1 Our fathers’ God, from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet today, united, free,
And loyal to our land and thee,
To thank thee for the era done,
And trust thee for the opening one.

2 Our fathers to their graves have gone;
Their strife is past, their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honored place,—
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.

3 So let it be! In God’s own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And strong in him whose cause is ours
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons he has given,—
The light, the truth, the love of heaven.

4 O make us, through the centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of thy righteous law;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old!