Escape For Thy Life

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Haste, O sinner! to be wise

Author: Thomas Scott (1773)
Tune: PLEYEL'S HYMN
Published in 546 hymnals

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Audio files: MIDI

Piano/Organ
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Choral
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Instrumental
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Representative Text

1 Hasten, O sinner, to be wise,
And stay not for the morrow’s sun;
The longer wisdom you despise,
The harder is she to be won.

2 O hasten mercy to implore,
And stay not for the morrow’s sun,
For fear thy season should be o’er
Before this evening’s course be run.

3 Hasten, O sinner, to return,
And stay not for the morrow’s sun,
For fear thy lamp should fail to burn
Before the needful work is done.

4 Hasten, O sinner, to be blest,
And stay not for the morrow’s sun,
For fear the curse should thee arrest
Before the morrow is begun.

Amen.

Source: American Lutheran Hymnal #26

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Author: Thomas Scott

Thomas Scott was born at Norwich, and was the son of a Dissenting minister. After his education he began his ministerial life at Wartmell, in Norfolk, adding also the labours of school-teaching. Subsequently he changed his pastoral relations several times, spending the last years of his life at Hupton, in Norfolk, where he died in 1776. He was the author of some prose works, several poems, and a few hymns. --Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A., 1872… Go to person page >

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First Line:	Haste, O sinner! to be wise
Title:	Escape For Thy Life
Author:	Thomas Scott (1773)
Meter:	7.7.7.7
Language:	English
Copyright:	Public Domain

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Hasten, [O] sinner, to be wise. T. Scott. [Exhortation to Repentance.] Published in his Lyric Poems, &c, 1773, No. 23, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, as “Hasten, sinner, to be wise." The L.M. version of this hymn, "Hasten, O sinner, to be wise," appeared in Rippon's Selection, 1787, No. 116, stanza ii. with the additional stanza "O Lord, do Thou the sinner turn." Both forms are in common use in Great Britain and America: the original is in Snepp's Songs of Grace & Glory, 1872, No. 470, with Rippon's additional stanza reduced to 7's metre; and Rippon's text is in the Baptist Psalms & Hymns, 1858, No. 373. In the Oberlin Manual of Praise, 1880, No. 219, 3 stanzas are given in 7's metre as "Haste, O Sinner, now be wise “ [William T. Brooke]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)