How fervent is our Shepherd’s love

Verse 1
How fervent is our Shepherd’s love,
Who follows all the sheep that rove,
Who every wanderer
Pursues with persevering grace,
As every child of Adam’s race
Ingros’d his tender care.

Verse 2
Their Shepherd rising from the dead
To each extends his friendly aid,
To each himself applies,
Dispers’d and stumbled by his death
Brings back into his fold beneath,
And leads them to the skies.

Verse 3
Tis thus he for his followers cares,
When persecution parts and tears
The flock, and scatters wide,
When daily they his lot partake,
To death deliver’d for his sake,
With Jesus crucified.

Verse 4
Beyond the rage of fiends and men
He gathers and unites again
The people of his love:
And O, that I might gather’d be,
To share thro’ all eternity
Thy glorious life above!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘After that he appeared in another form unto two of them.’—[Mark 16,] v. 12.” 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. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 95.
Publishing: Public Domain