The Hope of Heaven

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How happy every child of grace, Who knows his sins forgiven!

Author: Charles Wesley (1759)
Published in 364 hymnals

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Representative Text

1 How happy every child of grace
Who knows his sins forgiven!
This earth, he cries, is not my place,
I seek my place in Heaven,
A country far from mortal sight;
Yet, O by faith, I see
The land of rest, the saints’ delight,
The Heaven prepared for me!

2 A stranger in the world below,
I calmly sojourn here;
Nor can its happiness or woe
Provoke my hope or fear.
Its evils in a moment end,
Its joys as soon are past;
But O the bliss to which I tend
Eternally shall last!

3 To that Jerusalem above
With singing I repair;
While in the flesh, my hope and love,
My heart and soul, are there;
There my exalted Saviour stands,
My merciful high priest,
And still extends his wounded hands
To me, of saints the least.

4 Then let me joyfully remove
That fuller life to share;
I shall not lose my friends above,
But more enjoy them there.
There we in Jesus’ praise shall join,
His boundless love proclaim,
And sing the everlasting song
Of Moses and the Lamb.

Source: The Song Book of the Salvation Army #880

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Author: Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley, M.A. was the great hymn-writer of the Wesley family, perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn-writer of all ages. Charles Wesley was the youngest son and 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, and was born at Epworth Rectory, Dec. 18, 1707. In 1716 he went to Westminster School, being provided with a home and board by his elder brother Samuel, then usher at the school, until 1721, when he was elected King's Scholar, and as such received his board and education free. In 1726 Charles Wesley was elected to a Westminster studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1729, and became a college tutor. In the early part of the same year his religious impressions were much deepene… Go to person page >

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First Line:	How happy every child of grace, Who knows his sins forgiven!
Title:	The Hope of Heaven
Author:	Charles Wesley (1759)
Meter:	8.6.8.6
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Notes

How happy every child of grace. C. Wesley. [The Hope of Heaven.] Published in his Funeral Hymns, 2nd series, 1759, No. 2, in 8 stanzas of 8 lines, and from thence into the Supplement of the Wesleyan Hymn Book, 1830. G. J. Stevenson has given interesting "Associations" in his Methodist Hymn Book Notes, 1883, setting forth the spiritual help this hymn has been to many. (Original text, Poetical Works, 1868-72, vol. vi. p. 216.) Its use with the Methodist bodies in all English-speaking countries is extensive. A cento from this hymn, beginning "A stranger in the world below," is given in H. W. Beecher's Plymouth Collection, 1855, No. 1273. It is composed of stanzas ii. and iii. A second cento in the American Hymns and Songs of Praise, N. Y., 1874, is, "O what a blessed hope is ours" (stanzas vii., viii.).

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)

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