Judges, who rule the world by laws,

Will ye despise the righteous cause,

When the oppressed before you stands?

Dare ye condemn the righteous poor,

And let rich sinners go secure,

While gold and greatness bribe your hands?

2 Have ye forgot, or never knew,

That God will judge the judges, too?

High in the heavens his justice reigns;

Yet you invade the rights of God,

And send your bold decrees abroad,

To bind the conscience in your chains!

3 The Almighty thunders from the sky—

Their grandeur melts, their titles die—

They perish like dissolving frost;

As empty chaff, when whirlwinds rise,

Before the sweeping tempest flies,

So shall their hopes and names be lost.

4 Thus shall the vengeance of the Lord

Safety and joy to saints afford;

And all that hear shall join and say—

“Sure there’s a God that rules on high,

A God that hears his children cry,

And will their sufferings well repay.”

Our earth we now lament to see

With floods of wickedness o’erflowed,

With violence, wrong, and cruelty,

One wide-extended field of blood,

Where men like fiends each other tear

In all the hellish rage of war.

Let the land mourn through all its coasts!

And humble all its state;

Princes and rulers, at their posts,

Awhile sit desolate.

2 Let all the people, high and low,

Rich, poor, and great and small,

Invoke, in fellowship of woe,

The Maker of them all.

3 For God hath summoned from his place,

Death, in a direr form,

To waken, warn, and scourge our race,

Than earthquakes, fire, or storm.

4 Let churches weep within their pale,

And families apart;

Let each in secrecy bewail

The plague of his own heart.

5 So while the land bemoans its sin,

The pestilence may cease,

And mercy, tempering wrath, bring in

God’s blessÉd health and peace.

Lord, Lord, defend the desolate,

And rescue from the hands

Of wicked men the low estate,

Of him that help demands.

See, gracious God, before thy throne

Thy mourning people bend;

’Tis on thy sovereign grace alone

Our humble hopes depend.

2 Dark, frowning judgments from thy hand,

Thy dreadful powers display;

Yet mercy spares this guilty land,

And still we live to pray.

3 O, turn us, turn us, mighty Lord,

By thy convincing grace;

Then shall our hearts obey thy word,

And humbly seek thy face.

High as the heavens above the ground,

Reigns the Creator, God:

Wide as the whole creation’s bound,

Extends his awful rod.

2 Let princes of exalted state,

To him ascribe their crown,

Render their homage at his feet,

And cast their glories down.

3 Know that his kingdom is supreme,

Your lofty thoughts are vain;

He calls you gods, that awful name,

But ye must die like men.

Lord, while for all mankind we pray,

Of every clime and coast,

O hear us for our native land—

The land we love the most.

2 O guard our shores from every foe,

With peace our borders bless,

With prosperous times our cities crown,

Our fields with plenteousness.

3 Unite us in the sacred love

Of knowledge, truth, and thee;

And let our hills and valleys shout

The songs of liberty.

4 Lord of the nations, thus to thee

Our country we commend;

Be thou her refuge and her trust,

Her everlasting friend.

Thus Abraham, full of sacred awe,

Before Jehovah stood,

And with a humble, fervent prayer,

For guilty Sodom sued.

2 And could a single holy soul

So rich a boon obtain?

Great God! and shall a nation pray,

And plead with thee in vain?