What can persecution do

Verse 1
What can persecution do
Against the cause of God?
All things work, if God is true,
To spread the truth abroad:
Foes intending to destroy
His work, and slay the witnesses,
Higher raise the gospel-joy,
And make the church increase.

Verse 2
God himself prepares our way,
The door he opens wide,
Then we chearfully obey,
And follow Christ our Guide:
Pilgrims o’re the desart rove,
And every place our country own,
Where we can our Saviour love,
And live to God alone.

Verse 3
Chas’d from home we cannot be,
Or into exile sent:
All this wilderness we see
Our place of banishment;
Servants of the church we live:
And who to death our bodies doom,
Sooner they our souls shall drive
To their eternal home.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution, travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word.’—[Acts 11,] v. 19.” This hymn appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” 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 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). 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. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 259.
Publishing: Public Domain