A TIME TO WEEP | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 17, 1871

“A TIME TO WEEP.”

How often, in this “vale of tears,” Through all its changing, fleeting years, In disappointments, griefs, and fears, We find “a time to weep.”

“A time to weep”—how oft, indeed, The wounded heart has cause to bleed, When none the tears of anguish heed, Save eyes that never sleep.

For human hearts are just the same, Beset with ills of every name, As when the wisest man of fame, Declared, “A time to weep.”

To weep not for ourselves alone, But make another’s woes our own, And every cause of grief bemoan, That makes a brother weep.

Oh! can there be a heart so dead, From which all feelings pure have fled, No tear of sympathy could shed, Nor “weep with those that weep?”

To weep when slander’s venomed breath, Diffuses poison worse than death, Destroying friendship, love, and faith; Then is “a time to weep.”

“A time to weep”—but, most of all, When innocence and virtue fall, Shrouded in ruin’s dismal pall; Then might an angel weep.

“A time to weep”—when Zion’s foes Rejoice and triumph in her woes— When few the ways of sin oppose— Oh! then ’tis time to weep.

To weep before the mercy-seat, When in the house of prayer we meet, Or in the sacred, lone retreat, For Zion’s sake to weep.

“A time to weep,” when all around, So many precious souls are found, Whose steps in ways of sin are bound. “Oh! that my head were waters deep, A fount of tears, that I might weep.”