The eager for esteem and gold,
To avarice and ambition sold,
In every age deride the word
Of a poor self-denying Lord:
And should he now to earth return,
The rich would still their Saviour spurn,
His counsels slight, his yoke disdain,
And nail him to his cross again.
The eager for esteem and gold
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘The Pharisees who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him.’—[Luke 16,] v. 14.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 158.
Publishing: Public Domain