Till Jesus come to seek and send

Verse 1
Till Jesus come to seek and send,
Till us he in his work employs,
Our days in vanity we spend,
In useless cares, or sinful joys:
But saving grace to all appears,
But Mercy wills that all should live,
And young or old, the soul that hears
The call, shall the reward receive.

Verse 2
Alas, shall I stand idle still,
In sin, in Satan’s works employ’d,
Or now begin to serve thy will,
And labour for my gracious God?
Hir’d long ago I surely was
At Jordan’s consecrated flood,
And sign’d the servant of thy cross,
And claim’d the purchase of thy blood.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard, and &c.’—[Matt. 20,] v. 7.” Wesley originally published verse 2 in his 1762 hymnal "Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2" (Bristol: Farley, 1762). He later added verse 1 in his unpublished 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” This manuscript is part of the collection of the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester (accession number MA 1977/577, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 331.
Publishing: Public Domain