"Without a city wall" -- 1847

Speranza 1847 there is a green hill far away outside a city wall where the dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all. o dearly, dearly, has He loved, and we must love Him, too, and trust in His redeeming blood, and try His works to do. we may not know, we cannot tell, what pains He had to bear; put we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there. he died that we might be forgiv’n, he died to make us good, that we might go at last to Heav’n, saved by His precious blood. there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin; he only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in. Cecil Alexander wrote this hymn in 1847 as she sat up one night with her seriously sick daughter. Many times, traveling to town to shop, she had passed a small grassy mound, just outside the old city wall of Derry, Ireland. It always made her think of Calvary, and it came to mind as she wrote this hymn.