early days of the triumphs of the itinerant preachers. No hymns rise
higher in their exultant rapture, none are more tenderly triumphant
than the songs of Charles Wesley.

His Birthday hymn exhibits the happy enthusiasm of his evangelism.

      My remnant of days
      I spend in His praise,
  Who died the whole world to redeem;
      Be they many or few,
      My days are His due,
  And they all are devoted to Him.

In other hymns he expresses the same joy in living in calmer tones.

  The winter’s night and summer’s day
  Glide imperceptibly away,
      Too short to sing Thy praise;
  Too few we find the happy hours,
  And haste to join those heavenly powers,
      In everlasting lays.

Bright and inspiring as these pieces are, they are in striking
contrast with the hymns characteristic of minor religious movements,
and justify John Wesley’s claim that ‘in these hymns is no doggerel.’
That they are of unequal merit goes without saying, but it is
remarkable how many of them are living hymns to-day. Religious feeling
is no more healthy because it loves to pray for guidance ‘amid the
encircling gloom,’ or to describe the hosts of the Church militant as
‘pilgrims of the night.’ A ‘sober standard of feeling’ must take into
account that the darkness has passed and the true light now shineth.

Yet one who knows little of early Methodism would be surprised to find
how ‘sober’ is the tone of most of the hymns provided for the people
called Methodists. They are songs in which ‘calmly reverential joy’ is
more often heard than ecstasy. It is instructive to turn from Mr.
Lecky’s chapter on ‘The Religious Revival,’ in his _History of England
in the Eighteenth Century_ to Wesley’s hymns. The uninstructed reader
of Mr. Lecky would expect to find here the turbid, involved,
hysterical expression of a morbid fanaticism, but he would search
almost in vain for illustrations of that side of the Methodist
Movement. It is true that both the Wesleys were perplexed by the
physical effects of their preaching, and were afraid to treat them as
mere manifestations of hysterical excitement. But they dealt with them
as St. Paul dealt with somewhat similar phenomena at Corinth, and
carefully avoided encouraging such painful and inconvenient
interruptions of their services. The hymn-book makes no provision for
the nervously excited, and has no compositions of the class
characteristic of many ‘revivals’—such, for instance, as are found in
Hugh Bourne’s _Hymns for Camp Meetings, Revivals, etc._ The novelty,
the directness of the preaching, and, no doubt, the lack of education
of many of the preachers naturally led to indiscretion in many places,
especially in the early days of the Revival; but it is fair to judge
the Wesleys’ own standard of religious emotion by their hymns rather
than by the extravagances of their least intelligent helpers.

Charles Wesley’s hymn, ‘For the Fear of God,’ is a good example of the
attitude of soul he desired for himself and for Methodists generally.

  God of all grace and majesty,
    Supremely great and good!
  If I have mercy[148] found with Thee,
    Through the atoning blood,
  The guard of all Thy mercies give,
    And to my pardon join
  A fear lest I should ever grieve
    The gracious Spirit divine.

  Rather I would in darkness mourn
    The absence of Thy peace,
  Than e’er by light irreverence turn
    Thy grace to wantonness:
  Rather I would in painful awe
    Beneath Thine anger move,
  Than sin against the gospel law
    Of liberty and love.

  But O! Thou wouldst not have me live
    In bondage, grief, or pain,
  Thou dost not take delight to grieve
    The helpless sons of men;
  Thy will is my salvation, Lord;
    And let it now take place,
  And let me tremble at the word
    Of reconciling grace.

  Still may I walk as in Thy sight,
    My strict observer see;
  And Thou by reverent love unite
    My child-like heart to Thee;
  Still let me, till my days are past,
    At Jesu’s feet abide,
  So shall He lift me up at last,
    And seat me by His side.

Perhaps there are few hymns quite of this type, but the subdued and
subduing sense of the fear of God pervades many of Charles Wesley’s
poems. He dwells much on ‘the mystic joys of penitence,’ as in his
brief meditation on Ezek. xxxvi. 26, ‘I will give you an heart of
flesh.’

  Let me, according to Thy word,
    A tender, contrite heart receive,
  Which grieves[149] for having grieved its Lord
    And never can itself forgive;

a verse which reminds one of Cardinal Newman’s saying that true
penitence never forgives itself. This, however, is not what Charles
Wesley meant, for he of all Christian poets best understood how truly
the pardoned prodigal might make merry and be glad when he was safe in
his Father’s house once more.

  Lift up Thy countenance serene,
    And let Thy happy child
  Behold, without a cloud between,
    The Godhead reconciled.

An important series of hymns—so important that it demands separate
consideration—is that which is found in Sections vii.-ix. of the
original hymn-book. They include nearly one hundred pieces, and from
the days of John Wesley until the latest revision the section began
with a hymn which is the most fitting introduction to the series,
since it sets forth with great simplicity the Wesleyan doctrine of
Christian perfection. Familiar as this hymn is to Methodists, it is
worth while to quote it in full here—

      The thing my God doth hate,
      That I no more may do,
  Thy creature, Lord, again create,
      And all my soul renew;
      My soul shall then, like Thine,
      Abhor the thing unclean,
  And, sanctified by love divine,
      For ever cease from sin.

      That blessed law of Thine,
      Jesus, to me impart;
  The Spirit’s law of life divine,
      O write it in my heart!
      Implant it deep within,
      Whence it may ne’er remove,
  The law of liberty from sin,
      The perfect law of love.

      Thy nature be my law,
      Thy spotless sanctity,
  And sweetly every moment draw
      My happy soul to Thee.
      Soul of my soul remain!
      Who didst for all fulfil,
  In me, O Lord, fulfil again
      Thy heavenly Father’s will!

This hymn is made up, as are many others, by joining together verses
from the _Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures_. The
first verse is suggested by Jer. xliv. 4: ‘Oh, do not this abominable
thing that I hate.’ The second and third by Jer. xxxi. 33: ‘I will put
My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will
be their God, and they shall be My people.’

Another peaceful and attractive hymn on the same subject is based on
Heb. iv. 9: ‘There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.’
Charles Wesley wrote twenty-seven verses; John Wesley selected eight,
these are reduced to six in the _Methodist Hymn-book_. I am inclined
to think that a further abridgement would have been still wiser. The
four verses which follow are a beautiful meditation on the text—

  Lord, I believe a rest remains
    To all Thy people known,
  A rest where pure enjoyment reigns,
    And Thou art loved alone:

  A rest, where all our soul’s desire
    Is fixed on things above;
  Where fear, and sin, and grief expire,
    Cast out by perfect love.

  O that I now the rest might know,
    Believe, and enter in!
  Now, Saviour, now the power bestow,
    And let me cease from sin.

  Remove this hardness from my heart,
    This unbelief remove:
  To me the rest of faith impart,
    The Sabbath of Thy love.

The doctrine of Entire Sanctification, as it was believed and taught
by the Wesleys, is set forth in the hymn-book with emphasis, but the
expressions are rarely open to serious objection, nearly every phrase
having Scriptural precedent. In early days Charles Wesley had often
prayed for death, believing that through its gate alone could he find
entrance into ‘the land of rest from inbred sin.’ In one of his first
hymns, published in 1739, he had written—

  Fain would I leave this world below,
    Of pain and sin the dark abode,
  Where shadowy joy or solid woe
    Allures or tears me from my God;
  Doubtful and insecure of bliss,
  Since death alone confirms me His.[150]

But in later years he had outgrown this mood. John Wesley wrote _No_
against the last line of the stanza, and in his hymn-book gave—

  Since _faith_ alone confirms me His.

The brothers taught that sanctification was progressive, yet might be
‘cut short in righteousness,’ a phrase which they often quoted. In one
of the hymns for those that wait for ‘full redemption,’[151] Charles
Wesley writes—

  Surely I have pardon found,
  Grace doth more than sin abound,
  God, I know, is pacified;
  Thou for me, for me hast died;
  But I cannot rest herein,
  All my nature still is sin,
  Comforted I will not be
  Till my soul is all like Thee.

  See my burdened, sin-sick soul,
  Give me faith, and make me whole!
  Finish Thy great work of grace,
  Cut it short in righteousness.
  Speak the second time, ‘Be clean!’
  Take away my inbred sin;
  Now the stumbling-block remove,
  Cast it out by perfect love.

This doctrine of what has been called ‘the second blessing’ is often
met with in Charles Wesley, but he used expressions which John
disapproved, and would not repeat in his _Collection_, as in the
second verse of the great hymn, ‘Love divine, all loves excelling,’
which reads—

  Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit,
    Into every troubled breast;
  Let us all in Thee inherit,
    Let us find that second rest;
  Take away the power of sinning,
    Alpha and Omega be;
  End of faith as its beginning,
    Set our hearts at liberty.

John Fletcher suggested that ‘power’ should be altered to ‘love.’

The Wesleys’ teaching concerning sanctification had an immense
influence upon Methodist life and thought. ‘The pursuit of holiness,’
to use Dean Goulburn’s phrase, was the daily interest and delight of
multitudes of devout souls. No doubt in many cases there was more or
less of morbid introspection, but the rich treasury of Methodist
biography witnesses to the saintliness of those who made the search
for ‘full redemption,’ or, as they delighted to say, ‘perfect love,’
the one serious business of life.

Important and influential as this section of Wesley’s _Hymns_ is, not
many of the best are found here.[152] The finest are John Wesley’s
translations from the German but only a few original compositions are
of marked value. Some exceptions, indeed, must be made, notably—

  Love divine, all loves excelling;

and there are many verses inspired by that thirst of the soul ‘for
God, yea, even for the living God,’ which is characteristic of no one
Church or age, but of all elect souls restless till they find rest in
Him. The varying moods of the seeker after God are impressively
illustrated. Some of the hymns are of a solemn and even sombre type,
while others are bright with assurance of the favour of God and the
gladness of the redeemed. Here are a few verses from a

                      HYMN TO GOD THE SANCTIFIER

  Come, Holy Ghost, all quickening fire!
  Come, and my hallowed heart inspire,
    Sprinkled with the atoning blood;
  Now to my soul Thyself reveal,
  Thy mighty working let me feel,
    And know that I am born of God.

  Thy witness with my spirit bear,
  That God, my God, inhabits there;
    Thou, with the Father, and the Son,
  Eternal Light’s co-eval Beam;
  Be Christ in me, and I in Him,
    Till perfect we are made in one.

  Let earth no more my heart divide,
  With Christ may I be crucified,
    To Thee with my whole soul aspire;
  Dead to the world and all its toys,
  Its idle pomp, and fading joys,
    Be thou alone my one desire!

  Be Thou my joy, be Thou my dread;
  In battle cover Thou my head,
    Nor earth nor hell I then shall fear;
  I then shall turn my steady face,
  Want, pain, defy, enjoy disgrace,
    Glory in dissolution near.

  My will be swallowed up in Thee;
  Light in Thy light still may I see,
    Beholding Thee with open face;
  Called the full power of faith to prove,
  Let all my hallowed heart be love,
    And all my spotless life be praise.

  Come, Holy Ghost, all-quickening fire,
  My consecrated heart inspire,
    Sprinkled with the atoning blood;
  Still to my soul Thyself reveal,
  Thy mighty working may I feel,
    And know that I am one with God!

Of the other type two bright verses on 1 Chron. xxix. 5 are a good
example—

    Lord, in the strength of grace,
    With a glad heart and free,
  Myself, my residue of days
    I consecrate to Thee.

    Thy ransomed servant, I
    Restore to Thee Thine own,
  And, from this moment, live or die
    To serve my God alone.

These two verses belong to the very extensive series of

                6. Hymns on Passages of Holy Scripture

Charles Wesley’s poetry is always sanctified by the word of God. In
this regard he is unsurpassed, and I think unequalled, by any other
writer. He thought and wrote in the language of the Bible, and
constantly weaves into his hymns the words, phrases, incidents of Holy
Scripture. No one ‘spiritualized’ more boldly than he. Of this his
most famous poem, ‘Wrestling Jacob,’ is the great example. Many other
hymns illustrate the same power, e.g. this verse, which
‘spiritualizes’ Peter’s deliverance from prison—

  Long my imprisoned spirit lay
    Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
  Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
    I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
  My chains fell off, my heart was free,
  I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

and this, which refers in the same fashion to the resurrection of
Lazarus—

  Buried in sin, Thy voice I hear,
    And burst the barriers of my tomb,
  In all the marks of death appear,
    Forth at Thy call, though bound, I come.

His more formal paraphrases are often very fine, and are hymns of
permanent worth. Such are—

  None is like Jeshurun’s God (Deut. xxxiii. 26-29).

  Wherewith, O God, shall I draw near (Mic. vi. 6-8).

  Away my unbelieving fear (Hab. iii. 17, 18).

Of course Charles Wesley wrote many Psalm-versions. Comparatively few
are above the average, but there are some exceptions. Among these are
the 48th—

  Great is our redeeming Lord,
  In power, and truth, and grace.

the 84th—

  How lovely are Thy tents, O Lord!
  Where’er Thou choosest to record
    Thy name, or place Thy house of prayer,
  My soul outflies the angel-choir,
  And faints, o’erpowered with strong desire,
    To meet Thy special presence there.

the 121st—

  To the hills I lift mine eyes,
    The everlasting hills.

the 125th—

    Who in the Lord confide
    And feel His sprinkled blood,
  In storms and hurricanes abide,
    Firm as the mount of God.

Often only two or three verses can be taken from a long poem, as in
Ps. iii.—

  Thou, Lord, art a shield for me.[153]

and Ps. ix.—

  Thee will I praise with all my heart.

