Hush, my soul, what Voice is pleading

Hush, my soul, what Voice is pleading. John Henry Lester* (ca. 1845- ca. 1904).

The date of composition of this hymn is not known. It was published in the Lichfield Church Mission Hymn Book (1883), and later in the Mirfield Mission Hymn Book* (1907).  It had four stanzas:

Hush, my soul, what Voice is pleading?
   Thou canst feel its silent power;
 Who is this that speaks so gently
   In this solemn evening hour?
 ‘Stay, poor sinner; life is fleeting,
   And thy soul is dark within
 Wilt thou wait till outer darkness
   Close in gloom thy life of sin?’

Hark, it is a Voice of sweetness,
   Tenderly it speaks and true!
 Dark and sad, yet strangely yearning
   For a peace I never knew,
 Half inclined to stay and listen,
   Half inclined to go away,
 Still I linger, for it whispers,
   ‘Harden not thy heart to-day!’

What is this that steals upon me?
   Can it be that at my side,
 In His Own mysterious Presence
   Stands the Wondrous Crucified?
 ‘Why, poor sinner, wilt thou linger?
   I am waiting to forgive:
 See the meaning of these Wound-prints:
   I have died, that thou may’st live!’

Hush, my soul! it is thy Saviour;
   And He seeks His lost one now!
 He is waiting; flee not from Him,
   Venture near, before Him bow,
 Tell thy sins; He will forgive thee;
   And He will not love thee less;
 For the human Heart of Jesus
   Overflows with tenderness. (1907 text)

This dramatic hymn, with its appeal to the hardened sinner to repent and believe before it is too late, and its final words of comfort, is eminently suited to the purpose for which it was written. The penultimate line may be a borrowing from a line in William Wordsworth*’s, ‘Ode. Intimations of Immortality from recollections of early childhood’, ‘Thanks to the human heart by which we live’: here it serves well to concentrate on the humanity of Jesus. In Britain it was set to EVENSONG by John E. Roe (1838-1871).

In addition to the British books in which it appeared, Hymnary.org notes that the hymn was published in New York in Hymns of the Christian Centuries (1903), Immanuel Hymnal (New York, 1929), and the Hymnal of the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church of America (Chicago, 1950).

JRW