Alternate Title: Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
Lyrics: Phillip P. Bliss, 1875.
Music: Phillip P. Bliss.
Alternate tune by Phelps Anderson and Jim Hitch at igracemusic.com (Indelible Grace).
I prefer Mr. Bliss’s original tune for this hymn.
Theme:
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:3-5
Ira Sankey: “A few weeks before his death Mr. Bliss visited the State prison at Jackson, Michigan, where, after a very touching address on ‘The Man of Sorrows,’ he sang this hymn with great effect. Many of the prisoners dated their conversion from that day.”
Man of Sorrows! what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Guilty, vile, and helpless we;
Spotless Lamb of God was He;
“Full atonement!†can it be?
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Lifted up was He to die;
“It is finished!†was His cry;
Now in Heav’n exalted high.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
When He comes, our glorious King,
All His ransomed home to bring,
Then anew His song we’ll sing:
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Sources:
Sankey, Ira David. My Life and the StoÂry of the Gospel Hymns. Harper & Brothers, 1906.