What crowds in every age receive

Verse 1
What crouds in every age receive
The word with joyful forwardness,
Transported for a while believe,
And all the warmth of zeal express,
Yet shrinking in the evil day,
They faint, and fall, and die away.

Verse 2
The various shapes of worldly woe,
The conflicts dire of inbred sin,
These, only these can surely show
Who has, or wants, a root within:
And happy they, who always fear,
Till love, the perfect fruit, appear.

Verse 3
O may I hear and taste the word,
And faithfully thy grace retain,
Devoted to my pardning Lord,
Stand all th’ assaults of sin and pain,
Rooted in humble love divine,
And live, and die intirely thine!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘He heareth the word, and with joy receiveth it: yet hath he not root in himself &c.’—[Matt. 13,] v. 20, 21.” This hymn appears in the 1766 manuscript “MS Matthew.” 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 1977/577, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 3). 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. 10 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1870), page 271.
Publishing: Public Domain