Here the whole psalm, as it appears in the _Poetical Works_, consists
of fourteen verses, most of them impossible for singing in a Christian
Church, but there are four good verses, especially this, with its
tender trustfulness that the humble seeker must at length find his
Saviour—

  A helpless soul that looks to Thee
  Is sure at last Thy face to see,
    And all Thy goodness to partake;
  The sinner who for Thee doth grieve,
  And longs, and labours to believe,
    Thou never, never wilt forsake.[154]

The 23rd Psalm is also very beautiful, and is worthy to take its place
amongst the many lovely renderings of this sweetest of the praises of
Israel. I venture to quote the whole, as it is little known outside
Wesleyan Methodism, and not too well known in our own Church. It is
the 23rd Psalm read in the light of the tenth chapter of St. John’s
Gospel.

  Jesus the good Shepherd is;
    Jesus died the sheep to save;
  He is mine, and I am His;
    All I want in Him I have,
  Life, and health, and rest, and food,
  All the plenitude of God.

  Jesus loves and guards His own;
    Me in verdant pastures feeds;
  Makes me quietly lie down,
    By the streams of comfort leads:
  Following Him where’er He goes,
  Silent joy my heart o’erflows.

  He in sickness makes me whole,
    Guides into the paths of peace;
  He revives my fainting soul,
    Stablishes in righteousness;
  Who for me vouchsafed to die,
  Loves me still,—I know not why!

  Unappalled by guilty fear,
    Through the mortal vale I go;
  My eternal Life is near;
    Thee my Life, in death I know;
  Bless Thy chastening, cheering rod
  Die into the arms of God!

  Till that welcome hour I see,
    Thou before my foes dost feed;
  Bidd’st me sit and feast with Thee,
    Pour’st Thy oil upon my head;
  Giv’st me all I ask, and more,
  Mak’st my cup of joy run o’er.

  Love divine shall still embrace,
    Love shall keep me to the end;
  Surely all my happy days
    I shall in Thy temple spend,
  Till I to Thy house remove,
  Thy eternal house above!

Dr. Watts’s ‘grand design’ in his version of the Psalter was ‘to
teach’ the ‘author to speak like a Christian.’ Charles Wesley took St.
Augustine’s view, that we ought to hear the voice of Christ in all the
psalms. His version of Ps. xlv. is typical of his attitude toward the
Psalter as a whole.

  My heart is full of Christ, and longs
    Its glorious matter to declare!
  Of Him I make my loftier songs,
    I cannot from His praise forbear;
  My ready tongue makes haste to sing
  The beauties of my heavenly King.

In 1762 Charles Wesley took advantage of a time of physical weakness
to write a large number of verses, forming a kind of running
commentary on the Holy Scriptures. They are, for the most part, purely
devotional; but the events of the time and, perhaps, of the day on
which a poem was written are mirrored in some of the verses. In the
preface he says—

  Many of the thoughts are borrowed from Mr. Henry’s _Commentary_, Dr.
  Gell on the _Pentateuch_, and Bengelius on the _New Testament_.
  Several of the hymns are intended to prove, and several to guard,
  the doctrine of Christian Perfection. I durst not publish one
  without the other. In the latter sort I use some severity.

On this point the brothers differed, and especially as to the method
of treating those who discredited the doctrine by extravagance in
teaching or by inconsistency of life.

The _Short Poems_ account for the enormous number of Charles Wesley’s
hymns. On the Old Testament he wrote 1,609, on the New Testament
3,491, a total of 5,100 poetical notes on the Holy Scripture. But very
many consist of only one verse.[155] By skilful combination some very
good hymns have been made, and in a few instances we come upon a
complete hymn of great strength or beauty. Many of these are familiar
in Methodist congregations, though probably few worshippers recognize
the passages of Scripture which suggested the verses. The well-known
hymn

  A charge to keep I have,

is the poet’s meditation and prayer after reading Lev. viii. 35:
‘Therefore shall ye abide at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation day and night seven days, and keep the charge of the
Lord, that ye die not.’ After reading Lev. vi. 13: ‘The fire shall
ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out,’ he prays

  O Thou who camest from above
    The pure celestial fire to impart,
  Kindle a flame of sacred love
    On the mean altar of my heart!

  There let it for Thy glory burn
    With inextinguishable blaze;
  And trembling to its source return,
    In humble prayer and fervent praise.

On the words ‘merciful and gracious’ in Exod. xxxiv. 6 he comments

  Mercy is Thy distinguished Name,
    And suits the sinner best.

On the twenty-ninth verse of the same chapter, ‘Moses wist not that
his face shone,’ he writes

  Thine image if Thou stamp on me,
  Let others, Lord, the brightness see,
    By me unseen, unknown.

As these verses are buried in the last four volumes of the _Poetical
Works_, I venture to quote a few others which have, I think, some
special value, reminding one at times of Herbert or Crashaw.

              ‘The Lord went His way’ (Gen. xviii. 33).

  Unwearied let us still request
    By instant prayer whate’er we want:
  The patriarch from asking ceased,
    Before the Almighty ceased to grant.

            ‘O my Lord, I am not eloquent’ (Exod. iv. 10).

  How ready is the man to go
    Whom God hath never sent!
  How timorous, diffident, and slow
    God’s chosen instrument!
  Lord, if from Thee this mark I have
    Of a true Messenger,
  By whom Thou wilt Thy people save,
    And let me always fear.

  Slow of speech and slower still
    Of heart, alas! am I,
  Cannot utter what I feel,
    Or speak to the Most High:
  But I to my Brother look,
    Mighty both in word and deed:
  He my cause hath undertook
    And lives for me to plead.

           ‘Where hast thou gleaned to-day?’ (Ruth ii. 19).

  At evening to myself I say,
  My soul, where hast thou gleaned to-day,
      Thy labours how bestowed?
  What hast thou rightly said or done?
  What grace attained or knowledge won,
      In following after God?

       ‘Oh that I knew where I might find Him’ (Job xxxiii. 3).

  Where but on yonder tree?
  Or if too rich thou art,
  Sink into poverty,
  And find Him in thine heart.

              ‘Israel served for a wife’ (Hos. xii. 12).

  While Jacob for a wife doth wait,
    A length of servile years
  (His love to Rachel is so great)
    As a few days appears:
  And shall I think it long to stay
    Or wish my labours passed?
  A thousand years are but a day
    If Christ be mine at last.

These verses on Num. xi. 27, 28 are in a different strain.

  Eldad, they said, and Medad there,
    Irregularly bold,
  By Moses uncommissioned dare
    A separate meeting hold!
  And still whom none, but Heaven, will own,
    Men whom the world decry,
  Men authorized by God alone
    Presume to prophesy!

  How often have I blindly done
    What zealous Joshua did,
  Impatient to the rulers run
    And cried, ‘My lords, forbid!’
  Silence the schismatics; constrain
    Their _thoughts_ with ours to agree;
  And sacrifice the souls of men
    To idol unity!

John Wesley lets this pass without note or comment, but when, on Num.
xvi. 10, Charles wrote

  Raised from the people’s lowest lees,
  Guard, Lord, Thy preaching witnesses,
  Nor let their pride the honour claim
  Of sealing covenants in Thy name.

he notes on the first line, ‘Query? J. W.’

Here our detailed consideration of Charles Wesley’s hymns must end,
though there are many others over which one would be glad to linger.
Some of the hymns on Death and the Future Life are of great power,
though some have lost and others are losing their hold upon Methodist
worshippers. Charles Wesley’s view of death is well illustrated in
these verses, which I quote the more readily because, to my regret,
they are not found in the _Methodist Hymn-book_. If they could not
often be sung in the congregation, there are times when they would
speak the inmost feeling of the devout disciple.

  O when shall we sweetly remove,
    O when shall we enter our rest,
  Return to the Sion above,
    The mother of spirits distressed!

  Not all the archangels can tell
    The joys of that holiest place,
  When Jesus is pleased to reveal
    The light of His heavenly face.

  ’Tis good at Thy word to be here,
    ’Tis better in Thee to be gone,
  And see Thee in glory appear,
    And rise to a share of Thy throne.

  To mourn for Thy coming is sweet,
    To weep at Thy longer delay;
  But Thou, whom we hasten to meet,
    Shalt chase all our sorrows away.

This is not the tone of modern worship. It is open to the charge of
that ‘other-worldliness’ of which our time is so impatient and knows
so little, but it is the language of the disciples whom Jesus loves.
‘Having the desire to depart and be with Christ: for it is very far
better.’ ‘He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come
quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!’

After Charles Wesley, Methodism had no great hymn-writer, though
Thomas Olivers (1725-99), one of the early preachers, wrote one of the
finest of our hymns of adoration.

He was a man of considerable ability, but Wesley had more confidence
in him as a corrector of errors of doctrine than of errors of the
press. He left Toplady to be ‘corrected by one that is full his match,
Mr. Thomas Olivers,’ but he rejected Olivers as assistant-editor of
the _Arminian Magazine_, because ‘the errata are insufferable.’

‘The God of Abraham praise’ was published at Nottingham in a pamphlet
of eight pages, with the title, ‘A Hymn to the God of Abraham. In
three parts, adapted to a celebrated air, sung by the priest, Signior
Leoni, &c., at the Jews’ Synagogue in London.’ There is only slight
verbal resemblance between Olivers’ version and the Hebrew
original.[156] He wrote a few other hymns, not to be compared with
this, yet indicating considerable poetic power. One of them, ‘On the
Last Judgement,’ was published at ‘Leedes.’ It contained twenty
verses, and was afterwards altered, and enlarged to thirty-six verses,
Scripture references being given in the margin of almost every line.
Some verses of this poem have been occasionally used in hymn-books,
and Lord Selborne gave twelve verses in his _Book of Praise_. It is,
however, little known. The following are among the best verses.

  Come, immortal King of Glory!
    Now with all Thy saints appear;
  While astonished worlds adore Thee,
    And the dead Thy clarions hear,
        Shine refulgent,
    And Thy Deity maintain.

  Lo! He comes with clouds descending:
    Hark! the trump of God is blown:
  And the archangel’s voice attending,
    Makes the high procession known.
        Sons of Adam,
    Rise and stand before your God!

  ‘Come, Lord Jesus, O come quickly,’
    Oft has prayed the mourning Bride.
  Lo! He answers, ‘I come quickly’;
    Who Thy coming may abide?
        All who loved Him,
    All who longed to see His day.

  Come, He saith, ye heirs of glory,
    Come, ye purchase of My blood,
  Claim the kingdom now before you,
    Rise and fill the mount of God:
        Fixed for ever,
    Where the Lamb on Sion stands.

  Now their trials all are ended,
    Now the dubious warfare’s o’er,
  Joy no more with sorrow blended,
    They shall sigh and weep no more:
        God for ever
    Wipes the tear from every eye.

  Hail! Thou Alpha and Omega!
    First and last of all alone.
  He that is, and was, and shall be,
    And beside whom there is none.
        Take the glory,
    Great Eternal Three in One!

  Praise be to the Father given:
    Praise to the co-eval Son:
  Praise the Spirit, One and Seven;
    Praise the mystic Three in One.
        Hallelujah!
    Everlasting praise be Thine.

John Bakewell (1721-1819), a Methodist schoolmaster, wrote several
hymns, and is widely known as the author of ‘Hail, Thou once despisèd
Jesus.’[157] Benjamin Rhodes (1743-1815), converted under the
preaching of Whitefield, and for many years a Methodist preacher,
wrote one really fine hymn, ‘My heart and voice I raise.’ Another of
the early Methodist preachers, John Murlin, ‘the weeping prophet,’
published a small volume of hymns, some of which are quite as good as
most of the eighteenth-century songs.

                                  IV
                       Eighteenth-century Hymns

                         III.—The Olney Hymns

The contribution of evangelical Churchmen, apart from the Wesleys, to
the hymnody of the eighteenth century, is slight, with the important
exception of the remarkable collection of hymns issued by William
Cowper and John Newton, which takes its title from the little
Buckinghamshire town in which Newton was for years curate for an
absentee vicar.

Our little England has been the mother of so many famous sons that it
often happens that some out-of-the-way village or obscure country town
is rich in memories of the great and good, for

  Half of her dust has walked the rest
  In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages.

Such a spot is Olney, the town of Cowper and of Cowper’s Mary, of John
Newton, and for a time of Thomas Scott, of whom Newman speaks as ‘the
writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to
whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul.’[158] Where William
Carey, after some hesitation on the ground of his slight abilities,
was ‘allowed to go on preaching,’ and finally sent forth to the
ministry by the unanimous vote of the Baptist Church, over which John
Sutcliff presided. Where also Dr. H. J. Gauntlett, when a boy of ten,
was organist at the parish church.[159]

The Olney hymns are at once the ‘monument’ of ‘an intimate and
endeared friendship’ and of a memorable literary partnership. ‘The old
African blasphemer’ must have felt it even more a matter of
thankfulness that he found himself collaborating with William Cowper
than that he should become minister of the nearest church to the
Mansion House. John Newton’s romantic story is too well known to be
repeated here. He is a unique figure in the Christian choir, and the
story of our hymn-writers would be vastly poorer if his life were
omitted.

Influenced, as he gladly recognized, by the mother who died when he
was a boy of seven, his soul lay open to intellectual and spiritual
impressions, even in the midst of his wanderings and sins. Euclid, as
well as Thomas à Kempis, shared in the saving of his soul and kept him
from sinking to the level of his companions and oppressors. His
hair-breadth escapes were so many and so remarkable that he might well
regard them as interpositions of Providence, indicating that he was ‘a
chosen vessel’ whom God had designated to special work when his hour
should come.

