[Music]
Tho' sinners would vex me, tho' troubles perplex me,
Against inclination, O what shall I do?
No longer a rover, my follies are over.
But one thing is needful, and that I'll pursue.
Vain pleasure is deceitful, and sin is all hateful,
But genuine pleasure in Jesus I find:
This world is a bubble, a life full of trouble;
My thoughts now fly upward, and leave all behind.
I hear the bells tolling; and wheels are now rolling;
Some gallant, gay, fair one goes to her long home:
If dead out of Jesus--the Lord will not save us,
And to him in glory we never can come.
Oh! pray for conversion; shun foolish diversion;
Adopt self-denial, and take up your cross:
These do for a season, and use your own reason,
And you will see clearly you suffer no loss.
Your time is a treasure (there's none in vain pleasure),
Then look up to Jesus with faith's steadfast eye:
Oh, haste to believe in the crucified Savior,
For time flies apace, and eternity's nigh!
My soul starts with wonder, to think how God's thunder,
Will shake all creation at Gabriel's call!
When time is no longer, the aged and younger,
Before the great Judge, in their trouble, will fall.
The Judgment decided, friends now are divided;
And all the ungodly are turned into hell:
But glory to Jesus! believing, He'll save us,
With angels in glory his praises to swell.
_The Olive Leaf_ arranger spoiled the tune's apparent mixolydian
purity by changing the _d_'s to _d_-sharps. As to title and source the
editor says: "Reverend James Axley was one of the pioneer preachers of
the Holston Conference, and a very holy, laborious, and successful
minister. I learned this tune and song of Reverend Russell Reneau, who
died in Arkansas during our late unhappy Civil War. Crude as the song
is, I choose to preserve it in memory of Mr. Axley and Mr. Reneau."
The tune is a variant of 'Christian Warfare', GOS 603. Further
information as to the Reverend James Axley, whose period of activity
in the methodist conferences of Tennessee, Kentucky and other states
was during the first decades of the nineteenth century, may be found
in Peter Cartwright's _Autobiography_, p. 62 and elsewhere.
No. 4
HICKS' FAREWELL, SOH 19