Thy servant, Lord, I fain would be

Thy servant, Lord, I fain would be,
Would fain thy faithful follower prove,
Abhor the things abhor’d by Thee,
Love all the objects of thy love,
Myself renounce, my life despise,
To gain thy life which never dies.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘If any man serve me, let him follow me.’—[John 12,] v. 26." This hymn appears in the 1763-64 manuscript “MS John.” 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 1977/573, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). Accessed through the website of The Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition, Duke Divinity School. Published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 255.
Publishing: Public Domain