Our time has come

Ascension Lutheran Church

Our mission is affiliated with the Lutheran Church of Venezuela, a national church-body with only 15 congregations scattered from one end of the country to the other, and a total of 930 baptized members in a nation of 30 million people. The national church has requested prayers for one of its largest congregations, Ascension Lutheran Church of San Felix de Guayana in eastern Venezuela.

The city of San Felix is located on one side of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers with the city of Puerto Ordaz on the other. Much like Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, the two communities form one metropolitan area, known as Ciudad Guayana, which constitutes the sixth-largest city in Venezuela.

Pastor Elias Lozano

Ascension Lutheran Church has been nestled on the same hillside property for more than 40 years. Now an agency of municipal government wants to seize all of the land and destroy all of the exisiting buidlings, including the church itself and the house where Pastor Elias Lozano and his family live.

Ostensibly, this is for the purpose of constructing a housing project.   Of course, this action demonstrates appalling disregard for a house of prayer and the fundamental rights of the people who gather for worship there. But anyone who has paid attention to international headlines can sense that this is part of a trend toward diminished priority placed on religious liberty around the world, even in the United States.

Perhaps one might ask how you can compare unjust confiscation of property with the beheading, burning and crucifixion of Christians in the Middle East and other places? Because once the basic principle of freedom of religion is undermined, it is only a matter of time before violent persecution of religious dissidents follows. As Christians, we recognize that the impulse for persecution, no matter how mild it may seem in the beginning, or how severe it may become, stems from the same spiritual source.

 “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.   And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor Me." John 16: 1-3 ESV

Worship at Ascension Lutheran Church.

Jesus repeatedly told His disciples that His hour would come, the time when He would suffer and die on the cross to atone for the sins of the world, before rising from the dead on the third day. In these verses from the Gospel of John, He warns them that their time will come, when they will suffer and even die for the sake of their faith. Jesus both warned His disciples of persecution and hatred, and gave them encouragement that all these things would happen in accordance with God’s counsel and will or by His permission. The hatred of the world, of the children of unbelief, would be shown in various forms or degrees. First would come ostracism by their fellow Jews and denial of the right to public worship. But bigotry and hatred against Christ and His followers would not be satisfied with such measures, but would not even shrink back from murder as a work of great merit and well pleasing to God. These words have been and are being fulfilled continually.

St. Paul repeated this warning in 2 Timothy 3: 12-13, "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. " All who truly are eager to live a life of godliness in Christ, through the power which He imparts, all believers that give evidence of their faith in Christ in a life that accords with the will of God, must bear also the cross of Christ, whether in the form of ridicule and ostracism, or actual martyrdom.

The early Christians first earned the wrath of others of Jewish background who did not believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior because He did not meet their expectations of a superhero who would overthrow the hated Roman Empire and restore Israel to its ancient glory. As the Gospel spread throughout the wider Greco-Roman world, Christians were persecuted by those who personally profited from idolatry (Acts 16: 16-24; 19: 23-41) and those who feared that exclusive worship of just one God would anger rival deities and thus bring down all kinds of misfortune on the people. In Acts 17: 16-34, St. Paul noted that ancient Athens had altars dedicated to all the known gods and goddesses of the Mediterranean world, plus one to "the unknown god", just in case there was one that they had overlooked.

Finally the early Church faced a series of systematic campaigns to "stamp out" Christianity from the highest levels of Roman government. The problem here was the refusal of Christians to participate in even token worship of the Roman emperor, for they believed such absolute devotion belonged to God alone. But the Church endured these onslaughts and by the end of the fourth century A.D., Christianity had become the majority religion of the Roman Empire.

In the centuries that followed, the militant religion of Islam became the most visible threat to the lives and liberty of Christians. Even within "Christian" lands, those who stood up for the pure Word of the Scriptures against the over-reaching authority of the institutional church and the civil goverment often became targets of violent persecution.

And so it remains to this day and until the Lord returns in glory. I was blessed by God to grow up in a country with one of the highest standards of religious liberty in the world and in history. But recent events have shown that even those of us who have enjoyed this privilege should not take it for granted.

