A guide of souls will not retain,
Or suffer them on him t’ attend,
But sends them to increase the train
Of Him that did from heaven descend:
His Saviour’s humble harbinger,
No party will he call his own,
His only care that souls should hear,
Believe, and hang on Christ alone.
A guide of souls will not retain
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘John calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them unto Jesus &c.'—[Luke 7,] v. 19.” 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 163.
Publishing: Public Domain