When the Last Trumpet's Awful Voice

When the last trumpet’s awful voice
this rending earth shall shake,
When op’ning graves shall yield their charge,
and dust to life awake;

Those bodies that corrupted fell
shall incorrupted rise,
And mortal forms shall spring to life
immortal in the skies.

Behold what heav’nly prophets sung
is now at last fulfilled
That Death should yield his ancient reign,
and, vanquished, quit the field.

Let Faith exalt her joyful voice,
and thus begin to sing;
O Grave! where is thy triumph now?
and where, O Death! thy sting?

Thy sting was sin, and conscious guilt,
’twas this that armed thy dart;
The law gave sin its strength and force
to pierce the sinner’s heart:

But God, whose name be ever bless’d!
disarms that foe we dread,
And makes us conqu’rors when we die,
through Christ our living head.

Then stedfast let us still remain,
though dangers rise around,
And in the work prescribed by God
yet more and more abound;

Assured that though we labour now,
we labour not in vain,
But, through the grace of heav’n’s great Lord,
th’ eternal crown shall gain.

Scottish Psalms and Paraphrases, 1650