Arm of the Lord, awake, awake (Wesley)

Arm of the Lord, awake, awake. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). From Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), where it was headed ‘Isaiah li. 9 &c.’ (‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?’). It had five 8-line verses. It was shortened in the 1780 Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists to six 4-line verses, using stanzas 1, 4 and 5 from 1739. It appeared there in the section ‘For Believers Groaning for full Redemption’, immediately following ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’*. The omitted stanzas refer explicitly to the verse from Isaiah: 2...