Come, Holy Ghost, All-Quick’ning Fire
A hymn addressed to the Holy Spirit as God’s royal seal upon the heart.
A hymn addressed to the Holy Spirit as God’s royal seal upon the heart.
Hymns and indeed prayers to the Holy Spirit are not particularly common, but Charles Wesley composed several hymns to or about the Spirit. This hymn focuses on the idea (taken from St Paul’s letters) of the Holy Spirit as God’s royal seal on the Christian’s soul, a stamped image marking the believer out as redeemed by and for God.
COME, Holy Ghost, all-quick’ning fire,*
Come, and in me delight to rest;
Drawn by the lure of strong desire,
O come and consecrate my breast;
The temple of my soul prepare,
And fix thy sacred presence there!
2 If now thy influence I feel,
If now in thee begin to live,
Still to my heart thyself reveal;
Give me thyself, for ever give:
A point* my good, a drop my store,
Eager I ask, I pant for more.*
3 Eager for thee I ask and pant;
So strong, the principle divine
Carries me out with sweet constraint,
Till all my hallow’d soul is thine
Plunged in the Godhead’s deepest sea,
And lost in thine immensity.
4 My peace, my life, my comfort thou,
My treasure, and my all thou art
True witness of my sonship, now
Engraving pardon on my heart,
Seal of my sins in Christ forgiven,
Earnest of love, and pledge of heaven.*
5 Come, then, my God, mark out thine heir;
Of heaven a larger earnest give!
With clearer light thy witness bear,
More sensibly within me live;
Let all my powers thine entrance feel,
And deeper stamp thyself the seal!
* ‘Quicken’ here means ‘make alive’.
* ‘Point’ here may be used in the sense of one of the very small dots used in Hebrew script to indicate vowels, or the iota subscript (jot) in Greek. See also Wisdom 8:21, where the first ‘point’ of Wisdom is to know whose gift she is.
* The word ‘pant’ suggests Psalm 42:1.
* See 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.