Among the many interesting men who occupy secondary places in the
religious life of the eighteenth century, he is one of the most
interesting and attractive. The promise of his childhood blighted by
the death of his mother, his restless, roving, adventurous manhood,
his pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, his seven years’ faithful
love for Mary Catlett, thoughts of whom were never absent from his
mind for an hour amidst all his ‘misery and wretchedness,’ the
unegotistic frankness of his _Authentic Narrative_, his profound and
thankful modesty,

  The genuine meek humility,
  The wonder why such love to me,

his genius for friendship, his good-humoured perplexity as to his
proper theological and ecclesiastical affinities, his ready wit and
manly tenderness, unite to make John Newton’s a name over which one
may well linger.

He was a Calvinist for the same reason that the Wesleys were
Arminians. They were convinced that only a love divine which included
every soul of man could have stooped to them. Newton believed that
only God’s determinate counsel could have set such wandering feet as
his upon the rock and established his goings. To such elect souls the
divers ways of contradictory theologies blend in the one path which
leads the sinner to the Saviour. ‘The views,’ he says, ‘I have
received of the doctrines of grace, are essential to my peace, and I
could not live a day or an hour without them.’ He found them ‘friendly
to holiness,’ and it was not in him to be ‘ashamed of them.’ One of
his favourite stories was of an old woman near Olney, whose views on
predestination suited him exactly. ‘Ah! I have long settled that
point; for if God had not chosen me before I was born, I am sure He
would have seen nothing in me to have chosen me for afterwards.’ But
we can well believe that he was not a satisfactory Calvinist from the
‘highest’ point of view. ‘There were two sorts of Calvinists at
Olney,’ he said, ‘and they always reminded me of the two baskets of
Jeremiah’s figs.’

His Churchmanship was like his Calvinism, convinced but liberal,
almost easy-going. He writes to his friend, William Bull—

  I know not how it is. I think my sentiments and experience are as
  orthodox and Calvinistical as need be; and yet I am a sort of
  speckled bird among my Calvinist brethren. I am a mighty good
  Churchman, but pass amongst such as a Dissenter in prunello. On the
  other hand, the Dissenters (many of them, I mean) think me
  defective, either in understanding or in conscience, for staying
  where I am. Well, there is a middle party called Methodists, but
  neither do my dimensions exactly fit with them.... But there are a
  few among all parties who bear with me and love me, and with this I
  must be content at present.... Party walls, though stronger than the
  walls of Babylon, must come down in the general ruin when the earth
  and all its works shall be burned up, if not sooner.

In truth, he also was one of those whom any Church might gladly have
adopted. He would have been thoroughly happy and at home amongst the
best of the Dissenters, he would have been an ideal Methodist, and his
_Narrative_ would have given an added glory to the _Lives of Early
Methodist Preachers_; but, notwithstanding the difficulties which
delayed his taking orders, he was in his right place as a parish
clergyman, and had no reason to complain that he was not appreciated
in the Establishment. His _Apologia_ shows that when he desired to
enter the ministry, Dissenters were quite as much afraid of him as
Churchmen, and were as unwilling to ordain him as the archbishop
himself.[160]

He entered the Church without any special prejudice in its favour, but
his conviction that he had taken the right step grew stronger year by
year. His defence of the Prayer-book against the criticism of the
Dissenter who availed himself of Watts’s _Psalms and Hymns_ is as
effective as it is witty, and is enforced by a characteristic anecdote
of a preacher who used to compose hymns line by line as he announced
them from the pulpit.

  Crito freely will rehearse
  Forms of praise and prayer in verse;
  Why should Crito then suppose
  Forms are sinful when in prose?
  Must my form be deemed a crime
  Merely for the want of rhyme?

Newton’s charity went a good deal beyond that of the ordinary
evangelical of his own and of many a later day. In the _Apologia_ he
expresses with vigour his conviction that ‘the Lord has a people’
among the members of the Roman and Greek Churches.

  I should hope that they who, having themselves tasted that the Lord
  is gracious, know the language of a heart under the influence of His
  Spirit, would, in defiance of Protestant prejudices, be of my mind
  if they had opportunity of perusing the writings of some Papists.

Newton was not one of the great men of his age, but he is remarkable,
if not pre-eminent, for the naturalness with which he speaks the
common tongue of the children of God. Father Faber, in the preface to
his _Hymns_, bears a somewhat reluctant witness to this.

  Catholics even are said to be sometimes found poring with a devout
  and unsuspecting delight over the verses of the Olney hymns, which
  the author (Faber) himself can remember acting like a spell upon him
  for years, strong enough to be for long a counter influence to very
  grave convictions, and even now to come back from time to time
  unbidden into the mind.

If Faber deprecated the ‘spell’ of the Olney hymns, it is fair to
remember that Newton concludes his defence of devout Catholics by
saying, ‘However, I desire to be thankful that I am not a Papist.’

In 1764 the difficulties which beset his entrance to the ministry
ended, and he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln to the curacy of
Olney, which had been secured for him by the Earl of Dartmouth,[161] a
devout and liberal Churchman, commemorated in Cowper’s lines—

  We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways,
  And one who wears a coronet and prays.

Newton was nearly forty when he entered upon his first clerical
employment. A few months after his coming to Olney, Cowper and Mrs.
Unwin stayed with him at the vicarage for about six weeks, and from
that time they were bound together by the ties of a deep affection.
Newton recognized with his usual shrewdness how much he was inferior
to his friend in intellectual capacity, but he was able to give to the
sorely tried poet, in his fits of depression, much comfort and a very
patient friendship. When in 1773 one of Cowper’s worst attacks came
on, he went to the vicarage and remained there for more than twelve
months. It was no light trial to Newton, but he said, ‘I think I can
hardly do or suffer too much for such a friend,’ and ‘upon the whole’
he was not weary of his ‘cross.’ It has sometimes, most ungenerously,
been charged against Newton that his influence tended to produce, or
to aggravate, the religious melancholy of the poet, but Cowper’s
malady had been very pronounced long before Newton met him. Richard
Cecil, and more recently Canon Overton, have defended Newton against
this accusation. Cowper’s morbid depression must have been much more
trying to Newton than Newton’s humble, cheerful faith could have been
to Cowper. Indeed, his playful poems addressed to John Newton and his
wife and to their common friend, ‘the smoke-inhaling Bull’—the
Independent minister of Newport Pagnell, whom Cowper calls ‘a man of
letters and of genius.... but he smokes tobacco—nothing is
perfect’—sufficiently show how genial and even jovial was their
friendship. The fable that Nonconformist ministers and Evangelical
clergymen are either rank hypocrites or intolerable dullards, though
it had, and perhaps still has, the support of many great authorities,
is only believed in circles profoundly ignorant of them.

Yet Newton must have been greatly indebted, especially as a
hymn-writer, to Cowper. His hymns were all written during his
residence at Olney, and he had intended that his share in the volume
should have been much less than Cowper’s. Indeed, when his friend’s
‘long and affecting indisposition’ occurred, he laid the project aside
for some time. In the end the collection appeared with sixty-eight of
Cowper’s and two hundred and eighty of Newton’s. Of Cowper’s hymns,
some few had been written before he went to Olney, e.g. ‘The Happy
Change’ and ‘Retirement.’

Cowper is the one great hymn-writer who ranks with the greater poets.
Montgomery, Heber, Milman, all wrote ‘poems,’ but their enduring
poetic monument is in their hymns. Had Cowper never written a hymn, he
would have had fame sufficient as a poet; had he never written a
‘poem,’ he would still have lived through the ages as the writer of
immortal hymns. Lord Selborne says that Cowper’s contributions to the
Olney collection ‘are, almost without exception, worthy of his name’;
but, as a fact, many of them are prosaic and feeble, apparently
written as task work, perhaps to meet a challenge of Newton’s, or to
follow a particular sermon. Cowper’s choicest hymns are too well known
for quotation—

  O for a closer walk with God.
  Hark, my soul, it is the Lord.
  Sometimes a light surprises.
  God moves in a mysterious way.
  Jesus, where’er Thy people meet.

Newton’s best are—

  Glorious things of thee are spoken.
  How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.
  Quiet, Lord, my froward heart.
  Come, my soul, thy suit prepare.

And the simple Spiritual songs—

  Begone, unbelief, my Saviour is near.
  Though troubles assail and dangers affright.

Like Watts, Doddridge, Beddome, and many others, Newton wrote his
hymns for use after preaching or for some special occasion, such as
the opening of a room at the Great House for prayer-meetings and
children’s services. It was for this event that Cowper wrote

  Jesus, where’er Thy people meet,

and Newton a less effective hymn—

  Dear Shepherd of Thy people, hear,
    Thy presence now display;
  As Thou hast given a place for prayer,
    So give us hearts to pray.

I do not suppose that the Olney hymns were often selected as a
hymn-book for congregational use. The range of subjects is too narrow,
and is so largely affected by the circumstances of composition, the
sadness of Cowper’s prolonged illness, and the needs of the rustic
worshippers, that it is, as a whole, more suited to private devotion
than public worship, though from it may be gathered some of the most
beautiful of the songs of Zion.

From twelve to twenty of the Olney hymns have won a permanent place in
our hymn-books, but what is left is very far from being ‘empty chaff
well meant for grain.’ Indeed, there are very few hymn-books of the
eighteenth century so _interesting_ as this. When you have picked out
of Watts or Doddridge their best hymns, you find it a wearisome and
profitless task to plod through the remainder. An outrageous rhyme is
a pleasing break in the dull monotony of the sentiment, but the Olney
hymns, even at their feeblest, have life and vigour, and are often
provokingly easy to remember. Their influence on modern hymnody has
been all in favour of the expression of personal, individual
experience, in which regard they may not unfairly be compared with
many of the sublimest Psalms.

In Cowper’s verses there are often references to his own depressed and
anxious state of mind, and pathetic prayers for deliverance or
suggestions of comfortable thoughts.

  She, too, who touched Thee in the press,
    And healing virtue stole,
  Was answered, ‘Daughter, go in peace,
    Thy faith hath made thee whole.’

  Concealed amid the gathering throng,
    She would have shunned Thy view;
  And if her faith was firm and strong,
    Had strong misgivings too.

  Like her with hopes and fears we come,
    To touch Thee, if we may:
  Oh! send us not despairing home,
    Send none unhealed away.

                          THE CONTRITE HEART

  The Lord will happiness divine
    On contrite hearts bestow;
  Then tell me, gracious God, is mine
    A contrite heart, or no?

  I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
    Insensible as steel;
  If ought is felt, ’tis only pain,
    To find I cannot feel.

  I sometimes think myself inclined
    To love Thee, if I could;
  But often feel another mind,
    Averse to all that’s good.

  Thy saints are comforted, I know,
    And love Thy house of prayer;
  I therefore go where others go,
    But find no comfort there.

  Oh, make this heart rejoice or ache,
    Decide this doubt for me;
  And if it be not broken, break—
    And heal it, if it be!

                           THE WAITING SOUL

  Breathe from the gentle south, O Lord,
    And cheer me from the north;
  Blow on the treasures of Thy word,
    And call the spices forth!

  Help me to reach the distant goal;
    Confirm my feeble knee;
  Pity the sickness of a soul
    That faints for love of Thee!

  I seem forsaken and alone,
    I hear the lion roar;
  And every door is shut but one,
    And that is Mercy’s door.

  There, till the dear Deliverer come,
    I’ll wait with humble prayer;
  And when He calls His exile home,
    The Lord shall find him there.

                         PRAYER FOR PATIENCE

  Lord, who hast suffered all for me,
    My peace and pardon to procure,
  The lighter cross I bear for Thee,
    Help me with patience to endure.

  The storm of loud repining hush,
    I would in humble silence mourn;
  Why should the unburnt, though burning bush,
    Be angry as the crackling thorn?

  Ah! were I buffeted all day,
    Mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit upon,
  I yet should have no right to say,
    My great distress is mine alone.

  Let me not angrily declare
    No pain was ever sharp like mine,
  Nor murmur at the cross I bear,
    But rather weep, remembering Thine.

Cowper’s hymns are not all the voice of the penitent or of the anxious
believer. He shared Newton’s opinion as to the classification of
Calvinists, and two of his compositions evidently refer to the second
basket of figs. They illustrate Hazlitt’s criticism, ‘His satire is
excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of
the gentleman and the honest indignation of the virtuous man.’[162]
The following verses are a good example of his satire.

                      A LIVING AND A DEAD FAITH

  With golden bells, the priestly vest,
    And rich pomegranates bordered round,
  The need of holiness expressed,
    And called for fruit as well as sound.

  Easy indeed it were to reach
    A mansion in the courts above,
  If swelling words and fluent speech
    Might serve instead of faith and love.

  But none shall gain the blissful place,
    Or God’s unclouded glory see,
  Who talks of free and sovereign grace,
    Unless that grace has made him free!

This is not a favourite strain of Cowper’s. His hymns are nearly
always the expression of personal emotion or experience. We may close
our quotations from his Olney hymns with one which expresses, in his
own way, the common yearning of all who love our Lord Jesus Christ.

                      LONGING TO BE WITH CHRIST

  My Saviour, whom absent I love,
    Whom, not having seen, I adore;
  Whose name is exalted above
    All glory, dominion, and power;

  Dissolve Thou these bonds that detain
    My soul from her portion in Thee,
  Ah! strike off this adamant chain,
    And make me eternally free.

