Divine Love Making a Feast

Representative Text

1 How sweet and awful 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 cries, with thankful tongue,
"Lord, why was I a guest?

3 "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?"

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 Thy churches full,
that all the chosen race
may, with one voice and heart and soul,
sing Thy redeeming grace.

Source: Psalms and Hymns to the Living God #312

Author: Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts was the son of a schoolmaster, and was born in Southampton, July 17, 1674. He is said to have shown remarkable precocity in childhood, beginning the study of Latin, in his fourth year, and writing respectable verses at the age of seven. At the age of sixteen, he went to London to study in the Academy of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, an Independent minister. In 1698, he became assistant minister of the Independent Church, Berry St., London. In 1702, he became pastor. In 1712, he accepted an invitation to visit Sir Thomas Abney, at his residence of Abney Park, and at Sir Thomas' pressing request, made it his home for the remainder of his life. It was a residence most favourable for his health, and for the prosecution of his literary… Go to person page >

Text Information

First Line: How sweet and aweful is the place
Title: Divine Love Making a Feast
Author: Isaac Watts
Meter: 8.6.8.6
Language: English
Notes: Spanish translation: See "Cuán solemne y dulce aquel lugar" by Priscilla Piñero
Copyright: Public Domain

Notes

How sweet and awful is the place. I. Watts. [The Great Supper.] First published in his Hymns and Sacred Songs, 1707 (edition 1709, Book iii., No. 13), in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, and based upon St. Luke xiv. 17, &c. It is given, sometimes in an abbreviated form, in several modern collections in Great Britain and America. In Dr. Alexander's Augustine Hymn Book, 1849, and later editions it is given as "How sweetly awful is the place;" and in the Baptist Hymnal, 1879, "How sweet and sacred is the place."

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

Tune

DUNDEE (Ravenscroft)

DUNDEE first appeared in the 1615 edition of the Scottish Psalter published in Edinburgh by Andro Hart. Called a "French" tune (thus it also goes by the name of FRENCH), DUNDEE was one of that hymnal's twelve "common tunes"; that is, it was not associated with a specific psalm. In the Psalter Hymnal…

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ST. COLUMBA (Irish)


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Hymns to the Living God #202

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Psalms and Hymns to the Living God #312

The Baptist Hymnal #545

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The Cyber Hymnal #2628

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Trinity Hymnal (Rev. ed.) #469

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Trinity Psalter Hymnal #425

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