So let us pray for the liberty of Christians in Venezuela, the United States and China, and the very lives of those in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. Let us rejoice that the Lord is with us always, even to the close of the age. Amen.

Liturgy: The Card Game

When I was a boy, I enjoyed playing an educational card game called “Authors”. The deck of cards consisted of eleven sets of four cards each representing the works of eleven famous authors. The object of the game was to form complete sets of the four cards comprising the works of a particular author. I remember another such card game called “Famous Movie Monsters”, which was just as much fun, although not so high-brow.

Luz Maria has developed a set of cards for the historic Lutheran liturgy. The object is to answer correctly as many questions as you can. Her daughter, Charli, provided the graphic design, while the text on each card was taken, with the author's permission, from an explanation of the liturgy (in Spanish) by Edmund Mielke, former missionary to Venezuela and now the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Brandon, Manitoba. Luz Maria and Charli have put together 10 sets of these cards with the intention of selling them for a nominal fee at the national convention of SOLUDAVE (Sociedad Luterana de Damas Venezolanas), the Venezuelan Lutheran women's organization. Luz Maria hopes the card game will be used as a tool for teaching the history and importance of the liturgy in all of the member congregations of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela.

Rev. Mielke entitled his treatise “Oficio Divino” (Divine Office). English-speaking Lutherans perhaps more often use the expression “Divine Service” in reference to what the Augsburg Confession continues to call “the Mass.” According to Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession, “Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; for the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence.”

The term “Mass” is derived from the Latin word for dismissal. In the early Christian church, it was customary, after the preaching, or “service of the Word”, to dismiss all who were not baptized members of the church and then celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Thus, in the western half of the Roman Empire, where Latin was adopted as the liturgical language, the “mass” or dismissal of the unbaptized, at first signified the beginning of the sacramental service. Later it came to mean the entire service.

What is called “the Mass” in the tradition of the western European church is called the “Divine Liturgy” in the Greek Orthodox churches of eastern Europe and Asia. “Liturgy” comes from the Greek λειτουργια (“leitourgia”). This is a compound word combining “leitos” or public, with “ergon”, which means work or action. Leitourgia originally meant something provided as a service for the public by a benefactor of the ruling class. In Spanish, “oficio” can mean “official function” or “ministry” (the word for what we usually mean by “office” in English is “oficina”.) In fact, the word “leitourgia” occurs in the New Testament, where it is usually translated into English as “service” or “ministry” (Luke 1:23, 2 Corinthians 9:12, Philippians 2:17, 30, and Hebrews 8:6, 9:21). In Luke 1:23, Zachariah goes home when "the days of his liturgy” (αι ημεραι της λειτουργιας αυτου), or service in the Temple, are over.

In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament read by people who did not know Hebrew in New Testament times ) the word “leitourgia” (and nouns and verbs derived from it) is used to translate verses describing the ritual service of the temple (Numbers 4:24; Joel 1:9, 2:17). In Hebrews 8:6, the high priest of the New Covenant (Jesus) performs a better kind of “liturgy” than that of the Old Testament priests and Levites (νυνι δε διαφορωτερας τετυχεν λειτουργιας, οσῳ και κρειττονος εστιν διαθηκης μεσιτης, ητις επι κρειττοσιν επαγγελιαις νενομοθετηται) by sacrificing Himself once and for all time for the sins of the whole human race, and by continuing to act as Mediator between God and man. For this reason, propitiary sacrifices of animals have been eliminated from the worship of the New Covenant (because Christ's sacrifice on the cross covers all sin), as have the ceremonial/ritual purity laws which had to be obeyed before anyone could enter the Temple and participate in the Old Testament rites (because we enter the presence of God made holy by the blood of Christ).

Christ also instituted certain means for His salvation to be made known to the world and for the strengthening of the faith of those who believe. First the public proclamation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth and instruction in the doctrines of the faith (John 20:21-23, Matthew 28:19-20), and the sacraments of baptism (Matthew 28:19-20) and the Lord's Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-24).

By “Divine Service,” “Divine Liturgy” or “Divine Office”, we mean the public preaching of the Word, which Christ Himself instituted for the benefit of believers and those who have yet to believe, and the administration of the sacraments, baptism for the receiving of people into the household of faith, and Holy Communion for the strengthening of faith in those who believe.

