Help, gracious Lord, my deep distress

Verse 1
Help, gracious Lord, my deep distress
To thee with anguish I reveal,
Who every sickness, and disease
Dost still among thy people heal.

Verse 2
O wouldst thou undertake for me,
Exert thy healing art divine!
My complicated malady
Mocks every other help but thine.

Verse 3
A secret, slow, internal fire
Consumes my soul with lingring pains,
The restless fever of desire
Throughout my fallen nature reigns.

Verse 4
Jesu, this eagerness of praise,
This raging thirst of creature-good,
Allay with thy refreshing grace,
Extinguish with thy balmy blood.

Verse 5
See the poor patient at thy feet,
And now the gracious wonder shew:
I long thy healing touch to meet,
I gasp thy pardning love to know.

Verse 6
Now, Saviour, now the fever chide,
The virtue of thy name exert,
The fierceness of desire and pride
Rebuke, and bid my sin depart.

Verse 7
Soon as thy hand the balm applies,
My dying soul from sin set free
With instantaneous health shall rise,
And gladly serve thy saints and thee;

Verse 8
The servant of thy church below,
With all who know their sins forgiven,
Pardon’d I in thy peace shall go,
And walk, and run, and fly to heaven.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: "“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.” Hymn III." Introduced in Hymns and Sacred Poems Vol. 1, published by Charles Wesley (Bristol: Felix Farley, 1749). Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 4 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1869), page 375.
Publishing: Public Domain