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 cry, 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 thy 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.