Can I gain by losing Thee?
Yes; if so my state require,
If mine own infirmity
Force Thee, Saviour, to retire:
For when I thine absence mourn
Poor with poverty divine,
Soon the Comforter’s return
Speaks my Lord forever mine.
Can I gain by losing Thee?
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come.”—[John] xvi. 7. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1762). Wesley later altered this hymn in his 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. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 37.
Publishing: Public Domain