For One Fallen from Grack, Hymn 36

Father, I seek Thy face,
Which once with joy I saw,
But quickly forfeited Thy grace,
And lost my filial awe:
By sin, alas, beguiled!
Beneath Thy frown I grieve;
Pity Thy most rebellious child,
And, if Thou canst, forgive.

I know Thy justice wills
That I should suffer here;
And lo! my troubled spirit feels
Thy righteous wrath severe:
Left to myself, I groan
In vain Thy face to see,
My penal want of grace bemoan,
My penal want of Thee.

In all my griefs below
The fatal cause I read,
Thy justice aims each vengeful blow
At my faint, guilty head;
In every touch of pain
I feel a stroke of Thine.
And chasten'd by the rod of men
Revere the rod Divine.

Thy awful righteousness
I in Thy plagues revere,
Stripp'd of my power, and joy, and peace,
And every comfort here:
The loss of friends, and fame,
The wormwood, and the gall,
The bitterness of grief and shame,
My sins procured it all.

Yet what is all I bear
To what my sins require,
That blackness of extreme despair,
That everlasting fire!
Lord, I with thanks receive
Whate'er on earth I feel,
Tis mercy all that here I live,
A sinner — not in hell.

Here let me still remain
(If so Thy will decree)
In quiet grief, and silent pain,
And patient misery:
Let me my burden bear,
While in the vale beneath,
And die ten thousand times for fear
Of that eternal death.

Yet, O my God, at last
The worst of sinners save,
When all my penal woes are past,
Redeem me from the grave:
That grave of souls accurs'd
O may I never see,
But save in death the chief, the worst
Of sinners save in me.