Hymn 157. The Necessity of Renewing Grace

         How helpless, guilty nature lies,

                     Unconscious of its load!

         The heart unchang’d can never rise,

                     To happiness and God.

         The will perverse, the passions blind,                                                              

                     In paths of ruin stray:

         Reason debas’d can never find,

                     The safe, the narrow way.

         Can ought beneath a power divine

                     The stubborn will subdue?                                                        

         ’Tis thine, almighty Savior, thine

                     To form the heart anew.

         ’Tis thine the passions to recall,

                     And upwards bid them rise;

         And makes the scales of error fall                                                        

                     From Reason’s darken’d eyes.

         To chase the shades of death away,

                     And bid the sinner live!

         A beam of Heaven, a vital ray

                     ’Tis thine alone to give.                                                              

         O change these wretched hearts of ours,

                     And give them life divine!

         Then shall our passions and our powers

                     Almighty Lord, be thine.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 1, p. 92; Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship, no. 157 (all stanzas); Poems, 1780, vol. 3, pp. 141-42; MS, Steele Collection, STE 3/1/4 no. 5, Angus Library, Regents Park College,  Oxford.