Article V of the Augsburg Confession states, "To obtain such faith, God instituted the preaching office to give Gospel and Sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, when and where He pleases, in those who hear the Gospel.” Likewise Article XXIII of the Augsburg Confession says, “the sacraments were ordained, not only to be marks of profession among men, but rather to be signs and testimonies of the will of God toward us, instituted to awaken and confirm faith in those who use them. Wherefore we must so use the sacraments that faith be added to believe the promises which are offered and set forth through the sacraments.”

The service of the Word and sacraments is central to Christian worship. Although the New Testament gives no detailed description of early Christian worship, several other things are associated with the ministry of Word and sacrament: prayer (1 Timothy 2:8), singing of hymns (Ephesians 5:19). Scripture readings (James 1:22) and offerings of thanksgiving (1 Corinthians 16:1-2). Put all of these components together and a certain structure emerges. Thus we define Christian worship as God delivering the gifts of His grace, the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life to those who repent and believe, through the means of Word and sacrament, the grateful response of His people with prayer and praise. This basic structure, or “liturgy”, has stood the test of time. We see it in the earliest full descriptions of the church's worship, such as the writings of Justin Martyr or the Didache. Because this structure is based directly the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, it is not negotiable and may not be set aside.

There are elements of the historic liturgy that we have inherited from the church of past centuries that are neither expressly commanded or forbidden by Holy Scripture. These are called “adiaphora”, from a Greek word that often is translated as “indifferent matters.” Many people think that to say something is an adiaphoron is to say it's purely a matter of personal preference, but this is not so. If something is commanded or forbidden by Scripture, then one is faced with a simple black versus white proposition. To refuse to do what God commands in Scripture, or to do what Scripture forbids is to defy the will of God, pure and simple. With adiaphora, however, there may be shades of gray. To accept or reject an adiaphoron may depend on the historical or cultural context in which one finds oneself.

For example, early in the 20th Century, many German Lutheran congregations in the United States adopted the custom of placing a United States flag on one side of the chancel and a “Christian flag” (a red cross on a blue field against a white background) on the other. This was because in the years preceding, during and following World War I, there was a great deal of prejudice and animosity toward German-speaking immigrants. The German Lutherans wanted to show that they were both devout Christians and loyal citizens who recognized the United States of America as “one nation under God.” Nowadays this practice strikes some people as blurring the proper distinction between church and state, and identifying Christianity too closely with “the American way of life.” Who is right? To display the banners of church and state in this way may have made sense in a certain time and place, but may not be considered appropriate in a more global era. That is the nature of adiaphora.

The Lutheran approach to such matters is a variation of the principle, “If it works, don't fix it.” If some practice has become part of the common heritage of the church, does not contradict Scripture, serves a useful purpose and does not create misunderstandings, it should by all means be preserved as ṕart of our worship.

Martin Lutheran published his “Formula Missae” (Latin Mass) in 1523. In his introduction to it, he wrote:

“We therefore first assert: It is not now nor ever has been our intention to abolish the liturgical service of God completely, but rather to purify the one that is now in use from the wretched accretions which corrupt it and to point out an evangelical use.”

So we say along with the Apology (Defense) of the Augsburg Confession, Articles VII and VIII: 33, “...we believe that the true unity of the Church is not injured by dissimilar rites instituted by men; although it is pleasing to us that, for the sake of tranquillity [unity and good order], universal rites be observed, just as also in the churches we willingly observe the order of the Mass, the Lord’s Day, and other more eminent festival days. And with a very grateful mind we embrace the profitable and ancient ordinances, especially since they contain a discipline by which it is profitable to educate and train the people and those who are ignorant.”

The baptism of Adam Jesús Mogollón

Adam Jesús Mogollón was born August 21, 2012. He returned to the hospital with some kind of infection during the second week of his life. In his third week, he did not eat properly and seemed to have trouble breathing. Luz María and I visited his parents, Wuendy and Jesús, in Ottawa, Canada, that third week.

