Tremble thou careless minister

Verse 1
Tremble thou careless minister,
Who standest all day long
Idle in Jesus’ vineyard here,
Yet think’st thou dost no wrong,
Content in indolence to live,
As for thy pastime born,
Thou dost from Christ the pound receive,
And make him no return.

Verse 2
Not to improve them, is to lose
The talents of thy God,
The gifts which for his church’s use
He hath on Thee bestow’d:
Not to do good is to do ill;
Thy sacred ministry
Not to discharge, not to fulfil,
Is wickedness in thee.

Verse 3
Rest is in labourers a crime,
Before their work is done:
Thy power, authority, and time,
And life are not thy own:
Prepare a strict account to give,
When Jesus bows the sky;
And now his zealous servant live,
Or then—forever die.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘Lord, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin.'—[Luke 19,] v. 20.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Luke.” 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 1977/575, 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), pages 175-76. The first two verses were published in The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 266.
Publishing: Public Domain