Lyrics
Approach, my soul, the mercy seat,
Where Jesus answers prayer;
There humbly fall before His feet,
For none can perish there.
Thy promise is my only plea,
With this I venture nigh;
Thou callest burdened souls to Thee,
And such, O Lord, am I.
Bowed down beneath a load of sin,
By Satan sorely pressed,
By wars without, and fears within,
I come to Thee for rest.
Thus be my shield and hiding place!
That, sheltered near Thy side,
I may my fierce accuser face,
And tell him Thou hast died.
O wondrous love! To bleed and die,
To bear the cross and shame,
That guilty sinners, such as I,
Might plead Thy gracious name.
“Poor tempest-ravaged soul, be still,
My promised grace receive”;
’Tis Jesus speaks—I must, I will,
I can, I do believe.
Note: the later verse(s) below have been reconstructed from historical memory and may not be word-for-word identical to the original published text.
Public domain hymn text (1779). Words by John Newton.
The Story Behind the Hymn
John Newton wrote this hymn’s text for the 1779 ‘Olney Hymns’ collection. He drew its central image directly from the ‘mercy seat’ — the golden covering of the Ark of the Covenant, described in Exodus 25:17-22.
In ancient Israelite worship, that was understood as the specific physical location where God’s presence dwelt among His people. The high priest alone was permitted to approach it, once each year, on the Day of Atonement, to make sacrifice for the sins of the whole nation.
Newton’s hymn deliberately transfers this exclusive, tightly restricted ancient Israelite image into a New Testament promise. That original image permitted an approach to only one specially consecrated priest, on only one day each year, under carefully prescribed ritual conditions.
In the hymn’s own confident language, that promise is available to any ‘burdened soul’ at any time. It reflects the specifically Christian theological claim, developed at length in the New Testament book of Hebrews, that Christ’s own priesthood has permanently opened access to God that the Old Testament sacrificial system had kept carefully restricted.
The hymn’s repeated insistence is that the singer’s ‘only plea’ is God’s own promise, rather than any personal worthiness or preparation. That reflects a theme Newton returned to throughout much of his hymn writing.
It is closely related to the message of Charlotte Elliott’s later hymn ‘Just As I Am’ — both hymns insisting that coming to God requires no prior qualification beyond simply being burdened and in need.
William B. Bradbury, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as composer of the tune to ‘He Leadeth Me’ and ‘Just As I Am’, composed the tune most commonly paired with this hymn as well.
That gives Newton’s eighteenth-century text a considerably later nineteenth-century American musical setting, well suited to congregational singing at moments of prayer specifically. The hymn has become a standard piece sung to open extended periods of congregational prayer, in many English-speaking Protestant traditions.
