Today’s hymn is written by the father of British hymnody, Isaac Watts, in 1709. It was first published in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs in the same year.  Philip Doddridge, himself a hymn writer best remembered for O Happy Day, wrote to Watts: “I was preaching in a barn last Wednesday, to a company of plain country people. After a sermon from Hebrews, we sang one of your hymns, ‘Give Us The Wings Of Faith To Rise’ and had the satisfaction to see tears in the eyes of several of the auditory. After the service some of them told me they were not able to sing, so deeply were their minds affected with it; and the clerk in particular told me he could hardly utter the words of it”¹. Enjoy reading this one!

Give us the wings of faith to rise
within the veil, and see
the saints above, how great their joys,
how bright their glories be.

Once they were mourning here below,
their couch was wet with tears;
they wrestled hard, as we do now,
with sins and doubts and fears.

We ask them whence their victory came:
they, with united breath,
ascribe their conquest to the Lamb,
their triumph to his death.

They marked the footsteps that he trod,
his zeal inspired their breast,
and, following their incarnate God,
possess the promised rest.

Our glorious Leader claims our praise
for his own pattern given;
while the long cloud of witnesses
show the same path to heaven.

¹hymnstudiesblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/give-me-the-wings-of-faith/