Verse 1
Meek patient Son of God and man,
With us in our temptation stay,
Our fainting feeble minds sustain,
And keep throughout the evil day
(The evil day of doubts and fears,
And fightings,) till thy face appears.

Verse 2
We have not an high-priest in thee
Who cannot our afflictions feel,
The tempted soul’s infirmity
With kind concern affects thee still,
Touch’d with our every grief thou art,
And bleeds for us thy pitying heart.

Verse 3
For us by men and fiends distrest,
For us by various passions torn,
Who toil to enter into rest,
Who for thy second coming mourn,
And fill thy sacred sorrows up,
And drink thine agonizing cup.

Verse 4
Companions to the Man of Woe,
O let us still with thee abide,
Tempted alas! To let thee go,
And start from the command aside,
By every wind of doctrine driven
To seek a broader way to heaven.

Verse 5
Yes, Lord, with deepest shame we own
Our weariness of all thy ways,
Our haste to throw thy burthen down,
Nor bear the hidings of thy face,
Nor wait till thou create us new,
And give the crown to conquest due.

Verse 6
We fear’d to wait thy leisure, Lord,
Or make the crown thro’ sufferings sure,
Nature the dreadful cross[1] abhorr’d,
Nor would we to the end endure,
But snatch a cheap fallacious peace,
And rest in fancied holiness.

Verse 7
Ah, do not let thy sheep[2] depart
Wide-scatter’d in the cloudy day,
But cross th’ angelic tempter’s art,
But spoil the lion of his prey,
Nor let us from our hope remove,
Our gospel-hope of perfect love.

Verse 8
Us, and our brethren in distress
Patient within thy kingdom keep,
Sure all thy fulness to possess
Our harvest in the end to reap,
Thy sinless nature to retrieve,
And glorious in thine image live.

[1] Wesley changed “dreadful cross” to “killing word” in 1749.
[2] Wesley corrected the typo “sleep” to “sheep” in 1747.