Dispenser of the joyful word
Who at the banquet of his Lord
The people and himself hath fed,
Will gather up with pious care,
And in his faithful memory bear
The fragments of that heavenly bread;
Will fear a single word to lose,
On every sacred saying muse,
And meditate and pray them o’re,
Each precious truth resolve, digest,
And lengthen out the gospel-feast,
Replete, yet hungring still for more.
Dispenser of the joyful word
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘There were taken up of the fragments twelve baskets.'—[Luke 9,] v. 17.” 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 180.
Publishing: Public Domain