Ye rich, your poverty confess

Verse 1
Ye rich, your poverty confess,
And low at Jesus’ footstool bow,
Stewards of all ye here possess,
Proprietors of nothing now,
His goods as he directs employ,
And share at last your Master’s joy.

Verse 2
Foreign and false the riches here
Make themselves wings, and fly away:
Who bears the Christian character
Disdains to court their longer stay,
Restores the momentary loan,
And only heaven he calls his own.

Verse 3
For those eternal things design’d
Which Jesus did for him procure,
He sets on them his heart and mind,
The riches great, and true, and sure,
The fund of pure unfading bliss,
Which Jesus made forever his.

Hymnal/Album: Originally titled: “‘If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?'—[Luke 16,] v. 12.” 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 The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, Collected and Arranged by G. Osborn, Vol. 11 (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Conference Office, 1871), page 241.
Publishing: Public Domain