Doubt you the Lord’s hand can reach far as ever, to bring deliverance? Think you his ear has grown deaf, that you cry out in vain?

Nay, sin of yours has come between you and your God; guilt of yours has estranged him that he denies you audience;

the bloodstained hands, the itching fingers, lying lips, and tongues that whisper of treachery.

Who owns the claim of justice, who judges honourably? A lie their confidence, folly their watchword, they carry mischief in the womb, bring shame to birth.

Eggs the cockatrice may hatch, yet there is death in the taste of them, a brood of basilisks;

deftly the spider weaves, yet web of hers will never make cloth, none will be the warmer for her toil; so it is with these; all unprofitable their schemes, their doing all undoing.

Swift ministers of evil, hot-foot they scent down the blood of innocence,✻ their aim ever to destroy, leave a trail of havoc and ruin.

Where peace should be found they know not, nor ever set their hearts on right; still stray by crooked paths where safety is none.

What wonder if redress is still far from us, if reprieve linger on its way? Crave we light, and nothing see but darkness, hope we for dawn, and walk in dusk.

Blind men that grope along a wall, hands, not eyes, to shew the way, stumble we at noonday as though benighted; we are dead men in a world of shadows.

No better than growling bears, or doves that moan and mourn, still we hope for the redress that never comes, the deliverance that is far away.

Our guilt mounts up before thee, our sins accuse us; shame ever at our side, we confess the wrong done.

Heinous our treason against the Lord, that turn away from his divine leading to plan cruelty and rebellion; false thoughts we conceive in our hearts that still find utterance.

Redress is withheld from us, because loyalty lies neglected in our streets, and honour finds no entrance;

alas that loyalty should be forgotten, innocence marked down for spoil!

All this the Lord has seen, and shame he thought it there should be no redress.

Was there no champion to come forward? None found he, and his heart misgave him. And so his own arm must bring the deliverance he intended, his own faithfulness held him to it.✻

That faithfulness is the breastplate that arms him, that saving power the helmet that guards his head; vengeance the garment he wears, jealous love the mantle that wraps him round.✻

Doubt not he will repay, wreak his anger upon the rebels, give his enemies their due; no island so far off but it shall have its punishment,

till the name of the Lord strikes terror into western lands, and the east stands in awe of his fame. Here is a river coming upon them in full flood, driven on by the Lord’s breath;

here is one that brings deliverance to Sion, and to all Jacob’s children that turn away from their sins; the Lord has promised it.

This covenant I will make with them, the Lord says: Spirit of mine that dwells in thee, words of mine entrusted to thy lips, on thy lips shall dwell, on the lips of thy children and thy children’s children, henceforth and for ever.