  Oh then shall the veil be removed,
    And round me Thy brightness be poured,
  I shall meet Him whom absent I loved,
    I shall see Him whom unseen I adored.

Newton’s contribution to the Olney hymns is considerable both in
quality and quantity. His preface disarms criticism.

  Dr. Watts might, as a poet, have a right to say, ‘That it cost him
  some labour to restrain his fire, and to accommodate himself to the
  capacities of common readers.’ But it would not become me to make
  such a declaration. It behoved me to do my best.... If the Lord,
  whom I serve, has been pleased to favour me with that mediocrity of
  talent, which may qualify me for usefulness to the weak and the poor
  of His flock, without quite disgusting persons of superior
  discernment, I have reason to be satisfied.

It is quite refreshing to find a hymn-writer who describes himself
thus. They have often been modest men and women, but have had a fairly
good idea of the value of their own compositions.

Newton’s hymns are, even more than those of Watts or Doddridge,
pastoral hymns. Other men wrote for the congregation, he wrote for his
own particular congregation, and very often with a special reference
to one member of it. We know that his sermons were suggested in this
way. If ‘Sir Cowper’ had a bad fit, or the Vicarage maid, Molly, was
‘perplexed and tempted on the point of election,’ the kind-hearted
pastor had a sermon and a hymn, suited to their ‘state,’ ready on
Sunday.

Many of Newton’s pieces express much more of Cowper’s experience than
of his own. In such lines as the following is not his eye upon the sad
figure in ‘the poet’s corner’ in the Great House?

  Sure the Lord thus far has brought me
    By His watchful tender care,
  Sure ’tis He Himself has taught me
    How to seek His face by prayer:
      After so much mercy past,
      Will He give me up at last?

  In my Saviour’s intercession
    Therefore I will still confide!
  Lord, accept my free confession,
    I have sinned, but Thou hast died:
      This is all I have to plead,
      This is all the plea I need.

That is what he has to say of ‘Confidence’ from Cowper’s point of
view. When he speaks for himself he adopts a different tone.

  Oh! I tremble still to think
    How secure I lived in sin;
  Sporting on destruction’s brink,
    Yet preserved from falling in.

  Come, my fellow-sinners, try,
    Jesu’s heart is full of love!
  Oh that you, as well as I,
    May His wondrous mercy prove.

  He has sent me to declare,
    All is ready, all is free:
  Why should any soul despair
    When He saved a wretch like me?

Perhaps it was with Cowper in his mind he wrote that beautiful and
touching hymn for private devotion, which has been often most unjustly
censured—‘’Tis a point I long to know.’ Newton, like Bunyan, knew how
sincere a pilgrim Mr. Little Faith was, and each in his own way sought
to comfort him. There is good robust common sense in the prayer of the
last two verses. In strength and beauty it does not compare with
Cowper’s hymn on the same text, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ which Mr. Gladstone
reckoned one of the three greatest English hymns; but it belongs to
the Christian treasury, and has brought help to many.

  Lord, decide the doubtful case,
    Thou who art Thy people’s sun,
  Shine upon the work of grace,
    If it be indeed begun.

  Let me love Thee more and more,
    If I love at all, I pray;
  If I have not loved before,
    Help me to begin to-day.

The tenderness of ‘the old African blasphemer’s’ heart is nowhere more
touchingly illustrated than in his version of Isa. liv. 5-11, which
must surely have been written for Cowper, since it quotes and
emphasizes the words of his own great hymn. It has five eight-line
verses, and is headed ‘To the Afflicted, Tossed with Tempest, and not
Comforted.’

  Pensive, doubting, fearful heart,
    Hear what Christ the Saviour says;
  Every word should joy impart,
    Change thy mourning into praise.
  Yes, He speaks, and speaks to thee.
    May He help thee to believe!
  Then thou presently wilt see
    Thou hast little cause to grieve.

  Though afflicted, tempest-tossed,
    Comfortless awhile thou art,
  Do not think thou canst be lost,
    Thou art graven on My heart.
  All thy wastes I will repair,
    Thou shalt be rebuilt anew;
  And in thee it shall appear
    What a God of love can do.

It is the pastor’s heart which takes up the very words of his friend—

  Yes, He _speaks and speaks to thee_,
  May He help thee to believe!

Richard Cecil says that Herbert was a ‘favourite’ of Newton’s, and
there are not wanting reminiscences of Herbert in the Olney hymns,
though Newton had little of Herbert’s ingenuity or power, and he says
in a few plain words what Herbert weaves into a quaint poem, bright
and ever-memorable with some ‘conceit’ such as he only conceived. If
we set Newton and Herbert side by side, the comparison is, of course,
all in favour of Herbert. Herbert speaks to himself and to God in what
is an unknown tongue to many a good plain Christian. Newton wrote for
his simple labouring folk at Olney; he is the poet of the rustic
prayer-meeting. Bemerton and Olney were both villages in the land of
Beulah, but there is a difference in the dialect, which is easily
accounted for when we remember the contrast between the life of
Herbert and of Newton. When they passed through a similar spiritual
experience they described it in very different fashion, but, though
there are diversities of gifts, there is the same Spirit; there is the
same self-distrust, self-abhorrence; and there is the same calm
acceptance of the great salvation and its joys. George Herbert tells
his deepest, sweetest experience in the final poem of _The
Temple_.[163] Newton tells his story in simple, homely verse that is
not poetry, but is prayer and praise expressed in natural rhythm.

  Dost Thou ask me who I am?
  Ah, my Lord, Thou know’st my name:
  Yet the question gives a plea
  To support my suit with Thee.

  Thou didst once a wretch behold,
  In rebellion blindly bold,
  Scorn Thy grace, Thy power defy:
  That poor rebel, Lord, was I.

  Once a sinner near despair,
  Sought Thy mercy-seat by prayer;
  Mercy heard and set him free:
  Lord, that mercy came to me.

  Many years have passed since then,
  Many changes I have seen,
  Yet have been upheld till now;
  Who could hold me up but Thou?

                                  IV
                       Eighteenth-century Hymns

                   IV.—Addison, Toplady, and Others

A few other hymn-writers of the eighteenth century remain to be
mentioned. The first writer is of a very different class from those of
the later years. In 1712 Joseph Addison published six hymns in
successive numbers of the _Spectator_. One was by Dr. Watts; the
others were undoubtedly his own, though the authorship has been
claimed for others. The hymns themselves are the work of a devout man
of letters, and, without being exactly ‘popular,’ have been and still
are extensively used. They have the easy grace of Addison’s
prose-writings, and his name made them at once acceptable to all
classes. They belong to no school, and are used by all the Churches.

The six hymns are—‘The Lord my pasture shall prepare’; ‘When all Thy
mercies, O my God’; ‘When Israel, freed from Pharaoh’s hand’ (Watts);
‘The spacious firmament on high’; ‘How are Thy servants blest, O
Lord’; ‘When rising from the bed of death.’

John Cennick (1718-55) had much of Newton’s simplicity and sincerity,
though he had not his touches of genius or any trace of the old
sea-farer’s raciness. Cennick was ‘found’ by John Wesley at Reading,
in 1739, and was one of his earliest lay-preachers. But he adopted
Calvinistic views, and soon left the Methodists and attached himself
to Whitefield, whom he served as a brother beloved for several years.
He bore reproach, violence, hardship, with the courage which
characterized the itinerants of that day of either school of theology.
He separated from Wesley in 1741, from Whitefield in 1745, and found a
more congenial home among the Moravians. He was ordained a deacon, and
ministered in London and Dublin. He it was who earned for Protestants
of the Methodist type the nickname of ‘swaddlers,’ so long common in
Ireland. ‘A name given to Mr. Cennick, first by a Popish priest, who
heard him speak of a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and probably
did not know the expression was in the Bible, a book he was not much
acquainted with.’[164]

Cennick was vacillating, and apparently easily influenced by stronger
minds than his own, but he was not able to keep up a quarrel, and, ten
years after his defection from Wesley, wrote him an affectionate
letter, in which he wishes ‘heartily that Christians conferring
together had hindered the making that wide space between us and you.’
Whitefield, though he had suffered a larger defection from his Society
than Wesley, bore Cennick no ill will, but kept up an affectionate
correspondence with him to the end. ‘My dear John,’ he wrote in 1747,
‘I wish thee much success, and shall always pray that the work of the
Lord may prosper in thy hands.’[165] Cennick continued his abundant
labours till 1755, when he died in London in his thirty-seventh year.

His best-known hymn is in every collection—

  Children of the heavenly King,
  As ye journey, sweetly sing;

and notwithstanding the dreadful rhyme of its second verse—

  Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb

still finds a place in many hymn-books.

Cennick is often spoken of as the author of

  Lo! He comes with clouds descending;

but there is very little trace of Cennick’s hymn in Charles Wesley’s.
Canon Ellerton calls the hymn ‘a recast by Charles Wesley,’ and adds,
‘Cennick’s hymn is poor stuff compared to that into which Wesley
recast it, putting into it at once fire and tunefulness.’ This,
however, is an inaccurate statement of the facts. Probably Cennick’s
hymn suggested Wesley’s, but this is the only share Cennick had in it.

Cennick’s hymn was published in 1752, Wesley’s in 1758. In 1760 Martin
Madan pieced together six verses, five (with some alterations) from
these two hymns, and one from another of Wesley’s. Neither Cennick’s
original nor Madan’s can be compared with Wesley’s fine verses, which
are best left as he wrote them.[166] The following is Cennick’s
original—

  Lo! He cometh, countless trumpets
    Blow before His bloody sign!
  ’Midst ten thousand saints and angels,
    See the Crucifièd shine.
        Allelujah!
  Welcome, welcome, bleeding Lamb!

  Now His merits by the harpers,
    Through the eternal deeps resounds!
  Now resplendent shine His nail-prints,
    Every eye shall see His wounds!
        They who pierced Him
  Shall at His appearing wail.

  Every island, sea, and mountain,
    Heaven and earth shall flee away!
  All who hate Him must, ashamèd,
    Hear the trump proclaim His day:
        Come to judgement!
  Stand before the Son of Man!

  All who love Him view His glory,
    Shining in His bruisèd Face:
  His dear Person on the rainbow,
    Now His people’s heads shall raise:
        Happy mourners!
  Now on clouds He comes! He comes!

  Now redemption, long expected,
    See, in solemn pomp appear:
  All His people, once despisèd,
    Now shall meet Him in the air:
        Allelujah!
  Now the promised kingdom’s come!

  View Him smiling, now determined
    Every evil to destroy!
  All the nations now shall sing Him
    Songs of everlasting joy!
        O come quickly!
    Allelujah! come, Lord, come!

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78) was a devout clergyman, converted
through the preaching of a Methodist in Ireland. His ‘Arminian
prejudices’ received an ‘effectual shock’ in 1758. His ministry at
Broad Hembury, and in the French Reformed Church, Leicester Fields,
was greatly valued, and his sincere piety impressed all who knew him.

He was one of the most violent opponents of Wesley and Fletcher in the
Calvinistic controversy, and expressed himself in unmeasured terms. He
was a good man, with deep convictions and narrow views. Yet he touched
human hearts as few other hymn-writers have ever done. To have written
‘Rock of Ages’ would have been fame enough for a much greater man than
Toplady. It appeared in a curious and unpromising setting. Toplady was
editing the _Gospel Magazine_, and in 1776 published a _Spiritual
Improvement_ of a Catechism on the National Debt, in which he strives
to estimate the number of individual sins a man may be expected to
commit in the course of his earthly life.

  As we never, in the present life, rise to the mark of legal
  sanctity, is it not fairly inferrible that our sins multiply with
  every second of our sublunary durations?

  ’Tis too true. And in this view of the matter, our dreadful account
  stands as follows:—At ten years old, each of us is chargeable with
  315 millions and 36 thousand sins. At twenty, with 630 millions and
  720 thousand. At thirty, with 946 millions and 80 thousand. At
  forty, with 1,261 millions and 440 thousand. At fifty, with 1,576
  millions and 800 thousand. At sixty, with 1,892 millions and 160
  thousand. At seventy, with 2,207 millions and 520 thousand. At
  eighty, with 2,522 millions and 880 thousand.

  We can only admire and bless the Father for electing us in Christ,
  and for laying on Him the iniquities of us all; the Son for taking
  our nature and our debts upon Himself, and for that complete
  righteousness and sacrifice whereby He redeemed His mystical Israel
  from all their sins; and the co-æqual Spirit for causing us (in
  conversion) to feel our need of Christ, for inspiring us with faith
  to embrace Him, for visiting us with His sweet consolations by
  shedding abroad His love in our hearts, for sealing us to the day of
  Christ, and for making us to walk in the path of His commandments.

  _A living and dying_ Prayer _for the_ Holiest Believer _in the
  world_.

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
  Let me hide myself in Thee!
  Let the Water and the Blood
  From Thy riven Side which flowed,
  Be of Sin the double Cure,
  Cleanse me from its Guilt and Power.[167]

Toplady wrote a good many hymns, but no other compares with this great
universal prayer, probably the best-known and best-loved hymn in the
language. He was essentially a Methodist, his Calvinism being, one
might almost say, accidental. His hymns have the tone and even the
mannerisms of Charles Wesley.[168] Many of them are good devotional
reading. The following verses will remind many readers of some
well-known lines of Charles Wesley—

  O when wilt Thou my Saviour be?
    O when shall I be clean,
  The true, eternal Sabbath see,
    A perfect rest from sin?

  The consolations of Thy word
    My soul have long upheld;
  The faithful promise of the Lord
    Shall surely be fulfilled.

