Wonderful Words of Life

Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life,
Let me more of their beauty see, wonderful words of life;
Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty.

Refrain

Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life,
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.

Christ, the blessèd One, gives to all wonderful words of life;
Sinner, list to the loving call, wonderful words of life;
All so freely given, wooing us to Heaven.

Refrain

Sweetly echo the Gospel call, wonderful words of life;
Offer pardon and peace to all, wonderful words of life;
Jesus, only Savior, sanctify us forever.

Refrain

Words and Music: Philip P. Bliss, 1874.

Some history of this hymn from George C. Stebbins:

I car­ried that song through two sea­sons of evan­gel­is­tic work, ne­ver think­ing it pos­sessed much mer­it, or that it had the el­e­ment of spe­cial use­ful­ness, par­ti­cu­lar­ly for so­lo pur­pos­es.

It oc­curred to me to try it one day dur­ing the cam­paign in New Ha­ven, [Con­nec­ti­cut,] 1878 and, with the help of Mrs. Steb­bins, we sang it as a du­et. To our sur­prise the song was re­ceived with the great­est en­thu­si­asm and from that time on to the close of the meet­ings was the fa­vor­ite of all the hymns used.

As an il­lus­tra­tion of the hold it got up­on the peo­ple all about that se­ction of the coun­try, I re­ceived a let­ter from the Sec­re­tary of the Con­nec­ti­cut State Sun­day School As­so­ci­a­tion of­fer­ing me what seemed an ab­surd­ly large sum of mo­ney, if I would, with Mrs. Steb­bins, come to the State Con­ven­tion and sing that one song.

George C. Steb­bins
Mem­oirs and Rem­inis­cenc­es

Ht: Cyberhymnal