Verse 1
O thou, whose Spirit hath made known
My want of living faith divine,
Hear thy poor mournful captive groan,
Now in my nature’s darkness shine,
Now in mine inmost soul display
The glorious blaze of gospel-day.

Verse 2
A stranger to thy people’s joys,
An alien from the life of grace,
I never heard thy pard’ning voice,
I never saw thy smiling face,
I never felt thy blood applied,
Or knew for me the Saviour died.

Verse 3
Or if I did begin to taste
The sweetness of redeeming love,
The momentary bliss is past,
The tender joy no more I prove,
My faith is lost, my power is gone,
I sin, and have not Jesus[1] known.

Verse 4
But wilt thou not at last appear,
Object of all my wishful hope,
The conscious unbeliever chear,
And raise the fallen sinner up,
The God-revealing Spirit give,
And kindly help me to believe?

Verse 5
Thou only dost the Godhead know,
Thou only canst to man reveal,
To me, to me the Father shew,
To me, to me the secret tell:
Now, Saviour, now the veil remove,
And tell my heart, that God is love.

Verse 6
O never suffer me to rest,
Till I the rest of love obtain:
With trouble fill my lab’ring breast,
My aching heart with grief and pain,
And give me still to weep and grieve,
Till thou hast forc’d me to believe.

Verse 7
This, only this do I require,
Always to feel the load I bear;
In veh’mence of extreme desire,
To groan the Spirit’s speechless prayer,
And cry, I will not, will not rest,
Till Jesus hath pronounc’d me blest.

Verse 8
I will not let my sorrow go,
Till Jesus wipes away my tears,
Kindly extorts the stubborn woe,
And lastingly his mourner chears;
Constrain’d to cry by love divine,
My God, thou art forever mine!

[1] Wesley changed “have not Jesus” to “Jesus have not” in 1755.