What avails it, Lord, to know

What avails it, Lord, to know,
And not to do thy will?
This my chief delight below
Thy pleasure to fulfil:
Till I join the church above,
This only happiness by mine
Thee with all my heart to love,
And have no will but thine.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”—[John] xiii. 17. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1762). 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 505. Wesley later altered this hymn in his 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 258.
Publishing: Public Domain