When to the house of prayer we go

Verse 1
When to the house of prayer we go,
Who can our secret motive tell?
Beneath the same religious show
Our good or evil we conceal;
God only knows our inward parts,
The pride, or hunger of our hearts.

Verse 2
The proud he doth far off behold,
But hears the trembling sinner’s prayer,
Pities a soul to Satan sold,
Who from the confines of despair
In Jesus’ name for mercy cries;
And lives—because his Saviour dies!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.’—[Luke 18,] v. 10.” 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 257.
Publishing: Public Domain