Shall Jesus’ sufferers know,
While o’er the happy plains they range
Incapable of woe!
No ill-requited love
Shall there our spirits wound:
No base ingratitude above,
No sin in heaven is found.
No slightest touch of pain,
Nor sorrow’s least alloy,
Can violate our rest, or stain
Our purity of joy:
In that eternal day
No clouds or tempests rise;
There gushing tears are wiped away
Forever from our eyes.
Charles Wesley
There’s not a bird with lonely nest,
In pathless wood or mountain crest,
Nor meaner thing, which does not share,
O God, in thy paternal care.
Each barren crag, each desert rude,
Holds thee within its solitude;
And thou dost bless the wanderer there,
Who makes his solitary prayer.
In busy mart, or crowded street,
No less than in the still retreat,
Thou, Lord, are near our souls to bless
With all a parent’s tenderness.
And every moment still doth bring
Thy blessings on its loaded wing;
Widely they spread through earth and sky,
And last through all eternity.
And we where’er our lot is cast,
While life and thought and feeling last,
Through all our years, in every place,
Will bless thee for thy boundless grace.
G. T. Noel
