Must man, then, hopeless, be forever lost,
Since works and wealth and offerings cannot
save?
Must he on hell’s fierce, fiery lake be tossed,
Imbibe the torments of its burning wave,
And in his thirst for water vainly crave?
Ah! yes; this woe were his, if love had slept,
And God His Son had never sent to save;
For nothing man could bring could He accept,
And man must then, undone, in ceaseless woe
have wept.
But love divine all human thought transcends;
See in the Son how warm its ardor glows!
For ’tis in Him God now His love commends,
Whom once He gave to suffer for His foes,
And taste for them the keenest woe of woes;
Ah! yes, for them, the world, man’s guilty race,
This wondrous love so fully, freely flows,
To trait’rous man, who turns away his face
From his Creator-God, the God of love and
grace.
In Him, the Son, the love of God behold!
For Him, His well-beloved, He did not spare,
But gave Him up to grief and woe untold,
That He the judgment might for sinners bear,
And thus God’s own unbounded love declare
To man, who had rebellion’s flag unfurled!
Where is the love that can with this compare?
His Son delivered for this guilty world,
Which He to endless doom with justice might
have hurled!
W. Trotter