James Montgomery

For the Jubilee of the Religious Tract Society, 1848.

Proclaim the year of Jubilee;

New songs of glory sing;

From shore to shore, from sea to sea,

Your gratulations bring.

Through fifty years the constant sun,

On his untiring race,

Round the blue firmament hath run,

Since that first day of grace: --

When tracts, on embassies of love,

By our forefathers sent,

Charged with glad tidings from above,

Into all nations went.

Now, by the Spirit of the Lord,

With bounty unconfined,

The eternal riches of His Word

Are dealt to all mankind.

Tracts have the gift of tongues; they preach

Through every peopled land,

In all the forms of human speech,

What all may understand: --

Salvation in that Holy Name,

Which heaven and earth adore,

Christ Jesus, yesterday the same,

To-day, and evermore.

Tracts have the wings of angels, spread

To waft the joyful sound

Of resurrection ftoni the dead,

Where'er the curse is found: --

The primal curse from Adam's fall,

Sin's wages, and sin's doom,

The bitterness of life, and all

The terrors of the tomb,

What scale of numbers, grasp of thought,

What power of words could speak

The miracles of mercy wrought

By instruments so weak?

Weak, but almighty at His will,

Who speaks, and it is done;

With whom, to purpose and fulfil,

The Will and power are one.

In the Lamb's Book of Life, alone

Those annals lie, in sight

Of Him who sits upon the throne,

-- Whose deeds can bear that light?

Can ours, who, where our fathers trod,

Along this narrow way,

Would work like them, the works of God,

Like them, would watch and pray?

Bound in the same sure covenant,

Let us, their children, be;

And, Lord, that we may keep it, grant

The mind which was in Thee.