1 Dearest Jesus though unseen,
My believing heart must love thee;
Poor despised Nazarene:
A true and constant friend I prove thee,
Sinking in thy balmy name,
O how I love my dearest Lamb.
2 Night and day I vent my sign,
Languishing to see my Savior,
With warm heart and wondering eye,
I view my dying Lord for ever,
here I always would abide,
O this I choose and naught beside.
3 Like the widowed turtle dove,
I, dear lovely Lamb, mourn for thee
Pants my soul thy love to prove,
Crying O my God restore me
To thy presence sweet and fair,
O how I long to meet thee there.
4 Every moment seems an age,
Till thy presence shall relieve me,
Till thy grace my woes assuage,
And thy absence no more grieve me:
Welcome, welcome, bleeding Lamb,
O how thy presence feeds the flame.
5 O'er the hills I see him come,
Quick as darts the piercing lightning,
Scattered o'er the horrid gloom:
All thy joys are quick and brightening.
Welcome, welcome, bleeding Lamb,
O how I love thy dearest name.
Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the use of Christians, 1803
James Relly was born about 1722 at Jeffreston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and died in 1778. He was converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening ushered in by George Whitefield. He worked under George Whitefield as a Calvinistic Methodist preacher and missionary. However, Whitefield and Relly separated ways over Relly's seemingly universalist teaching that all humanity was elect (i.e. saved) when Christ took the punishment for all sin when he died. He also departed from both the Calvinists and Methodists by taking the doctrine of Justification further, in teaching that believers no longer sin and the Law's sole purpose is to condemn humanity and point them to Christ.
He was the mentor of John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Ch… Go to person page >
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