If Thou the word bestow

Verse 1
If Thou the word bestow,
If Thou the preachers bless,
Thy church will always grow,
Thy witnesses increase,
And help’d by every obstacle
Thy gospel over all prevail.

Verse 2
Didst Thou not give the seed
We in thy name have sown,
And send us forth indeed,
To make thy goodness known?
Give then the multiplied success,
And let the world our Lord confess.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘But the word of God grew and multiplied.’—[Acts 12,] v. 24.” This hymn appears in the 1764 manuscript “MS Acts.” 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 1977/555, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 1). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 349.
Publishing: Public Domain