How Sweet and Awful Is The Place

HOW SWEET AND AWFUL IS THE PLACE — ST. COLUMBA

Original Trinity Hymnal, #271

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
"Lord, why was I a guest?

"Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there's room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?"

'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.

Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious Word abroad,
And bring the strangers home.

We long to see thy churches full,
That all the chosen race
May, with one voice and heart and soul,
Sing thy redeeming grace.

[Note: The word "awful" in first line of this hymn is indeed correct; it was changed to "awesome" in the revised Trinity Hymnal (1990).]

Issac Watts 1707                                                 Old Irish hymn melody

A certain man made a great supper, and bade many...Luke 14:16