Calm retreat and fervent prayer

Calm retreat and fervent prayer
To labour should succeed,
Every prosper’d messenger
In Jesus’ footsteps tread:
If we linger, Lord, behind,
Constrain thy servants to depart,
Bless us with an active mind
And with a praying heart.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘He constrained his disciples to get into the ship: and departed into a mountain to pray.’—[Mark 6,] v. 45, 46.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Mark.” 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 1977/574, 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. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 501.
Publishing: Public Domain