Yes; unless Thou hold me fast,
After all thy love to me,
I shall faithless prove at last
Treacherously depart from Thee:
That from Thee I may not go,
Leave me not to my own will;
My Companion here below,
Guide me to thy heavenly hill.
Yes, unless Thou hold me fast
Hymnal/Album: Originally titled “Will ye also go away?”—[John] vi. 67. Introduced in Charles Wesley, Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, Vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1762). 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 393. Wesley later altered this hymn in his 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. The adapted version was published in S.T. Kimbrough Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge, eds., The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, vol. 2 (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), page 240.
Publishing: Public Domain