Wuendy is Luz Maria's daughter, and Adam Jesús is her ninth grandchild. His parents did not know this, but his initials, “A.J.” are the same as those of my great-grandfather, Andrew John Hemmingson. Due to the delicate nature of the child's health and because his parents have yet to find a church home in Ottawa, I baptized Adam Jesús in their home on Saturday, September 8, 2012. His maternal grandmother was physically present to witness the event, while his father's mother, brother and sister in Caracas were with us via the magic of Internet videoconferencing. That was a new experience for me.

We purchased a glass dish shaped like a scallop shell to hold the water for the baptism. The scallop shell is an ancient symbol for baptism, probably because the shells are easily found on any of the world's seashores, and because they are useful for pouring water. We have brought the shell-shaped dish back to Venezuela and will use it from now on for all baptisms at La Caramuca Lutheran Mission. Thanks to generous contributions from our sponsoring individuals and organizations, we were able, throughout our journey, to buy a large amount of supplies that are hard to find in Venezuela at this time.

 Of course, I explained to Wuendy and Jesus that the baptism of an infant represents a commitment by its parents and, ideally, a local congregation to continue its instruction in the faith. However, none of the Lutheran churches near their home offer worship services in Spanish. Wuendy and Jesus both have learned enough English and French for daily business and social interactions. But it is a universal part of the immigrant experience that the language of prayer and worship remains the last link to the immigrant's life in the old country.

I am reminded of the story of “Meyer vs. Nebraska.” This was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, the first in which the Court invoked the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the noneconomic rights of citizens against intrusion by the states.

 In the years leading up to, and following World War I, anti-German sentiment led to the imprisonment of German immigrants suspected of being spies, and bans of the speaking of German, the performance of German music and the reading of German books. However, in 1923 the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska statute that prohibited the teaching of modern foreign languages in private and parochial elementary schools. The Court held that the statute was unconstitutional because it deprived parents and teachers of liberty and property without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Why? Because Robert T. Meyer, a teacher at Zion Lutheran Church, Hampton, Nebraska, defied the statute by openly teaching German, as did two other Lutheran parochial schoolteachers in defiance of similar state laws in Ohio and Iowa. Meyer argued that it was his duty to teach children the religion of their parents in the language of their parents. Since the Lutheran parochial schools already taught basic curricular subjects in the English language, the Court found that the Nebraska, Ohio, and Iowa statutes did not promote the states' interest in encouraging patriotism and the use of a common language.

 I long have thought that we who are descendants of German-speaking immigrants who sought religious liberty in the United States should not be blind to the reflection of our ancestors' spiritual needs and struggles in the more recent waves of immigrants. Jesús told me that although the number of Venezuelans living in Ottawa is small, the total number of Spanish-speaking people is much larger, with representatives from nearly all Central and South American countries, including Colombia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. I gather that the Lutheran Church – Canada (sister synod to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod) once supported a Latin American mission in the Ottawa metropolitan area, but it was discontinued for reasons that I have yet to learn.

Anyway, while Wuendy and Jesus stayed home to care for their sick child, Luz María and I on Sunday attended St. Luke Lutheran Church. We are grateful for the warm reception by everyone, but especially Pastor Bryan King, and Skip and Anne Taylor.

 A tour of Issues Etc.

While visiting my mother before returning to Venezuela, we had the opportunity to tour the studio of Issues Etc., a Lutheran talk-radio program that broadcasts over the Internet, in nearby Collinsville, Illinois. I regularly listen to Issues Etc. In Venezuela and especially appreciate the interviews with seminary professors. Thanks again to Jeff Schwarz and Pastor Bruce Kesemann of Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church of Freeburg, Illinois.

Knowing it by heart

Every day we open the preschool with the raising of the Venezuelan flag and the singing of the national anthem, followed by a Scripture reading, the Lord's Prayer and a couple of songs. One song goes like this:

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

El amor de Dios es maravilloso,

¡Cuan grande es el amor de Dios!

Es tan alto que no puedo ir arriba de él,

Tan profundo que no puedo ir abajo de él,

Tan ancho que no puedo ir afuera de él,

¡Cuan grande es el amor de Dios!

