Hail, Sovereign Love, which first began
That scheme to rescue fallen man!
Hail, matchless, free, eternal grace
Which gave my soul a hiding place.
Against the God who built the sky
I fought with hands uplifted high;
Despised the mention of His grace:
Too proud to seek a hiding place.
Enwrapt in thick Egyptian night,
And fond of darkness more than light,
Madly I ran the sinful race,
Secure without a hiding place.
And thus the eternal counsels ran:
"Almighty Love, arrest that man!"
I felt the arrows of distress,
And found I had no hiding place.
Indignant Justice stood in view:
To Sinai's fiery mount I flew;
But Justice cried with frowning face,
"This mountain is no hiding place.”
On Jesus God's just vengeance fell
Which would have sunk a world to hell;
He bore it for a sinful race,
And thus became their HIDING PLACE.
Should sevenfold storms of thunder roll,
And shake this globe from pole to pole,
No thunderbolt shall daunt my face,
For Jesus is my Hiding Place.
A few more rolling suns at most
Shall land me on fair Canaan's coast;
There I shall sing the song of grace,
And see my glorious Hiding Place.
Andre
These lines were found in the possession of one who knew what it was to be a fugitive from justice with no adequate "hiding place." Major Andre, who cherished the words of this poem and found in Christ his refuge, was executed as a spy during the revolutionary war in the United States.