Hymn of the Reformed

Captives to sin and sunk in shame,
     To all a loathing and a pest,
With shattered health and blighted name,
     Alike unblessing and unblessed;
Demons who made our homes a hell
     Where passions howled, like fiends below,
Where all the crimes and shames that swell
     The catalogue of human woe;

Such were we—and could men be worse?
     Friends from our pathway turned aside,
Foes muttered in our ear their curse,
     And children saw us to deride!
Before us yawned the drunkard’s grave,
     Curtained in midnight’s starless gloom:
Who from its greedy jaws could save,
     Who snatch us from the drunkard’s doom?

Such were we—victims of despair!
     For Hope, with folded wing, had died;
Hell moved to meet us, and the air
     Quivered the shouts of fiends, who cried:
“Ah! ha! and have ye fallen thus?
     Ye who exulted in your strength,
Hurled from your neights, have ye, like us,
     Become the spoiler’s prey at length?”

But this is past. The woe, the tears,
     The fiery weight on heart and brain,
The anguish and the shame of years—
     Only their memory doth remain!
The serpent’s bite, the adder’s sting,
     Pass with the poison-cup away;
And waters bubbling from the spring,
     Sparkling and pure, out thirst allay.

LORD GOD OF HOSTS! To thee belong
     Thanksgiving and the voice of praise;
Thine eye beheld, thine arm was strong
     The drunkard from the pit to raise!
Saved from our vice, to life restored,
     To home, to wives, to children given,
We praise thee for thy goodness, LORD!
     And pray, Oh! lead us to thy heaven.