This is based, more or less, on Romans 8:39, “Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There are movements to accompany the words of the song. For example, when you sing, “It's so high that I cannot rise above it,” you lift your hands up as high as you can. You lower your hands as far as you can for “It's so deep that I cannot sink beneath it,” and spread them as far as you can for “It{ s so wide that I cannot go outside of it.”

Luz Maria sang this song to her one-year-old granddaughter, Anyi, when Anyi was lying in a hospital bed with dengue fever. Despite the fact that dengue fever causes severe pain in the joints, Anyi began raising and lowering her hands in response to the song!

Rote learning may have a bad name in certain circles, but incidents like this illustrate its value. I am glad that a times of stress in my own life that I have not had to struggle to remember the creeds, the Lord's Prayer, key Bible verses and hymns. This I credit to the liturgical form of worship that we followed as a church (which was found in the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal for the first 20 years of my life).

For Sunday morning worship in La Caramuca, we follow the liturgy in Culto Cristiano, a Spanish-language hymnal first published by Concordia Publishing House in 1964. There has been no complete Spanish-language Lutheran hymnal published since then. Actually, many in the congregation, both children and adults, either cannot read at all or are semi-literate. However, the structure of the liturgy has enabled them to memorize the creeds, the Lord's Prayer, various hymns and the numerous Bible verses that are used in the liturgy.

Our place of worship is only a roofed patio (we hope that soon we might build a real chapel). Our altar is only a white plastic lawn table. Nevertheless we decorate the altar in the appropriate liturgical colors, which also are reflected in the altar candles and my vestments. The liturgical colors are a visual aid to help everyone recall important events memorialized in the church calendar and to remind them that we are, in fact, marking time. We are counting down the days until the Lord's return.

A gentleman named J.A.O. Stubb once wrote of his early experiences in a Swedish-American Lutheran church: “As grandfather turned to the Altar and intoned the Lord’s Prayer and the words of consecration, with the elevation of the host and the chalice, I felt as if God was near. The congregation standing reverentially about those kneeling before the Altar, made me think of Him who, though unseen, was in our midst. I forgot the old, cold church with its bare walls, its home-made pews and its plain glass windows. I early came to know some words of that service, such as: “This is the true body, the true blood of Christ”; “Forgiveness of sins”; “Eternal life.” I venture that all who, like me, early received such impressions of the Lord’s Supper, will approach the Altar or the Communion with a reverence that time will but slowly efface.” (J.A.O. Stubb, D.D., “Vestments andLiturgies”, 1920).

Of course, the Lutheran liturgy is not the invention of Swedish-Americans, nor of German-Americans, nor of any national/ethnic group, but rather is derived from pre-Tridentine versions of the Latin Mass (when people today speak of “the traditional Latin Mass”, usually they are thinking of the Tridentine Mass. This was developed at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and adopted as the standard order of worship by the Roman Catholic Church in 1570 (it would later be replaced as the norm by the post-Vatican II Novo Ordo in 1969).The Tridentine Mass was developed some time after the first specifically Lutheran form of the Latin Mass in 1523. As the Lutheran order of worship retained all the elements of the Mass except those that directly contradicted the principles of “Scripture alone, faith alone and grace alone,” the Tridentine Mass by design reflected the Council of Trent s rejection of those principles.

Nearly all Lutheran churches throughout the world use some form of the revised “Western rite”, translated into vernacular languages. One exception being the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, which subscribes to the Book of Concord, but uses an order of worship based on Byzantine (Greek Orthodox) liturgies. All variations of the Lutheran liturgy draw on the liturgical heritage of the ancient church (and beyond, since the worship of the early church was rooted in the liturgical worship of the Temple and the synagogues) as the most appropriate manner of conducting the ministry of the Word and the sacraments.

Christmas in June

Here in La Caramuca we got some presents early, as we were visited by a delegation from our national church, the Lutheran Church of Venezuela. The delegation included Pastor Elias Lozano, the newly elected president of the ILV; Pastor Miguelangel Perez, vice president of the ILV; and Pastor Abel Garcia, director of the Juan de Frias Theological Institute. They gave us some Spanish Bibles with Luther's Small Catechism included as an appendix. We hope to present them to our next group of confirmands.