  I look to my Incarnate God,
    ’Till He His work begin,
  And wait ’till His redeeming blood
    Shall cleanse me from all sin.

  His great salvation I shall know,
    And perfect liberty;
  Onward to sin he cannot go,
    Whoe’er abides in Thee:

  Added to the Redeemer’s fold,
    I shall in Him rejoice,
  I all His glory shall behold,
    And hear my Shepherd’s voice.

  O that I now the voice might hear
    That speaks my sins forgiven!
  His word is past to give me _here_
    The inward pledge of heaven.

  His blood shall over all prevail
    And sanctify the unclean;
  The grace that saves from future hell
    Shall save from present sin.

In no part of the kingdom was the Evangelical Revival more influential
than in Wales. Whitefield, Howell Harris, and, perhaps more than all,
Lady Huntingdon, were the controlling minds, and they led the people
of the Principality to the Calvinistic rather than to the Wesleyan
Methodists. The quaint poetry of Vicar Rees Prichard’s _Welshman’s
Candle_ and the Psalms of Archdeacon Prys seem to have been the songs
of the Welsh Church until William Williams of Pantycelyn arose—a great
light, well worthy to be called the Watts of Wales. His father was
deacon of an Independent Church, which at one time met ‘in a cave
during the hours of twilight,’ for fear of their enemies. Williams
himself was studying medicine, and had no thought of the ministry. One
Sunday morning, as he passed through Talgarth in Breconshire, he went
into the parish church. After the service the congregation gathered in
the churchyard, and Howell Harris, standing on a tomb-stone, preached
with the Holy Ghost and with power. That was the hour of Williams’s
conversion. He prepared for the ministry of the Established Church,
and was ordained deacon in 1740. He acted as curate of two small
parishes for three years, and then, drawn into the current of the
Revival under the influence of Whitefield, David Rowlands, and Howell
Harris, he became an earnest evangelist, travelling throughout the
Principality. His hymn-writing is said to have been occasioned by a
challenge of Howell Harris to the Welsh Calvinistic preachers to write
better hymns than their congregations then possessed. He wrote hymns
by the hundred, and they won an immediate and enduring popularity in
Wales. ‘What Paul Gerhardt has been to Germany, what Isaac Watts has
been to England, that and more has William Williams of Pantycelyn been
to Wales.’[169] He was a great favourite with Lady Huntingdon, at
whose suggestion he prepared a volume of hymns for Whitefield’s Orphan
House. In this work, entitled _Gloria in Excelsis_, some of his best
hymns appeared. In modern hymn-books he is known by two hymns—

  Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah!

and

  O’er those gloomy hills of darkness.

It is probable that the English version of his greatest hymn was
written by himself, and this seems to indicate that he suffers in
translation, for none of the English versions of his other poems is to
be compared with this. Mr. Garrett Horder thinks that ‘Guide me, O
Thou great Jehovah’ has been largely supplanted by ‘Lead, kindly
Light,’ though the most recent hymn-books do not sustain this
criticism. Keble re-wrote, but failed to improve it; and the same may
be said of those who have made minor alterations. It is, and is likely
to remain, one of the great songs of the Christian pilgrim in his
progress from this world unto that which is to come.

Mr. Elvet Lewis has given several translations of hymns hitherto
unknown to English people, which are good reading, though perhaps none
are likely to attain extensive use. Here are two verses in Williams’s
favourite metre—

  Much I love the faithful pilgrims,
    Who the rugged steeps ascend;
  On their hands and knees they labour
    To attain the heavenly end;
      To the summit
  On my knees shall I come too.

  Bruisèd hands, oh! stretch ye upward,
    Tired feet, walk ye with care;
  The reward, the crown is yonder,
    My Belovèd—He is there!
      Earth forsaking
  Now the journey’s end is all.

Here are two more in another metre, and with the cheery rhythm of John
Newton—

  Here I know myself a stranger,
    And my native country lies
  Far beyond the ocean’s danger
    In the lands of Paradise:
  Storms of trial blowing keenly
    Drive me on this foreign strand;
  Come, O South wind, blow serenely,
    Speed me to my Fatherland.

  Now the air is full of balm
    With the fragrance of the land;
  And the breezes clear and calm
    Tell of Paradise at hand:
  Come, ye much-desired regions,
    With the best of joy in store;
  Country of the singing legions,
    Let me reach thy restful shore!

Williams had the spirit of devout enthusiasm which characterized the
Revival; his missionary hymns, though not among the best, are among
the earliest of that class, and he had the rapt devotion to his Lord
which is ever the inspiration of the true hymn-writer.

  To Thee, my God, my Saviour,
    Praise be for ever new;
  Let people come to praise Thee
    In numbers like the dew;
  O! that in every meadow
    The grass were harps of gold,
  To sing to Him for coming
    To ransom hosts untold![170]

                                  V
                       Nineteenth-century Hymns

                          I.—Anglican Hymns

The hymns of the eighteenth century are almost without exception by
writers of the Dissenting, Methodist, or Evangelical schools. In the
nineteenth century the tide turns, and though the Nonconformists are
not without hymn-writers of distinction, the great hymns are by
Anglicans. Henry Francis Lyte in the first half of the century, Bishop
Bickersteth, Charlotte Elliott, and Miss Havergal in the second,
represent the Evangelical school. Heber was a typical Anglican, but he
was not of the Tractarian type, and died before the publication of the
_Christian Year_. Keble and Newman were the poets of the Oxford
Movement, and gave a distinctive tone to much of the later Church
hymn-writing; but Heber, more than any other man, did for the Church
of England what Watts had done for the Nonconformists.

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was a scholar and a gentleman, his
churchmanship was unimpeachable, and his life and death alike served
to win acceptance for hymns whose intrinsic worth must have secured
the widest recognition. His hymns, like those of Herbert, Keble, and
many of our sweetest singers, are hymns of the country parsonage, and
seem all to have been written whilst he held the family living of
Hodnet, to which he was welcomed by the people as ‘Master Reginald.’
He was little better satisfied with Tate and Brady than Watts had been
with Barton, and at one time contemplated using the Olney hymns in his
church. Then he projected a more ambitious scheme, and hoped, with the
help of Milman, Southey, and Walter Scott, to provide a book which
might, perhaps under episcopal sanction, become the authorized hymnal
of the Church. But he felt the proposal a bold one, and tried to
prepare the way by the publication in the _Christian Observer_ of a
few hymns which he described as ‘part of an intended series
appropriate to the Sundays and principal holy days of the year,
connected in some degree with their particular collects and gospels,
and designed to be sung between the Nicene Creed and the sermon.’ Like
other reformers, he indulges in criticisms of the hymns then in use,
and is especially severe in censuring those which address our Lord
‘with ditties of embraces of passion.’ The hymn-book was duly
compiled, and specimens were submitted to Bishop Howley in the hope
that he might give it an episcopal benediction. It is curious to note
the apologetic tone in which Heber writes.

  The evil, indeed, if it be one, of the admission of hymns into our
  Churches has, by this time, spread so widely, and any attempt to
  suppress it entirely would be so unpopular, and attended with so
  much difficulty, that I cannot help thinking it would be wiser, as
  well as more practicable, to _regulate_ the liberty thus assumed,
  instead of authoritatively taking it away. Nor can I conceive any
  method by which this object might be better obtained than by the
  publication of a selection which should, at least, have the praise
  of excluding whatever was improper in diction or sentiment; and
  might be on this, if on no other ground, thought not unworthy a
  licence of the same kind as that which was given to the psalms of
  Tate and Brady. I have the vanity to think that even my own
  compositions are not inferior in poetical merit to those of Tate;
  and my collection will contain some from our older poets, which it
  would be mockery to speak of in the same breath with his. There are
  a few also which I have extracted from the popular collections
  usually circulated, which, though I have not been able to learn
  their authors, possess considerable merit and much popularity, and
  are entirely free from objectionable expressions.[171]

The Bishop criticized freely, generally approved and advised the
completion of the project; but Heber was called to Calcutta, and the
collection was not published until after his death. It contained
fifty-seven hymns of his own, twelve of Milman’s, and twenty-nine
others. His object had been to obtain ‘a well-selected and sanctioned
book of hymns for the Church of England, to supersede the unauthorized
and often very improper compositions now in use.’ He did not secure
this, but he prepared the way for something better, and may justly be
regarded as the first of the modern Anglican hymn-writers. His best
hymns are too well known to need comment, and of the rest
comparatively few are of special value in public worship. His hymns
owe more to the inspiration of the Gospels than the Psalms. The
collect or gospel for the day often explains and throws new light upon
a hymn, as in this for the Second Sunday after Trinity, the gospel
being the Parable of the Great Supper. It is usually regarded as a
Communion hymn.

  Forth from the dark and stormy sky,
  Lord, to Thine altar’s shade we fly;
  Forth from the world, its hope and fear,
  Saviour, we seek Thy shelter here:
  Weary and weak, Thy grace we pray;
  Turn not, O Lord, Thy guests away!

  Long have we roamed in want and pain,
  Long have we sought Thy rest in vain;
  ’Wildered in doubt, in darkness lost,
  Long have our souls been tempest-tost;
  Low at Thy feet our sins we lay,
  Turn not, O Lord, Thy guests away!

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), who died Dean of St. Paul’s, is famous
as an historian rather than a hymn-writer, but his few hymns have a
wide popularity. In

  Ride on, ride on in majesty!

he has shown how fine and true a hymn may be, though it departs from
recognized devotional form. It is a meditation of a highly rhetorical
kind, and apostrophizes but does not address our Lord. By some editors
this is regarded as fatal to its inclusion in a collection of hymns,
but the common judgement of Christian congregations is right. It has
proved itself a hymn in spite of all rules, and is an excellent
spiritual song for Palm Sunday.

In the year (1827) of the publication of Heber’s _Hymns, written and
adapted to the Weekly Church Services of the Year_, Keble issued
anonymously the most influential devotional work of the nineteenth
century, _The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and
Holy Days throughout the Year_. Like Ken’s festival hymns, it was not
a hymn-book, and was not meant for use in Church services, though from
a few of the poems verses may be taken which make hymns of the very
best type. Pusey regarded it as ‘the real source of the Oxford
Movement,’ of which Newman also thought Keble ‘the true and primary
author,’ though he ‘ever considered and kept’ July 14, 1832, the day
when Keble preached his sermon on ‘National Apostasy,’ ‘as the start
of the religious movement.’ Of the _Christian Year_ Newman says,
‘Keble struck an original note, and woke up in the hearts of thousands
a new music, the music of a school long unknown in England.’ But the
teaching of the Oxford Movement was rather latent than patent in the
_Christian Year_, and it would be a great mistake to regard it as
influencing that religious revival or even the English Church alone.
On the other hand, Hurrell Froude feared that the authorship of the
_Christian Year_ would be attributed to a Methodist.[172] It was as
important an element in the Movement as Charles Wesley’s hymns were in
the Evangelical Revival. In each case the influence extended far
beyond those who claim the poems as their special heritage.

Keble regarded the Church as in a state of desolation, decay, and
apostasy. He knew nothing of the glorious optimism of the Wesleys, who
saw everywhere signs of the speedy triumph of the gospel and the
coming of Christ’s kingdom. They sang

  Plague, earthquake, and famine, and tumult and war,
  The wonderful coming of Jesus declare.

Keble’s vision was

  So Famine waits, and War with greedy eyes,
  Till some repenting heart be ready for the skies.

They saw in the ingatherings to their scattered Societies the
assurance of abounding blessing

  Lo, the promise of a shower
    Drops already from above;
  But the Lord will shortly pour
    All the spirit of His love.

Keble saw no such visions, dreamed no such dreams. All he dares to ask
is

  Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die,
  Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh.[173]

Yet, when he forgets the depression of the time, and turns to the
consolations of eternity, he shows how firmly he believed his own
motto, ‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ He has
the sure trust and confidence of all God’s chosen, and at times
kindles into holy rapture. The prevailing tone, however, is of
sadness—the depression of the saint, not the perplexity of the
doubter.

In 1839 Keble published, also anonymously, his metrical version of the
Psalms. He had intended it to be a substitute for Tate and Brady, and
had hoped to secure episcopal sanction for its use in the dioceses of
Oxford and Winchester. It is, however, more interesting from the
standpoint of the expositor than the hymnologist, very few of its
versions being adapted to congregational use. The _Lyra Innocentium_,
published anonymously in 1846, is vastly inferior to his great work,
and has little to recommend it to those who are not in sympathy with
the High Church Movement.

After Heber and Keble all that there was of justice in Montgomery’s
sarcastic complaint, that hymns had been written by ‘all sorts of
persons except poets’[174] is gone. They were poets first,
hymn-writers afterwards. Keble’s greatest hymn is taken from his
‘Verses for Evening,’ which begins as a poem, and rises from
meditation to praise and prayer. The earlier verses are not suitable
for a hymn-book, but the beauty of the later lines is only fully
realized when they are remembered.

  ’Tis gone, that bright and orbèd blaze,
  Fast fading from our wistful gaze;
  Yon mantling cloud has hid from sight
  The last faint pulse of quivering light.

  In darkness and in weariness
  The traveller on his way must press,
  No gleam to watch on tree or tower,
  Whiling away the lonesome hour.

  Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear,
  It is not night if Thou be near:
  O may no earth-born cloud arise
  To hide Thee from Thy servant’s eyes.

There is surely no more beautiful illustration of the way in which the
Christian rises from Nature up to Nature’s God.

As in the case of so many hymns, the part is greater than the whole.
The six verses universally selected are not improved by the addition
of others—though they have much to commend them.

