A minister should burn and shine

Verse 1
A minister should burn and shine,
Inflam’d with pure celestial love,
Glad to impart the light divine,
Himself inlighten’d from above:
His life should our instruction be,
One exercise of fervent zeal,
That all the light of truth may see,
That all the fire of love may feel.

Verse 2
Joyful to see the light appear,
If Christ his minister ordain,
The world admire, the adders hear,
And dart into the dark again:
They soon against conviction fight,
The unaccepted56 truth repel,
And quench the burning shining light
Who shews their works, the works of hell.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.’—[John 5,] v. 35." This hymn appears in the 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 373.
Publishing: Public Domain