“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 150 / 120 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,
He is willing; doubt no more.
The whole hymn—ten stanzas—is not sung now as one, but two, the second division beginning with the line—
Come ye weary, heavy laden.
Rev. Joseph Hart became minister of Jewin St. Congregational Chapel, London, about 1760, where he labored till his death, May 24, 1768.