John Henry Newman (1801-90) belongs to Anglican hymn-writers in virtue
of his ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ though it may almost be described as his
farewell to the Church of England. It marks at least the beginning of
his long-drawn-out parting from the Establishment. Few hymns have won
a wider popularity, and no doubt it has done much to accustom
Nonconformist Churches to sympathize with the poetic and emotional
side of the Oxford Movement. This hymn and the _Christian Year_ made
absolute want of sympathy with the new devotion impossible. Moreover,
the tone of perplexity, the confession of bewilderment, the sense of
‘encircling gloom,’ fell in with the prevailing spirit of religious
emotion. To many men of his own school the hymn meant something very
different from what it means to the average worshipper, who finds in
it a comfortable sedative for vague religious depression. I confess
that personally the hymn does not seem to me as great as its
reputation, but it has brought help and comfort to myriads. Dr. Wm.
Barry says—

  This most tender of pilgrim songs may be termed the March of the
  Tractarian Movement. It is pure melody, austere yet hopeful,
  strangely not unlike the stanzas which Carlyle has made familiar to
  the whole English race, the Mason-Song of Goethe, in its sublime
  sadness and invincible trust. Both are psalms of life, Hebrew or
  Northern, chanted in a clear-obscure where faith moves onward
  heroically to the day beyond.[175]

Newman’s other great hymn, ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,’
which owes its popularity largely to Mr. Gladstone’s affection for
it—though it is in itself a fine hymn—belongs to his Romanist days.

There was room for the new teaching. Perhaps Methodism was a little
too buoyant, Evangelicalism too contented, and the Church was ready
for a fresh upheaval.

Coincidently with the rise of the Oxford Movement came, as we have
seen, the rolling away of the reproach of hymn-singing. Even the
strongholds of the Establishment capitulated, and hymns formed an
important part in the new propaganda. Stanch Churchmen had disliked
hymn-singing. To quote Canon Ellerton—

  It came to us from an unwelcome source—from the Dissenters,
  eminently from the Methodists. It was first adopted by those of the
  clergy who sympathized most with them; for many long years it was
  that dreaded thing, a party badge.[176]

The Evangelicals adopted the custom easily, and with delight. Cowper,
Newton, Toplady, Hervey, Watts, Doddridge, and even Wesley, were no
strangers to them. But for the Calvinistic trouble, they all minded
the same things. They had no difficulty in regard to fellowship with
Nonconformists in worship or in work. It has been the fashion to
disparage the Evangelicals, and to regard the ‘Clapham Sect’ as a
coterie of ill-informed, self-satisfied Pharisees; but for solid,
practical Christianity it would be difficult to find any ‘school’ that
outrivals them. The ‘Clapham Sect’ knew little and cared less for
priestly rights or the niceties of ritual. They may have been slack in
the observance of fast and vigil, but they kept the fast of God,
breaking the bonds of wickedness and letting the oppressed go free.
The men who were the backbone of the anti-slavery movement, who were
nursing fathers to the Bible Society, and established the Church
Missionary Society, were not narrow-minded bigots, but held the true
Catholic Faith concerning the kingdom of God.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), whose highest preferment was the
Perpetual Curacy of Lower Brixham, ranks, as a hymn-writer, with Ken
and Keble. While ministering to his ‘dear fishermen,’ he wrote many a
lovely hymn, and one of unsurpassed beauty. ‘Abide with me’ was his
swan-song. He died, like Toplady, of consumption, and felt the pain
and pathos of death in the prime of life. In a most tender poem he has
recorded that common but infinitely pathetic grief. It is interesting
to contrast the subdued sadness, the patient submission of Lyte with
the triumphant ecstasy of Toplady’s ‘Deathless principle, arise.’

  Shudder not to pass the stream,
  Venture all thy care on Him.
  Not one object of His care
  Ever suffered shipwreck there.

  Saints in glory perfect made
  Wait thy passage through the shade;
  Ardent for thy coming o’er,
  See they throng the blissful shore.

  Such the prospects that arise
  To the dying Christian’s eyes.
  Such the glorious vista, Faith
  Opens through the shades of death.[177]

This was the view of death taken by the Evangelicals in the eighteenth
century. The gospel of the great Revival brought life and immortality
to light, robbed death of all its terrors, and made heaven seem, even
to young men, far better than earth. The nineteenth century had not
the glowing rapture of the earlier time. Moreover, its interest in
works of Christian philanthropy, its awakening to the great missionary
call, made the life and work of the day infinitely important and
interesting. Christian men began to realize that heaven lay beyond the
golden glory of the sunset sky, and felt, with those of the older
dispensation, that it was a calamity for the sun to go down while it
was yet day. Lyte felt with Anne Brontë—

  I hoped that with the brave and strong
  My portioned task might lie.

Lyte’s sorrow was not that he feared to change the earthly for the
heavenly, but that he longed to have done enduring work e’er the night
fell.

      Why do I sigh to find
  Life’s evening shadows gathering round my way,
  The keen eye dimming, and the buoyant mind
      Unhinging day by day?

      Is it the natural dread
  Of that stern lot, which all who live must see?
  The worm, the clay, the dark and narrow bed,—
      Have these such awe for me?

      Can I not summon pride
  To fold my decent mantle round my breast,
  And lay me down at Nature’s Eventide,
      Calm to my dreamless rest?

      As nears my soul the verge
  Of this dim continent of woe and crime,
  Shrinks she to hear Eternity’s long surge
      Break on the shores of Time?

      I want not vulgar fame—
  I seek not to survive in brass or stone;
  Hearts may not kindle when they hear my name,
      Nor tears my value own;

      But might I leave behind
  Some blessing for my fellows, some fair trust
  To guide, to cheer, to elevate my kind,
      When I was in the dust;

      Within my narrow bed
  Might I not wholly mute or useless be;
  But hope that they, who trampled o’er my head,
      Drew still some good from me;

      Might verse of mine inspire
  One virtuous aim, one high resolve impart;
  Light in one drooping soul a hallowed fire,
      Or bind one broken heart;—

      Death would be sweeter then,
  More calm my slumber ’neath the silent sod,—
  Might I thus live to bless my fellow-men,
      Or glorify my God!

      O Thou! whose touch can lend
  Life to the dead, Thy quickening grace supply,
  And grant me, swanlike, my last breath to spend
      In song that may not die!

Was ever faithful prayer more abundantly answered? ‘He asked life of
Thee, and Thou gavest it, even length of days for ever and ever.’

Christopher Wordsworth (1807-85), Bishop of Lincoln, nephew of the
poet, was of set purpose a writer of hymns for congregational use. He
taught that hymns should express the feeling of the Church, and not of
the individual worshipper. He thought it ‘inexpressibly shocking’ that
‘Jesu, Lover of my soul’ should be sung in Westminster Abbey, at
least, so I understand his reference to ‘a large, mixed congregation
in a dissolute part of a populous and irreligious city.’[178] His
hymns are objective, and the best—e.g. ‘O day of rest and gladness,’
‘See the Conqueror mounts in triumph’—are very fine. Bishop Wordsworth
did not ‘translate any ancient hymns, but attempted to infuse
something of their spirit into’ his own.

The _Holy Year_ was a distinct contribution to the literature of the
Anglican Revival. Very inferior in strength and beauty to the
_Christian Year_, it was more useful to editors of hymn-books, and it
helped to concentrate interest upon the selection of hymns suited to
the Church year. Bishop Wordsworth kept closely to the Prayer-book
ideal of devotion, and some of his less-known poems are illustrative
of its special teaching. A good example is the hymn for the Second
Sunday in Advent, which he inscribed, ‘Christ ever coming in Holy
Scripture.’

  Lord, who didst the Prophets teach
    To prepare Thy way of old;
  And by Thine Apostles preach
    Truths of wisdom manifold;

  Teach us to behold Thee, Lord,
    Present in the sacred page,
  Living Word in written word
    Coming thus to every age.

  Coming in King David’s Psalms,
    In Isaiah’s trumpet-call,
  Coming in St. John’s deep calms,
    Coming in the fires of Paul.

  Coming brightly from afar
    To the lands with darkness dim,
  On the Evangelic car
    Of Thy fourfold cherubim.

  Thus, O blessèd Lord, when we
    On Thy Holy Scriptures look,
  May we ever worship Thee,
    Coming in Thy sacred Book.

  So, when as a scroll is past
    Heaven, and earth with all its strife,
  We may see our names at last
    Written in the Book of Life.

But the Anglican hymn-writers of the nineteenth century are too many
for detailed comment in my fast-failing space. It is a glorious choir,
including Joseph Anstice, who had so powerful an influence over Mr.
Gladstone in his Oxford days;[179] Dean Alford, Dr. Monsell, Sir H. W.
Baker, Dean Stanley, Bishops Mant, How, and Bickersteth, Canon Bright,
Godfrey Thring, Canon Ellerton, S. J. Stone, Canon Twells, Laurence
Tuttiett, S. Baring-Gould, among the clergy; Mrs. Alexander, Charlotte
Elliott, Frances Ridley Havergal, Sir R. Grant, W. Chatterton Dix,
among the laity.

Sir Henry Williams Baker (1821-77) wrote the lovely sacramental
version of Ps. xxiii.: ‘The King of love my Shepherd is.’ One verse he
repeated with his dying breath—

  Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
    But yet in love He sought me,
  And on His shoulder gently laid,
    And home, rejoicing, brought me.

He is one of the simplest and most attractive of hymn-writers, and the
inclusion of his hymns in Nonconformist hymnals is a great gain. His
greatest service to Anglican hymnody was the editing of _Hymns Ancient
and Modern_—a truly epoch-making (or perhaps epoch-marking) book.

While Baker was at work in his Herefordshire vicarage, John Ellerton
(1826-93) was writing hymns and essays on hymns in his rural or
semi-rural parsonages. Ellerton had a rare gift in writing for special
occasions. His great funeral hymn, ‘Now the labourer’s task is o’er,’
has a sombre strength which is full of comfort and trust. ‘Behold us,
Lord, a little space’ is an ideal hymn for a week-day service, and ‘In
the Name which earth and heaven’ is the grandest of all hymns for the
laying of the foundation-stone of a church.[180] Without being a
High-Churchman, Ellerton was a thorough-going Anglican, and his poetry
has the restraint, the good taste, and the dignity which beseem a
great Church.

S. J. Stone (1839-1900), unlike most clerical hymn-writers, was not a
country parson, though his best hymns were written before he began his
work in East London. But even in its dreary wastes he found the true
poetry of life, and some of his obscure parishioners at Haggerston are
richly shrined in his memorial verses. I feel all the more moved by
the triumphant tones of ‘The Church’s one foundation,’ all the more
tenderly impressed by ‘Weary of earth, and laden with my sin,’ when I
remember how dear to his heart were the struggling, toiling masses of
his dull East London parish. His best hymns are well known, so I quote
a sonnet which expresses his love for those who live in the crowded
city.

  _From Windermere, To the Congregation and Children of St. Paul’s,
                             Haggerston._

  Moored by a green isle of Winandermere—
    Listening the gentlest lapping of the wave
    On the rock margin, and the blackbirds’ brave
  Soldierly antiphons, afar and near,
  And the wind’s whispered evensong—I hear
    A sound beyond, and sweeter as more grave
    Than ever paradise of nature gave,
  Dear to my heart of old, and now more dear:
  _The roar of London_—the deep undersong,
    The myriad music of immortal souls
  High-couraged, much-enduring, midst the long
    Drear toil and gloom and weariness. It rolls
  Over me with all power, for in its tone
  The hearts I love in Christ beat with my own.

Bishop Bickersteth demands mention, not only for his own beautiful
hymns, but for his successful editing of the _Hymnal Companion to the
Book of Common Prayer_. Edward Bickersteth’s _Christian Psalmody_ was,
in its day, one of the best and most catholic hymnals. In the _Hymnal
Companion_, his son provided for a later generation the more complete
and worthy hymn-book which the growth of hymnody made possible. Of
Bishop Bickersteth’s own hymns, a few are amongst those universally
accepted. His Communion Hymn, to the regret of many, is absent from
the _Methodist Hymn-book_.

  ’Till He come!’ O let the words
  Linger on the trembling chords;
  Let the ‘little while’ between
  In their golden light be seen;
  Let us think how heaven and home
  Lie beyond that ’Till He come.’

  When the weary ones we love
  Enter on their rest above,
  Seems the earth so poor and vast,
  All our life joy overcast?
  Hush, be every murmur dumb;
  It is only till He come.

  Clouds and conflicts round us press;
  Would we have one sorrow less?
  All the sharpness of the cross,
  All that tells the world is loss,
  Death, and darkness, and the tomb
  Only whisper, ’Till He come.’

  See! the feast of love is spread;
  Drink the wine, and break the bread:
  Sweet memorials, till the Lord
  Call us round His heavenly board,
  Some from earth, from glory some,
  Severed only till He come.[181]

This aspect of the Lord’s Supper, the proclamation of the Lord’s death
’till He come,’ must ever be present to the mind of the devout
communicant. The hymn—especially in its last verse—is full of the
gracious, subdued trustfulness which befits the Christian as he
commemorates the Atoning Sacrifice and looks forward to glad, eternal
communion with those who have gone before, when once again our Lord
Himself shall break the bread and drink the wine with His disciples in
the Father’s kingdom.

