How Sweet and Awful Is the Place
ST. COLUMBA
Author: Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
Musician: Ancient Irish Melody

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 cries, 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 forced 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.