These Bibles represent part of the work of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, an organization that has has published the catechism in more than 50 languages, and published and distributed more than 450 titles and 3 million Lutheran books to pastors, seminary students, missionaries and churches. The Bible translation used is the 1960 revision of the Reina-Valera Bible. This is our preferred translation. There are more contemporary Spanish translations, and I know the argument that contemporary translations based on earlier manuscripts should be better than the translations of the Reformation era based on the Textus Receptus (the Reina-Valera, King James Version and Luther's German Bible). Unfortunately, most contemporary translations either reflect more of the theological and political prejudices of the translators or fail to convey the meaning of the original text as powerfully as the older translations.

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Goodbye, Grandma, God bless you

She was born Clara Helen Viola Kurth, January 16, 1917, in Haakon County, South Dakota. Years later she would tell me that, as the last of seven children, her parents gave her all the names of female relatives for whom they had yet to name a girl.

She died November 27, 2010, having outlived her parents, all of her siblings, two husbands and two of her five children. She was my last surviving grandparent and one of the greatest of the great cloud of witnesses that have surrounded me all my life.

Grandma grew up on the Kurth homestead southeast of Philip, SD. As a teenager, she would cook for the men that her father hired for his threshing crew. One of the young men was my grandfather, Anthony Hollis Hemmingson. They were married on September 29, 1935, and stayed together until Grandpa´s death on November 11, 1979.

The Kurth homestead still stands.

During the late 1930s Grandma and Grandpa lived on a farm south of Belvidere, SD.They moved to the town of Kadoka, SD, in 1942. Grandma continued to develop her talent for cooking. She worked as a cook at the H&H Restaurant, the Kadoka hospital and nursing home, and the Kadoka high school and grade school. For a time, she and Grandpa managed their own restaurant on Main Street.

Anthony Hollis Hemmingson

In 1969 Grandma and Grandpa moved to Lovington, New Mexico, as the South Dakota winters were becoming hard on my grandfather's arthritis. Grandpa passed away in New Mexico, as did my Uncle Tony (Anthony Richard) Hemmingson in 1996, her second husband, Orville "Tim" Long in 1997, and my Uncle Loren Hemmingson in 1998. Nevertheless, she continued to live in New Mexico until 2004.

Grandma's faith was a never-failing source of consolation to her during those years of loss. She and Grandpa were both baptized and confirmed as Lutherans and received Word and sacrament regularly, first at Zion Lutheran Church in Kadoka and later at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Lovington, NM. I consider this shared faith their best legacy to me.

I last saw Grandma in 2006 when Luz Maria and I visited her at my Uncle Arnie's house in Spearfish, SD. We both knew it probably would be our last meeting in this life, and she was moved to tell me how glad she was that I had found Luz Maria.

Grandma's body will be buried next to that of my grandfather in the Lovington, NM, cemetery. Their common epitaph, “For by grace are you saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). This also is the basis of the hymn, “By Grace I'm Saved, Grace Free and Boundless,” by Christian Scheidt, 1709-1761.

By grace I'm saved, grace free and boundless;
My soul, believe and doubt it not.
Why stagger at this word of promise?
Hath Scripture ever falsehood taught?
Nay; then this word must true remain;
By grace thou, too, shalt heav'n obtain.

By grace! None dare lay claim to merit;
Our works and conduct have no worth.
God in His love sent our Redeemer,
Christ Jesus, to this sinful earth;
His death did for our sins atone,
And we are saved by grace alone.

By grace! Oh, mark this word of promise
When thou art by thy sins opprest,
When Satan plagues thy troubled conscience,
And when thy heart is seeking rest.
What reason cannot comprehend
God by His grace to thee doth send.

By grace God's Son, our only Savior,
Came down to earth to bear our sin.
Was it because of thine own merit
That Jesus died thy soul to win?
Nay, it was grace, and grace alone,
That brought Him from His heavenly throne.

By grace! This ground of faith is certain;
So long as God is true, it stands.
What saints have penned by inspiration,
What in His Word our God commands,
What our whole faith must rest upon,
Is Grace alone, grace in His Son.

By grace to timid hearts that tremble,
In tribulation's furnace tried,--
By grace, despite all fear and trouble,
The Father's heart is open wide.
Where could I help and strength secure
If grace were not my anchor sure?