Dean Stanley (1815-81) was not a poet, though he wrote the best
English hymn on the Transfiguration. I mention him here, however, to
quote some verses of his stirring national hymn, worthy of a Dean of
Westminster. It is of a type that, I think, ought to be represented in
our hymnals, and especially those intended for school use. Why should
not such hymns as this and Mr. Gill’s ‘Lift thy song among the
nations’ stir and consecrate the patriotism of our up-growing girls
and boys? Dean Stanley’s hymn is very long. I quote less than half. In
the _Westminster Abbey Hymn-book_ it is assigned to the Accession.

  Let us with a gladsome mind
  Praise the Lord, for He is kind!
  Long our island throne has stood,
  Planted on the ocean flood;
  Crowned with rock, and girt with sea,
  Home and refuge of the free:
  For His mercies aye endure,
  Ever faithful, ever sure.

  On that island throne have sate
  Alfred’s goodness, Edward’s state;
  Princely strength and queenly grace,
  Lengthened line of royal race:
  Round that throne have stood of old
  Seers and statesmen, firm and bold;
  Burleigh’s wisdom, Hampden’s fire,
  Chatham’s force in son and sire.

  Let us with a gladsome mind
  Praise the Lord, for He is kind:
  Him, in homely English tongue,
  Epic lay and lyric song,
  Shakespeare’s myriad-minded verse,
  Milton’s heavenward strains, rehearse:
  For His mercies aye endure,
  Ever faithful, ever sure.

  Hither in our heathen night
  Came of yore the gospel light;
  By the Saviour’s sacred story,
  ‘Angles’ turned to angels’ glory.
  Breaking with a gracious hand
  Ancient error’s subtle band;
  Opening wide the sacred page,
  Kindling hope in saint and sage.

  Give us homes serene and pure,
  Settled freedom, laws secure;
  Truthful lips and minds sincere;
  Faith and love that cast out fear.
  Grant that light and life divine
  Long on England’s shores may shine;
  Grant that people, Church, and throne
  May in all good deeds be one.[182]

Of the eighteenth century, Miss Steele and Mrs. Barbauld are almost
the only women whose hymns survive to-day. In the nineteenth century,
however, there are not a few women whose songs are likely to endure.
Charlotte Elliott, Cecil Frances Alexander, Anna Lætitia Waring, have
written immortal hymns, and it will be long ere Frances Ridley
Havergal is absent from the songs of the Church. It is safe to
prophesy that ‘Just as I am,’ ‘There is a green hill far away,’ and
‘Father, I know that all my life,’ will be sung through many
generations—as long, indeed, as English Christianity endures.

Charlotte Elliott (1791-1871), who belonged to a famous evangelical
Church family, is one of many who learnt in suffering what she taught
in song. Her greatest hymn, ‘Just as I am,’ was first published in the
_Invalid’s Hymn-book_ (1836), and, without her knowledge, was
reprinted and widely circulated. In no other hymn has the sinner’s way
to the Saviour been made more plain. Through the penitential
self-despair of its earlier verses countless numbers of the weary and
heavy-laden have found rest unto their souls, and entered into the
joyous confidence of its closing lines. Wordsworth’s daughter, Dora,
received the hymn in her last illness, and her husband wrote to the
authoress, ‘At least ten times that day she asked me to repeat it to
her,’ and every morning she asked for it again till the end came.
After her death it formed part of her mother’s ‘daily solitary
prayer.’

Miss Elliott is the truest and the best representative of the early
evangelical Church hymn-writers. Many of her little-known hymns are
very beautiful. I quote two pieces, notwithstanding a breath of
Calvinism in them both, for it is a Calvinism that has good Scripture
warrant.

         ‘My soul followeth hard after Thee’ (Ps. lxiii. 8).

  I look to Thee, I hope in Thee,
    I glory in Thy name!
  I make Thy righteousness my plea,
    Thou all-atoning Lamb!
  Methinks even death will welcome be,
  That I, through death, may pass to Thee.

  Thou art my portion, saith my soul,
    My all in earth or heaven;
  None but Thyself can make me whole,
    No name but Thine is given
  At which the gates of pearl fly wide—
  The passport of the justified.

  I know Thy voice—I strive to keep
    Thy word within my heart;
  Though the most worthless of Thy sheep,
    Still Thou my Shepherd art;
  Firm as a rock that word shall stand,
  None, none shall pluck me from Thy hand.

  Without repentance are Thy gifts;
    This thought my hope sustains,
  In deep distress my soul uplifts,
    When sin the victory gains;
  My faith, though weak, shall never fail,
  Thy prayer shall even for me prevail.

  When I Thy glory shall behold,
    And see Thee face to face,
  Sheltered in Thy celestial fold,
    A sinner saved by grace.
  What will it be Thy love to adore,
  Assured I shall go out no more?

The following lines are evidently in part suggested by her own great
hymn. The text is ‘Into Thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast
redeemed me, O Lord God of truth’ (Ps. xxxi. 5)—

  God of my life! Thy boundless grace
    Chose, pardoned, and adopted me;
  My rest, my home, my dwelling-place!
    Father! I come to Thee.

  Jesus, my hope, my rock, my shield!
    Whose precious blood was shed for me,
  Into Thy hands my soul I yield;
    Saviour! I come to Thee.

  Spirit of glory and of God!
    Long hast Thou deigned my Guide to be;
  Now be Thy comfort sweet bestowed!
    My God! I come to Thee.

  I come to join that countless host
    Who praise Thy name unceasingly.
  Blest Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!
    My God! I come to Thee.

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-79) was full of the gladness of God’s
chosen, and her songs illustrate Faber’s verse—

  If our love were but more simple,
    We should take Him at His word,
  And our lives would be all sunshine
    In the sweetness of our Lord.

After her conversion she knew nothing of Wesley’s experience of the
‘howling wilderness’; to her the night was never dark, as it was to
Newman, and she was never far from home. Her hymns overflow with
exultant faith.

  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
    Thy sky is ever clear,
  Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
    No winter in thy year.[183]

It would, perhaps, be unsafe to predict that any of Miss Havergal’s
hymns will rank among the songs that cannot die, but they will
certainly be long loved and sung. Her consecration hymns, especially
‘Lord, speak to me that I may speak,’ are solemn and impressive, and
are, perhaps, her best. But her triumphant songs are often very fine,
though they are not always well sustained. Her Advent hymn has the
triumphant rapture of the soul that goes out to meet her Lord.

  Thou art coming, O my Saviour,
    Thou art coming, O my King,
  In Thy beauty all-resplendent,
  In Thy glory all-transcendent;
    Well may we rejoice and sing;
  Coming! in the opening east
    Herald brightness slowly swells;
  Coming! O my glorious Priest,
    Hear we not Thy golden bells?

  Thou art coming; at Thy table
    We are witnesses for this;
  While remembering hearts Thou meetest
  In communion clearest, sweetest,
    Earnest of our coming bliss,
  Showing not Thy death alone,
    And Thy love exceeding great,
  But Thy coming and Thy throne,
    All for which we long and wait.

Cecil Frances Alexander (1823-95) may almost be called the first
writer of real children’s hymns. Dr. Watts was not happy in his
_Divine and Moral Songs_, and some of Charles Wesley’s most horrible
verses are to be found in his _Hymns for Children_. It is true that
Watts wrote some simple lyrics which seem to have suited our prim
little ancestors, and that Charles Wesley wrote ‘Gentle Jesus, meek
and mild,’ but even the manners and beliefs of the devout souls of
that time cannot altogether excuse some of his hymns, which must have
frightened many a poor little Methodist out of his wits.

Anne and Jane Taylor’s _Hymns for Infant Minds_ are _too_ infantile,
though they served their generation well, and led on from Watts to
Mrs. Alexander. The Taylors had a happy knack of conveying Scripture
history and teaching in simple verse. I do not know a better
definition of repentance than—

  Repentance is to leave
    The sins I loved before,
  And show that I in earnest grieve
    By doing so no more.

But Mrs. Alexander combines with the winsome simplicity which charms
and instructs a little child, the power to speak to the child in the
heart of the man. Never has the gospel story been told to children and
to child-like souls more attractively than in ‘Once in royal David’s
city’ and ‘There is a green hill far away.’ Since our Church hymnals
began to include a section for children, Mrs. Alexander has been a
large contributor. Even yet, when we have a considerable number of
good children’s hymns, there are none better than hers. Of course she
wrote other hymns, but these are her glory, her most precious
contribution to the hymn-book of the modern Church. ‘Her character,’
says Archbishop Alexander, ‘was based and moulded upon the best
teaching of the original Oxford movement,’[184] but she had little
sympathy with mere ritualism. Well known and loved as many of her
hymns are, her collected _Poems_ include, among the less familiar
pieces, much of value and interest. She made for the _Irish Church
Hymnal_ a fine translation of the _Breastplate_ of St. Patrick, a hymn
which belongs to the Celtic, not to the Roman Church.

  I bind unto myself to-day
    The strong Name of the Trinity,
  By invocation of the same,
    The Three in One and One in Three.

  I bind unto myself to-day
    The power of God to hold and lead,
  His eye to watch, His might to stay,
    His ear to hearken to my need.
  The wisdom of my God to teach,
    His hand to guide, His shield to ward,
  The word of God to give me speech,
    His heavenly host to be my guard.

  Christ be with me, Christ within me,
    Christ behind me, Christ before me,
  Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
    Christ to comfort and restore me,
  Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
    Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
  Christ in hearts of all that love me,
    Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[185]

This hymn is extensively used in Ireland on St. Patrick’s day.

To these hymn-writers we may add the poetesses Christina G. Rossetti
and Jean Ingelow. Miss Rossetti wrote very little that is really
adapted for use in public worship. There is much, however, to justify
the inclusion in a hymn-book of such verses as, ‘None other Lamb, none
other Name,’[186] though they are more fitting for private prayer than
for social worship. The same is not equally true of Miss Ingelow’s
poem, ‘And didst Thou love the race that loved not Thee?’ for the
verses usually selected form a true hymn. The last verse is—

  Come, lest this heart should, cold and cast away,
    Die ere the Guest adored she entertain;
  Lest eyes which never saw Thine earthly day
    Should miss Thy heavenly reign.[187]

Of laymen I can mention only a few names here. Mr. W. Chatterton Dix
has written more good hymns than those known to our hymn-books.
Francis Turner Palgrave (1824-97), whose _Treasury of Sacred Song_ is
our best anthology, also wrote hymns which, it seems to me, deserve a
wider use than they have attained. His best-known hymn, without being
of the popular type, is of the class which is appreciated by many in
these days of perplexity and unrest.

  Thou say’st, ‘Take up thy cross,
  O man, and follow Me’:
      The night is black,
      The feet are slack,
  Yet we would follow Thee.

  But oh, dear Lord, we cry,
  That we Thy face could see!
      Thy blessèd face
      One moment’s space:
  Then might we follow Thee!

  Dim tracts of time divide
  Those golden days from me;
      Thy voice comes strange
      O’er years of change:
  How can we follow Thee?

  Comes faint and far Thy voice
  From vales of Galilee;
      The vision fades
      In ancient shades:
  How should we follow Thee?

  Ah, sense-bound heart and blind!
  Is naught but what we see?
      Can time undo
      What once was true?
  Can we not follow Thee?

  Within our heart of hearts
  In nearest nearness be:
      Give Thou the sign:
      Say, ‘Ye are Mine’;
  Lead, and we follow Thee.[188]

Other hymns by Professor Palgrave are, ‘O thou not made with hands,’
‘Star of morn and even,’ ‘Thou that once on mother’s knee.’

I close this section of my lecture with a few verses which have, as
far as I know, not yet found a place in any hymnal. They are from a
Communion hymn by Mr. Gladstone. They may rightly be included in the
hymns of the Anglican Revival.

‘Mr. Gladstone’s mind and heart,’ says Mr. G. W. E. Russell, ‘were
already attuned to the new teaching, and prepared to receive it, even
though he had not paid much attention to the controversy. It was in
1836 that he wrote his hymn on the Holy Communion.’ Mr. Russell gives
the following verses—

  Here, where Thine angels overhead
    Do warn the Tempter’s powers away,
  And where the bodies of the dead
    For life and resurrection stay;
  And many a generation’s prayer
  Hath perfumed and hath blest the air;

  Oh, lead my blindness by the hand,
    Lead me to Thy familiar Feast,
  Not here or now to understand,
    Yet even here and now to taste,
  How the eternal Word of Heaven
  On earth in broken bread is given.

  We, who this holy precinct round
    In one adoring circle kneel,
  May we in one intent be bound,
    And one serene devotion feel;
  And grow around Thy sacred shrine
  Like tendrils of the deathless Vine.

  We, who with one blest Food are fed,
    Into one body may we grow,
  And one pure life from Thee, the Head,
    Informing all the members flow;
  One pulse be felt in every vein,
  One law of pleasure and of pain.

  Oh, let the virtue all divine,
    The Gift of this true Sabbath morn,
  Stored in my spirit’s inner shrine,
    Be purely and be meekly borne;
  Be husbanded with thrifty care,
  And sweetened and refreshed with prayer.[189]

It is at once necessary and almost superfluous to say that I know how
much has been left unsaid, how many names there are deserving mention,
how many hymns that might be referred to, but in such a fruitful land
the gleanings are richer than the vintage of former years.

                                  V
                       Nineteenth-century Hymns

                        II.—Free Church Hymns

  The composing of hymns is one of the surest signs of spiritual life,
  and the use of hymns is a wonderful witness of Christian unity; and
  the Church of England has been fertile during the last half-century
  in the production of hymns which are used by all English Christians,
  whilst the confederate Churches of the same period can hardly point
  to any additions made by them to the hymns of the Christian
  world.[190]

As we have seen, the honours of hymn-writing during the period
referred to are undoubtedly with the Anglicans, though Heber and Keble
belong to an earlier time. But this sweeping assertion of Mr.
Llewellyn Davis ought to have been impossible if he had remembered
Horatius Bonar, certainly one of the greatest English hymn-writers.
There are also George Rawson, T. T. Lynch, T. H. Gill, George
Matheson, and, every Methodist would add, William M. Bunting.

