Love Constraining to Obedience

“No strength of nature” by William Cowper is found Cowper’s & Newton’s Olney Hymns. In the 12th edition it is in Book III, Hymn 62 – under the theme “Dedication and Surrender” with the heading “Love Constraining to Obedience.” The hymn stresses the “then” and “now” difference of a sinner struggling for worthy obedience, and of a believer who has seen Christ fulfill the law and has heard “his pardoning voice.” The “strength of nature” is not sufficient for the just to live by faith. The 12th edition of Olney Hymns (and perhaps the original) has a footnote for this hymn referencing Romans 3:31 (Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.). Some later hymn books connect it with Romans 7:9.
 
The hymn does not appear in many popular hymnals, though it would make a worthy addition. Being in common meter, it might be paired with any good common meter tune. Hymnary.org prints it with the tune Aberdeen or St. Paul. This melody apparently first appeared as St. Paul’s Tune in Rudiments of Music: or, A Short and Easy Treatise on the Subject by Robert Bremner (Edinburgh, 1756).
 
1. No strength of nature can suffice
To serve the Lord aright;
And what she has she misapplies,
For want of clearer light.
 
2. How long beneath the law I lay
In bondage and distress!
I toil’d the precept to obey,
But toil’d without success.
 
3. Then to abstain from outward sin
Was more than I could do;
Now, if I feel its pow’r within,
I feel I hate it too.
 
4. Then all my servile works were done
A righteousness to raise;
Now, freely chosen in the Son,
I freely choose his ways.
 
5. “What shall I do,” was then the word,
That I may worthier grow?
“What shall I render to the Lord?”
Is my inquiry now.
 
6. To see the law by Christ fulfilled,
And hear his pard’ning voice;
Changes a slave into a child,
And duty into choice.