Jesus, Thine All-Victorious Love is by Charles Wesley. The tune is Azmon, the same tune used for Wesley’s O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, a hymn we sing with some regularity, so at least that will be familiar. Here are the words:

Jesus, thine all-victorious love

shed in my heart abroad;

then shall my feet no longer rove,

rooted and fixed in God.

It’s useful to note that the word “shed” here in the first stanza is a verb. We’re praying, asking Jesus to “shed,” to “pour out” his “all-victorious love” in my heart, wherever I am. The expected result of Jesus pouring out this love in my heart (Wesley is drawing on Romans 5:5) is that “my feet no longer rove,” no longer flit from this attraction to that, but are “rooted and fixed in God.” The sentiment is very similar to Robert Robinson’s words in the third stanza of Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

O that in me the sacred fire

might now begin to glow;

burn up the dross of base desire

and make the mountains flow!

Two desires are expressed in this stanza, both building on volcanic imagery. Wesley is drawing a close connection between “love,” “fire,” and the Holy Spirit. Now we are singing/praying that Jesus’ all-victorious love will, like a fire, burn up all the “base desire,” all our desires that aim for less than God. When it comes to the phrase about the mountains flowing, I think he’s pointing at Jesus’ comment about how faith the size of a mustard seed can say to “this mountain,” “get up and be cast into the sea.” The power of Jesus’ love operative in us is powerful enough to remove any impediment.

O that it now from heaven might fall

and all my sins consume!

Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call,

Spirit of burning, come!

Early Methodism had a strong conviction that the power of God was sufficient to defeat sin in our lives. This went beyond the conviction that our sins would be forgiven so we could be reconciled to God. Wesley and the early Methodists believed that through the power of the Spirit we could defeat the presence and power of sin in our lives now. That’s the experience we are praying for in this third stanza.

Refining fire, go through my heart,

illuminate my soul;

scatter thy life through every part

and sanctify the whole.

The song ends with a request that the work of God permeate every aspect of our being. More than just having sin rooted out and eradicated, there is something positive happening as well: God himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, is taking up residence in us. Our prayer here is one of opening ourselves to him without reservation, without saying to the Spirit, “Here, you can go into these parts of my life, but leave those other parts alone.