O Lord, look down from Hea­ven, be­hold
And let Thy pi­ty waken:
How few are we with­in Thy fold,
Thy saints by men for­sak­en!
True faith seems quenched on ev­ery hand,
Men suf­fer not Thy Word to stand;
Dark times have us o’er­tak­en.

With fraud which they them­selves invent
Thy truth they have con­found­ed;
Their hearts are not with one con­sent
On Thy pure doc­trine grounded.
While they pa­rade with out­ward show,
They lead the peo­ple to and fro,
In er­ror’s maze as­tound­ed.

May God root out all he­re­sy
And of false teach­ers rid us
Who proud­ly say: Now, where is he
That shall our speech for­bid us?
By right or might we shall pre­vail;
What we de­ter­mine can­not fail;
We own no lord and mas­ter.

Therefore saith God, I must arise,
The poor My help are need­ing;
To Me as­cend My peo­ple’s cries,
And I have heard their plead­ing.
For them My sav­ing Word shall fight
And fearless­ly and sharp­ly smite,
The poor with might de­fend­ing.

As sil­ver tried by fire is pure
From all adul­ter­ation,
So through God’s Word shall men en­dure
Each trial and temp­ta­tion.
Its light beams bright­er through the cross,
And, pu­ri­fied from hu­man dross,
It shines through ev­ery na­tion.

Thy truth de­fend, O God, and stay
This ev­il ge­ne­ra­tion;
And from the er­ror of their way
Keep Thine own con­gre­ga­tion.
The wick­ed ev­ery­where abound
And would Thy lit­tle flock con­found;
But Thou art our sal­va­tion.