“WHY SHOULD WE START AND FEAR TO DIE?”
Probably it is an embarrassment of riches and despair of space that have crowded this hymn— 577 / 513 perhaps the sweetest that Watts ever wrote—out of some of our church singing-books. It is pleasant to find it in the new Methodist Hymnal, though with an indifferent tune.
Christians of today should surely sing the last two stanzas with the same exalted joy and hope that made them sacred to pious generations past and gone—
O if my Lord would come and meet,
My soul would stretch her wings in haste.
Fly fearless through death's iron gate,
Nor feel the terrors as she passed.
Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are,
While on His breast I lean my head
And breathe my life out sweetly there.