181 Downs. C.M.
(396) The Need of Regeneration.
How helpless guilty nature lies,
Unconscious of its load!
The heart, unchanged, can never rise
To happiness and God.
2 Can aught, beneath a power divine,
The stubborn will subdue?
'Tis thine, almighty Spirit! thine,
To form the heart anew.
3 'Tis thine, the passions to recall,
And upward bid them rise;
To make the scales of error fall,
From reason's darkened eyes.
4 Oh! change these wretched hearts of ours,
And give them life divine;
Then shall our passions and our powers,
Almighty Lord! be thine.
Anne Steele, 1760.