

1 How sweet and awesome is the place
with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays
the choicest of her stores.
2 While all our hearts and all our songs
join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongue,
"Lord, why was I a guest?
3 "Why was I made to hear your voice,
and enter while there's room,
when thousands make a wretched choice,
and rather starve than come?"
4 'Twas the same love that spread the feast
that sweetly drew us in;
else we had still refused to taste,
and perished in our sin.
5 Pity the nations, O our God,
constrain the earth to come;
send your victorious Word abroad,
and bring the strangers home.
6 We long to see your churches full,
that all the chosen race
may, with one voice and heart and soul,
sing your redeeming grace.
Source: Trinity Psalter Hymnal #425
First Line: | How sweet and aweful is the place |
Title: | Divine Love Making a Feast |
Author: | Isaac Watts |
Meter: | 8.6.8.6 |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
How sweet and awful is the place. I. Watts. [The Great Supper.] First published in his Hymns and Sacred Songs, 1707 (edition 1709, Book iii., No. 13), in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, and based upon St. Luke xiv. 17, &c. It is given, sometimes in an abbreviated form, in several modern collections in Great Britain and America. In Dr. Alexander's Augustine Hymn Book, 1849, and later editions it is given as "How sweetly awful is the place;" and in the Baptist Hymnal, 1879, "How sweet and sacred is the place."
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)