While hovering on the brink of fate

Verse 1
While hovering on the brink of fate,
The margin of the tomb,
In awful doubt I humbly wait
To know my instant doom,
Help me, great God of truth, and love,
To wisely weigh my end,
And rightly use, and well improve
The talent of a Friend.

Verse 2
The Giver of my faithful guide
Thee in my friend I see,
And beg I never may confide
In him, instead of Thee,
May never rob Thee of thy due,
But thankfully embrace
The instrument, whom I look thro’
And give Thee all the praise.

Verse 3
I woud not vex thy glorious eyes
Whose grace I wait to feel,
Or make thy jealous anger rise
By loving Him too well:
I woud not place him in thy stead,
Or, making him my stay,
Compel Thee to remove my reed,
And take my friend away.

Verse 4
But what my Lord is pleas’d t’ impart
May I not safely take,
And clasp the comfort to my heart,
And love him for thy sake?
I shoud injoy the boon bestow’d,
While ready to restore,
Shoud prize my friend, but prize my God
Incomparably more.

Verse 5
O woudst Thou by thy special grace
My fallen soul redeem,
And guard me from the fond excess,
Th’ idolatrous extream!
O that the Sea might drown the drop
Descending from above,
While both our souls are swallow’d up
In all the depths of love!

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “Hymns for the use of a Backslider, J. H[utchinson]. Hymn VI.” This hymn appears in the ca. 1786 manuscript “MS Miscellaneous Hymns.” 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 1977/556, Charles Wesley Notebooks Box 2). 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 and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 3 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1992), pages 267-68.
Publishing: Public Domain