How Sweet and Awesome is the Place

Lyrics: Isaac Watts (1707) Tune: St Columba (Old Irish hymn melody)

This is the first selection produced using the newly hand-crafted
Steinway model S, S/N 282884 first built in 1936.

1 How sweet and awesome is the place with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores.

2 While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongue, "Lord, why was I a guest?

3 "Why was I made to hear your voice, and enter while there's room,
when thousands make a wretched choice, and rather starve than come?"

4 'Twas the same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in;
else we had still refused to taste, and perished in our sin.

5 Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come;
send your victorious Word abroad, and bring the strangers home.

6 We long to see your churches full, that all the chosen race
may, with one voice and heart and soul, sing your redeeming grace.