Christ My Song - 601

In this great world of ours - The strength of evil
(Horatius Bonar/Johannes Thomas Rüegg)

The strength of evil.

1. In this great world of ours
  nothing is small or poor;
for each hour's smallest thing is knit
  to the long evermore. (PDF - Midi)

2. The common deed or word,
  of which we took no heed,
ends in a vast eternity,
  as in the tree the seed.

3. Nor room to trifle here;
  to jest away life's hours,
as if we were but born to laugh,
  and sport among the flowers.

4. Sin spreadeth round and round
  in all we hear or see;
each drop enough to poison earth
  and stain eternity.

5. Its lightest touch is death;
  and from each spark there come
fires, through the ages spreading wide,
  the harbingers of doom.

6. The soul that sinneth dies!
  He who has swerved aside
from the full-hearted love of God,
  he has already died.

7. The sentence has gone forth
  from the great Judge of all,
in whose high estimate of guilt
  no sin of man is small.

8. O endless fruit of sin!
  O solemn doom of God!
One drop of evil upon earth
  swells to a world-wide flood.

9. One sin sweeps over time,
  rushing through silent space,
like a dark angel, to destroy
  the new-created race.

10. Yet as the one sad sin
  brought death, and woe, and strife,
so the one righteousness has brought
  the everlasting life.

Horatius Bonar, The Song of the New Creation, 1872, 162-163.

            PDF - Midi