d, mine inmost soul convert,
And deeply on my thoughtful heart
Eternal things impress:
Give me to feel their solemn weight,
And tremble on the brink of fate,
And wake to righteousness.

The preachers and poets of the great spiritual movement of the
eighteenth century in England abated nothing in the candor of their
words. The terrible earnestness of conviction tipped their tongues and
pens with fire.

_THE TUNE._

Lady Huntingdon would have lent "Meribah" gladly to this hymn, but Mason
was not yet born. Many times it has been borrowed for Wesley's words
since it came to its own, and the spirit of the pious Countess has
doubtless approved the loan. It is rich enough to furnish forth her own
lyric and more than one other of like matter and metre.

The muscular music of "Ganges" has sometimes carried the hymn, and there
are those who think its thunder is not a whit more Hebraic than the
words require.

"COME YE SINNERS POOR AND NEEDY."

Few hymns have been more frequently sung in prayer-meetings and
religious assemblies during the last hundred and fifty years. Its
author, Joseph Hart, spoke what he knew and testified what he felt. Born
in London, 1712, and liberally educated, he was in his young manhood
very religious, but he went so far astray as to indulge in evil
practices, and even published writings, both original and translated,
against Christianity and religion of any kind. But he could not drink at
the Dead Sea and live. The apples of Sodom sickened him. Conscience
asserted itself, and the pangs of remorse nearly drove him to despair
till he turned back to the source he had forsaken. He alludes to this
experience in the lines--

Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him.

During Passion Week, 1767, he had an amazing view of the sufferings of
Christ, under the stress of which his heart was changed. In the joy of
this experience he wrote--

Come ye sinners poor and needy,

--and--

Come all ye chosen saints of God.

Probably no two hymn-lines have been oftener repeated than--

If you tarry till you're better
You will never come at all.

The complete form of the original stanzas is:

Come ye sinners poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity, love and power.
He is able