Wesley Corpus

Faithful and good thou art; We taste the heavenly powers, The glorious earnest in our heart Insures the kingdom ours: Exceeding glad we are, Our ravish'd bosoms swell With extacy too strong to bear, With joy unspeakable. Thro' persecutions20 bold, To thee our songs we raise; Thee in the furnace we behold, Thee in the fires we praise: We now the promise know, Sufficient is thy love To bear us thro' these storms below, And land us safe above. To suffer now is sweet, For thou the strength hast given: And O! How infinitely great Is our reward in heaven! We shall be surely there, The fight will soon be won; The cross we now with Jesus bear Shall lift us to the throne. 19A manuscript precursor of this hymn appears in MS Thirty, 222-23. 20"Persecutions" changed to "persecution" in 2nd edn. (1745) and following. Page 36 'Twas thus the saints of God, His messengers and seers The narrow path of sufferings trod, And past the vale of tears, Thro' sore afflictions past To better worlds above, And more than conquer'd all at last In our Redeemer's love. Sufferers like them beneath, Thro' much distress and pain, Thro' all the toils of hell and death We come with them to reign; With Christ the glorious King, Who wipes our tears away, And calls us up his praise to sing In everlasting day. Shepherd of souls, thy sheep behold In the dark cloudy day, The wolf is come into thy fold, To scatter, tear, and slay. His bloody hand th' oppressor shakes Against the faithful seed, And havock of thy church he makes He makes us as our head. Thy marks we in our bodies bear, But arm us with thy power, The rage of fiends and men we dare, And meet the evil hour. They only can our bodies kill, Our souls can never die; Our souls exist in Jesus still, And reign above the sky. Page 37 Wherefore the utmost sufferings here Of those who Jesus love, We count not worthy to compare With our reward above. Light are the pains we now endure, And quickly over-past, But O! The pleasures they secure, Eternally shall last. On all th' affliction we look down, The joy so far exceeds, So bright, so weighty is the crown It sets upon our heads.