1 The Sun of Righteousness appears
To set in blood no more;
Adore the Scatterer of your fears,
Your rising Sun adore.
2 The saints, when He resigned His breath,
Unclosed their sleeping eyes;
He breaks again the bonds of death;
Again the dead arise.
3 Alone the dreadful race He ran,
Alone the wine-press trod;
He dies and suffers as a man;
He rises as a God.
4 In vain the stone, the watch, the seal
Forbid an early rise
To Him who breaks the gates of hell,
And opens paradise.
Source: African Methodist Episcopal Church Hymnal #171
First Line: | The Sun of Righteousness appears |
Title: | The Sun of Righteousness |
Author: | Samuel Wesley |
Meter: | 8.6.8.6 |
Language: | English |
Copyright: | Public Domain |
The Sun of Righteousness appears. S. Wesley, jun. [Easter Day.] First published in his Poems on Several Occasions, 1736, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, and again in Nicholl's reprint of the same, 1862. At an early date it appeared in the Psalma & Hymns of J. & C. Wesley, and other collections. It has passed into a limited number of modern hymn-books. The fourth stanza is noteworthy as being that upon which C. Wesley based his stanzas iii. in "Christ the Lord is risen today."
S. Wesley's hymn was given in Bishop Heber's posthumous Hymns, &c, 1827, p. 69, as Anonymous. In a few collections stanzas iii., iv. are given as "Alone the dreadful race He ran."
--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)