Thanks be to God in Christ, who gives

Verse 1
Thanks be to God in Christ, who gives
A dying Worm th’ immortal prize,
As a ripe shook [shock] of corn receives,
And stores our Brother in the skies!

Verse 2
Found in the paths of righteousness,
Our Lord hath crown’d his hoary hairs,
And parting hence in perfect peace
He now the wreath triumphant wears.

Verse 3
The good and faithful Servant, blest
With hope, and patience to the end,
Doth now from all his labours rest,
And sees his everlasting Friend.

Verse 4
His faith was swallow’d up in Sight,
Soon as he laid the body down;
His works pursue the Saint in light,
T’ adjust the measure of his crown.

Verse 5
His crown of life shall soon be ours
Built on the sole Foundation sure,
Who serve our God with all our powers,
And faithful unto death endure;

Verse 6
Who now with humble zeal go on,
Our faith’s integrity to prove,
The race prescrib’d with patience run
And walk in all the works of love.

Verse 7
Then let us steadily pursue
Our comrades in distress and pain,
And fight, like them, our passage thro’
Like them, the purchas’d prize obtain;

Verse 8
Press on to perfect holiness,
Instant in never-ceasing prayer,
By force the heavenly kingdom seize,
And find Salvation finish’d there!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “On the Death of Mr John Boult, Nov. 1, 1771, Aged Seventy Eight.” Wesley included this hymn in a manuscript known as MS Funeral Hymns. This manuscript appears in the Methodist Archive and Research Centre in The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester, accession number MA 1977/578 (Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Funeral Hymns [Third Series] (Bristol, 1769). 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 317.
Publishing: Public Domain