Long in those peaceful pleasant ways

Verse 1
Long in those peaceful pleasant ways
She walk’d, she run[1] the Christian race,
With never-slack’ning care;
Studious her talents to improve,
She liv’d a life of faith and love,
Of holiness and prayer.

Verse 2
The weighter matters of the law
With single eye she clearly saw,
Nor overlook’d the less:
Her tythe of mint she gladly paid,
But the main stress on mercy laid,
And truth and righteousness.

Verse 3
The golden rule she still pursu’d,
And did to others, as she would
Others should do to her:
Justice compos’d her upright soul,
Justice did all her thoughts controul,
And form’d her character.

Verse 4
Her morals, O thou bleeding Lamb,41
Forth from that open fountain came,
That wounded side of thine;
Thy love of equity she caught,
Thy Spirit in her spirit wrought
The righteousness divine.

Verse 5
Thenceforth an Israelite indeed,
By child-like innocency led,
And ignorant of art,
See her integrity approv’d,
To God and man: the truth she lov’d,
And spoke it from her heart.

Verse 6
To falshood an eternal foe,
The fair pretence, the specious shew,
The gross and colour’d lie;
Darkness she never put for light,
Evil for good, or wrong for right,
Or fraud for piety.

Verse 7
Thro’ all her words the soul within,
The honest, artless soul was seen,
Ingenuous, pure, and free:
Candour and love were sweetly join’d
With easy nobleness of mind,
And true simplicity.

Verse 8
Inspir’d with godliness sincere,
She had her conversation here;
No guile in her was found:
Chearful and open as the light,
She dwelt in her own people’s sight,
And gladden’d all around.

[1] Wesley changed “run” to “run’d” in 1769.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: "On the Death of Mrs. Mary Naylor, March 21, 1757, Part II." Introduced in Charles Wesley, Funeral Hymns [Second Series] (London: Strahan, 1759).Published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 6 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 268.
Publishing: Public Domain