Servants of God, by Jesus’ love

Verse 1
Servants of God, by Jesus’ love,
Are not exempt from grief and pain,
Though caught to the third heaven, they prove
That still on earth they are but men;
Thro’ sinners contradiction here,
For others, sorrowful they mourn,
Yet guided by the Comforter
With songs of joy to God return.

Verse 2
Th’ Apostle gloried in distress:
Yet when his ambush’d foes essay’d
To stop the course of gospel grace,
And oft prevail’d with Satan’s aid;
Those haters of th’ Incarnate God
Who made his Saviour’s eyes o’reflow
The same blood-thirsty men he view’d,
And weeping, traced the Man of woe.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Serving the Lord with tears and trials which befit me through the ambushes of the Jews.’—[Acts 20,] v. 19." 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 12 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 371.
Publishing: Public Domain