Helpless guilty nature

How helpless guilty nature lies,
Unconscious of its load!
The heart, unchanged, can never rise
To happiness and God.

Can aught, beneath a power divine,
The stubborn will subdue?
'Tis Thine, almighty Spirit! Thine,
To form the heart anew.

'Tis Thine, the passions to recall,
And upward bid them rise;
To make the scales of error fall
From reason's darkened eyes;

To chase the shades of death away,
And bid the sinner live;
A beam of Heaven, a vital ray,
'Tis Thine alone to give.

O change these wretched hearts of ours,
And give them life divine;
Then shall our passions and our powers
Almighty Lord! be Thine.

Anne Steele (1716-1778)
Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional, 1760