To the hedges and highways

Verse 1
To the hedges and high-ways
Ev’n now thy servant goes,
All the riches of thy grace
To wandring sinners shows,
Seeks the vagabonds that fly,
The most abandon’d slaves of sin,
Outcasts at the point to die,
And forces to come in.

Verse 2
Jesus bleeding on the tree,
Thy death their hearts compels,
Then they feel the joy in Thee
Which all delight excels,
Croud into thine house below,
Convinc’d thy flesh is meat indeed,
Thee their Life eternal know,
And on thy fulness feed.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Go out into the high ways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.'—[Luke 14,] v. 23.” 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 230.
Publishing: Public Domain