Oh, rapture of infinite peace! Many are weeping without; From the lost crowd of these, God, Thou hast lifted me out!
Though strong be the devil's net, Thy grace, O God, is more strong; I never was tempted yet To even the edge of wrong.
The world never fired my brain, The flesh never moved my heart-- Thou hast spared me the strife and strain, The struggle and sorrow and smart.
The dreams that never were deeds, The thought that shines not in word, The struggle that never succeeds-- Thou hast saved me from these, O Lord!
I stood in my humble place While those who aimed high fell low; Oh the glorious gift of Thy grace The souls of Thy saved ones know!
And yet if in heaven at last, When all is won and is well, Dear hands stretch out from the past, Dear voices call me from hell--
My love whom I long for yet, My little one gone astray!-- No; God will make me forget In His own wise wonderful way.
Oh the infinite marvels of grace, Oh the great atonement's cost! Lifting my soul above Those other souls that are lost!
Mine are the harp and throne, Theirs is the outer night. This, my God, Thou has done, And all that Thou dost is right!
Lost as I am--degraded, foul, polluted, Sunk in deep sloughs of failure and of sin, Yet is my hell by God's great grace commuted, For what I lose the others yet may win.
I--sport of flesh and fate--in all my living Met the world's laughter and the Christian's frown, Ever the spirit fiercely vainly striving, Ever the flesh, triumphant, laughed it down.
Down, lower still, but ever battling vainly, Dying to win, yet living to be lost, My soul through depths where all its guilt showed plainly Into the chaos of despair was tossed.
Yet not despair. I see far off a splendour; Here from my hell I see a heaven on high For those brave men whom earth could never render Cowards as foul and beasts as base as I!
Hell is not hell lit by such consolation, Heaven were not heaven that lacked a thought like this-- That, though my soul may never see salvation, God yet saves all these other souls of His!
The waves of death come faster, faster, faster; Christ, ere I perish, hear my heart's last word-- It was not I denied my Lord and Master; The flesh denied Thee, not the spirit, Lord.