But if I aim at aught beside,
Thro’ selfish vanity and pride,
Eclips’d and dark within
My soul will lose the heavenly light,
Fill’d and o’rewhelm’d with sudden night,
With folly, grief, and sin.
But if I aim at aught beside
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘But if thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.'—[Luke 11,] v. 34.” 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 S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 132.
Publishing: Public Domain