
What impious numbers, bold in sin,
Disgrace the Christian name!
O bid us turn, almighty Lord,
By Thy resistless grace;
Then shall our hearts obey Thy word,
And humbly seek Thy face.
Then should insulting foes invade,
We shall not sink in fear;
Secure of never failing aid,
If God, our God, is near.