O How Happy They Are

227 O How Happy They Are

1 How happy are they,
   Who the Saviuor obey,
   And have laid up their treasure above!
   Tongue cannot express
   The sweet comfort and peace
   Of a soul in its earliest love.

2 That comfort was mine,
   When the favour divine
   I first found in the blood of the Lamb;
   When my heart it believ'd,
   O what joy I receiv'd,
   What a heaven in Jesus's name!

3 'Twas a heaven below
   The Saviour to know;
   And the angels could do nothing more
   Than to fall at his feet,
   And the story repeat,
   And the lover of sinners adore.

4 Jesus all the day long
   Was my joy and my song;
   O that all his salvation might see!
   He hath loved me, I cried,
   He hath suffer'd and died,
   To redeem such a rebel as me.

5 Oh! the rapturous height
   Of that holy delight
   Which I felt in the life-giving blood!
   Of my Saviour possest,
   I was perfectly blest,
   As if fill'd with the fulness of God.

6 Now my remnant of days
   Would I spend to his praise,
   Who hath died my poor soul to redeem.
   Whether many or few,
   All my years are his due;
   May they all be devoted to him.
                         Charles Wesley
                         The Methodist Hymnal 1964 edition

<idle musing>
I don't recall ever singing this hymn, but it does a good job of capturing the first love of a believer. Would that it remained true for the rest of their (and my) life!

Hymnary.org inserts a few verses:

5 On the wings of his love
   I was carry'd above
   All sin, and temptation, and pain;
   I could not believe
   That I ever should grieve
   That I ever should suffer again.

6 I rode on the sky,
   Freely justify'd I!
   Nor envy'd Elijah his seat:
   My soul mounted higher
   In a chariot of fire,
   And the moon it was under my feet.

9 What a mercy is this!
   What a heaven of bliss!
   How unspeakably favored am I!
   Gathered into the fold,
   With believers enrolled,
   With believers to live and to die!

</idle musing