Jordan

Words: Isaac Watts

Tune: William Billings

from The Sacred Harp p. 66

 

There is a land of pure delight

Where saints immortal reign

Infinite day excludes the nights

And pleasures banish pain.

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green

So to the Jews old Canaan stood,

While Jordan rolled between.

 

There everlasting spring abides,

And never-withering flowers:

Death, like a narrow sea, divides

This heavenly land from ours.

But timorous mortals start and shrink

To cross this narrow sea;

And linger, shivering on the brink,

And fear to launch away.

 

O could we make our doubts remove,

Those gloomy doubts that rise,

And see the Canaan that we love

With unbeclouded eyes!

Could we but climb where Moses stood,

And view the landscape o'er,

Not Jordan's stream, nor death's cold flood,

Should fright us from the shore.