Hymn on God's Love

When languor and disease invade

    This trembling house of Clay,

’Tis sweet to look beyond our Cage

    And long to fly away.

Sweet to look inward and attend                                                   

    The whispers of his love,

Sweet to look upward to the place

    Where Jesus pleads above.

Sweet to look back and see my name

    In life’s fair book set down,                                                       

Sweet to look forward and behold

    Eternal joys my own.

Sweet to reflect how grace divine

    My sins on Jesus laid,

Sweet to remember that his blood                                                     

    My debt of suffering paid.

Sweet in his righteousness to stand

    Which saves from second Death,

Sweet to experience day by day

                     His Spirit’s quickening breath.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto), 4.210-11; Reeves Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. The hymn is undated, but c. 1800-1820.