Love and Charity

Let Pharisees of high esteem
Their faith and zeal declare,

Let Pharisees of high esteem
Their faith and zeal declare,
All their religion is a dream,
If love be wanting there.

Love suffers long with patient eye,
Nor is provoked in haste;
She lets the present injury die,
And long forgets the past.

Malice and rage, those fires of hell,
She quenches with her tongue;
Hopes and believes, and thinks no ill,
Though she endure the wrong.

She nor desires nor seeks to know
The scandals of the time;
Nor looks with pride on those below,
Nor envies those that climb.

She lays her own advantage by
To seek her neighbor’s good;
So God’s own Son came down to die,
And bought our lives with blood.

Love is the grace that keeps her power
In all the realms above;
There faith and hope are known no more,
But saints for ever love.

1 Cor. 13:2-7, 13

Isaac Watts