It must be remembered also that the Free Churches were already rich in
hymns when the nineteenth century dawned, whilst the Tractarians had
to make, translate, or borrow from the Nonconformists, hymns for their
special needs. Methodism had an ample supply of hymns for such Church
festivals as it desired, and the observance of festivals and other
ecclesiastical occasions was only gradually adopted in the older
Nonconforming Churches. When at length they felt the need for such
hymns as form the characteristic portions of Anglican hymnody they
were already to hand; and after the first natural prejudice against
everything that savoured of the ritualistic movement had passed away,
they found hymns intended to be the exclusive property of the
Anglicans admirably suited to their own newly awakened Church
consciousness. There is something delightful and even amusing in the
readiness with which such hymns as ‘The Church’s one Foundation’ and
‘Onward, Christian soldiers’ have been adopted by all the
denominations. The Baptist and the Bible Christian sing with as simple
confidence as the highest of Anglicans:

  Like a mighty army
    Moves the Church of God;
  Brothers, we are treading
    Where the saints have trod;
  We are not divided,
    All one body we,
  One in hope, in doctrine,
    One in charity.

They may have different thoughts as to Apostolic Succession, but as
long as we believe that where Christ is there is the Church such hymns
belong to all.

But though Nonconformity was rich in hymns and could take without
scruple many of the Anglican songs, the nineteenth century was very
far from being altogether barren in regard to the Free Churches.

Two hymn-writers mark the transition from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century—James Montgomery and Thomas Kelly. They lived, it
is true, into the second half of the last century, but their hymns are
an aftermath of the Evangelical Revival. The later Oxford Movement did
not affect them, and their songs might all have belonged to the
earlier period, save for the missionary enthusiasm which inspires some
of their best efforts.

James Montgomery (1771-1854) was the son of a Moravian minister, who
died in the West Indies whilst the poet was at school. He was born at
Irvine, Ayrshire, lived for a time in Ireland, and having been
educated at the Brethren’s school at Fulneck, after a few unsuccessful
experiments, settled to work at Sheffield as assistant to the editor
of a local newspaper. He was a man of strong convictions, and did not
hide his light under a bushel. He was rewarded by two terms of
imprisonment, which he turned to profitable account by writing poems.
His was the usual fate of honest men persecuted for righteousness’
sake. Montgomery’s name is one of the chief glories of this city,[191]
where he wrought with head and heart and hand for freedom and for
righteousness. ‘The Climbing Boy’ is a memorial of his part in the
great philanthropic movements of which Lord Shaftesbury was the
leader. ‘The West Indies’—a poem which has lines here and there which
Cowper or even William Watson might have written—celebrates the time

  When Wilberforce, the minister of grace,
  The new Las Casas of a ruined race,
  With angel-might opposed the rage of hell,
  And fought like Michael, till the dragon fell.

‘Greenland’ commemorates his inherited love of missions, and the
curious ‘Thoughts on Wheels’—a satire upon State lotteries—reminds us
that Montgomery anticipated the _Daily News_ in refusing to insert
advertisements of a ‘national nuisance.’ We are accustomed to think of
Montgomery as a gracious Moravian poet, whose most appropriate place
was the platform of a Methodist missionary meeting, but he passed
through storm and tempest, through privation and struggle, to the
peaceful haven of his later years. Montgomery was a Moravian all his
life, a Methodist the greater part of it, and a Churchman toward the
end. Once again, we may say, ‘Such he was as every Christian Church
would rejoice to have adopted.’ Indeed, through its hymn-book, every
Church has adopted him, and in some of the best modern collections
Montgomery is more often heard than Watts.[192]

Montgomery cherished no illusion as to his poetic powers. He hoped
that his _Poems_ might be read for a generation, but that his _Hymns_
would be his lasting memorial. ‘The World before the Flood’ and ‘The
Wanderer in Switzerland’ are forgotten, and little likely to be
revived; but such hymns as ‘Hail to the Lord’s Anointed’ and ‘For ever
with the Lord’ will be sung through the centuries.

The first of these is not only Montgomery’s finest psalm-version, but
an unsurpassed rendering of a triumphant Messianic psalm. It owes
something to the instinctive wisdom with which the best verses have
been selected, and to a few editorial touches.[193] One can well
imagine the thrill with which it was heard in Pitt Street Chapel,
Liverpool, when the author recited the hymn at the close of a
missionary speech, and how Adam Clarke rejoiced to add this
magnificent rendering of the 72nd Psalm to his _Commentary_. It is, I
think, a finer and a much closer rendering of the ‘Psalm for Solomon’
than Watts’s great version. When urged by Dr. Clarke to attempt a
complete version of the Psalms, Montgomery said that he feared to
touch the harp of Zion. He did, however, paraphrase about fifty or
sixty psalms with more than average success.

It is sometimes said that ‘Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire’ is not
‘in the true sense’ a hymn, but this is to take too narrow a view of
the term. It excellently illustrates the way in which devout
meditation ends in prayer. Had the last verse been omitted, it would
have been a religious poem, not a hymn, but this throws upon all that
precedes it the light of devotion. Each verse looks forward to the
last—

  O Thou by whom we come to God,
    The Life, the Truth, the Way!
  The path of prayer Thyself hast trod:
    Lord! teach us how to pray.

It is superfluous to refer to all Montgomery’s contributions to our
hymn-books, but we must ever gratefully remember such pieces as his
Communion hymn

  According to Thy gracious word,

and the solemn prayer

  In the hour of trial,
    Jesus, pray for me,
  Lest by base denial
    I depart from Thee.

It is remarkable that editors should have thought it necessary to
meddle (as indeed Montgomery himself did) with the second line of this
verse, thinking it ‘unscriptural,’ although the very word ‘pray’ is
taken from the lips of our Lord.

Montgomery has also given us a fine Christmas carol—

  Angels, from the realms of glory;

and a solemn meditation on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection,
rising at the last into actual prayer—

  Early hasten to the tomb
    Where they laid His breathless clay:
  All is solitude and gloom;
    Who hath taken Him away?
  Christ is risen! He seeks the skies:
  Saviour, teach us so to rise.

In Montgomery, as in all great hymn-writers, the word of Christ dwelt
richly, and his songs are full of the thoughts and phrases of the
Psalter and the New Testament. Some of his sacred poems, though
unsuitable for congregational singing, are good devotional reading. I
quote one such, which seems to me to deserve something better than the
place he gave it in the Appendix to his _Poetical Works_.

                         CHRIST THE PURIFIER

                          (Mal. iii. 2, 3.)

  He that from dross would win the precious ore
    Bends o’er the crucible an earnest eye,
  The subtle, searching process to explore,
    Lest the _one_ brilliant moment should pass by
  When in the molten silver’s virgin mass
  He meets his pictured face as in a glass.

  Thus in God’s furnace are His children tried;
    Thrice happy they who to the end endure!
  But who the fiery trial may abide?
    Who from the crucible come forth so pure,
  That He, whose eyes of flame look through the whole,
  May see His image perfect in the soul?

  Not with an evanescent glimpse alone,
    As in that mirror the refiner’s face,
  But, stampt with heaven’s broad signet, there be shown
    Immanuel’s features, full of truth and grace—
  And round that seal of love this motto be,
  ‘Not for a moment, but eternity!’

Thomas Kelly (1769-1854), who was in Ireland what Williams of
Pantycelyn was in Wales, wrote nearly 800 hymns, the vast majority of
which belong to the same class as the masses of the forgotten hymns of
pious Dissenting pastors in the eighteenth century. They are often
redeemed from absolute dullness only by his love for curious rhymes,
e.g. ‘hers is’ and ‘mercies.’ He illustrates abundantly how easy it is
to have rhyme and rhythm without a suggestion of poetry, as in this
verse—

  Spread abroad the joyful sound,
    Fly in all directions;
  Speak to all the world around,
    Men of all complexions.

It is amazing that a man who could at times write so well should, as a
rule, write so feebly. Yet Kelly’s hymns have had a great popularity,
and a few are firmly fixed in all our hymn-books. His best are—‘Look,
ye saints, the sight is glorious,’ ‘Through the day Thy love hath
spared us,’ ‘We sing the praise of Him who died,’ ‘The Head that once
was crowned with thorns,’ and that most inspiring and comforting
missionary valediction, ‘Speed Thy servants, Saviour, speed them.’

Josiah Conder (1789-1855) was a poet and an expert editor. His
_Congregational Hymn-book_ (1836) marks a new era in the devotional
service of Nonconformity. He was in some cases a grievous sinner in
regard to alterations, and was often very unhappy in his
emendations.[194] Some of his original poems are very beautiful,
especially his short hymns and his versions of Prayer-book collects,
e.g. ‘Bread of heaven on Thee I feed,’ and the beautiful paraphrase of
the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, with which the
_Methodist Hymn-book_ closes. Conder belongs to both centuries. His
hymns are often of the dull didactic type of the earlier time, but he
caught something of the spirit of the later day. Of his longer hymns
the following is a good specimen. It is found in many hymnals.

  How shall I follow Him I serve?
    How shall I copy Him I love?
  Nor from those blessèd footsteps swerve,
    Which lead me to His seat above?

  Privations, sorrows, bitter scorn,
    The life of toil, the mean abode,
  The faithless kiss, the crown of thorn,—
    Are these the consecrated road?

  ’Twas thus He suffered, though a Son,
    Foreknowing, choosing, feeling all;
  Until the perfect work was done,
    And drunk the bitter cup of gall.

  Lord! should my path through suffering lie,
    Forbid it I should e’er repine;
  Still let me turn to Calvary,
    Nor heed my griefs, remembering Thine.

  Oh, let me think how Thou didst leave
    Untasted every pure delight,
  To fast, to faint, to watch, to grieve,
    The toilsome day, the homeless night:—

  To faint, to grieve, to die for me!
    Thou camest not Thyself to please:
  And, dear as earthly comforts be,
    Shall I not love Thee more than these?

  Yes! I would count them all but loss,
    To gain the notice of Thine eye:
  Flesh shrinks and trembles at the cross,
    But Thou canst give the victory.

Thomas Toke Lynch (1818-71), an Independent minister, whose delicate
health often interrupted his labours, published in 1855 a little book
of poems which roused an extraordinary storm. It is difficult to
understand how such an inoffensive book as _The Rivulet_ could make
any great sensation, but the theological mind was more sensitive, if
not more restless, than it is to-day. The ‘Rivulet Controversy,’ in
which the redoubtable Dr. John Campbell was the prime mover, is long
forgotten, but a few of the hymns survive. The best known is,
‘Gracious Spirit, dwell with me.’[195] Lynch is an important
contributor to Congregational and Baptist hymnals, but he is
practically unknown to Anglican books, and is not represented in the
_Presbyterian Church Hymnary_.

Lynch was of the new and broader school of thought, and his hymns,
which he is said to have designed as a supplement to Watts, are of an
entirely different cast from those of the earlier day, though their
teaching is familiar enough in our time. I make a brief quotation,
which is more likely to be welcome to-day than it was half a century
ago.

  If love in any heart arise,
  And stir the tongue, and light the eyes,
  And speed the foot, and fill the hand;
  Then, Christian, thou must understand
  That, though unthought of, God is there;
  So of denying Him beware.

  If Little-more makes haste to bless
  His troubled neighbour Little-less,
  And poor men to the poorer give,
  Weak ones the weaker help to live,
  The sad those sadder still console;
  Then God is working in the soul.

  If the grown man forgoes his bread
  That little mouths may first be fed;
  And patient women serve the men
  Who care for them but now and then,
  And love keeps warm without a fire;
  O, then, the grace of God admire.

  Two strangers ocean may divide
  Who yet shall bridegroom be and bride,
  And God unknown to souls may be
  Who love Him will eternally;
  But all true hearts our Father knows,
  And will to them His truth disclose.

George Rawson (1807-89) has won a wider recognition than any other
English Nonconformist hymn-writer of the century, except Montgomery.
He was a solicitor in Leeds, and took part in the preparation of the
_Leeds Hymn-book_. His Communion hymn, ‘By Christ redeemed, in Christ
restored,’ his Evening hymn, ‘God the Father, be Thou near,’ and his
Litany of the Holy Spirit, ‘Come to our poor nature’s night,’ are his
most beautiful contributions to our hymnals, but several of his
less-known poems are bright, simple, and melodious. His version of Ps.
lxxxiv. would have been better known if Lyte’s had not been written.

Thomas Hornblower Gill’s (b. 1819) is a very distinct voice in the
choir. He will, I fear, have but a small place in the hymn-books of
the future, though there is an individuality and force in many of his
hymns which make them singularly attractive. Unfortunately, he often
uses an unusual word or phrase which diverts the worshipper’s mind
from what is said to the form in which it is expressed. Again, he is
too fond of the epithets ‘dear’ and ‘sweet,’ which is the more to be
regretted, as his hymns are never what Wesley called ‘namby-pambycal,’
but have a fine, robust tone, and often a stirring rhythm. He has much
of the Puritan spirit. One of his best hymns, ‘Lord, in the fulness of
my might,’[196] has for its text Cromwell’s saying, ‘How good it is to
close with Christ betimes.’ In the Congregational and Baptist books
Mr. Gill is largely represented. I hope the inclusion of a few of his
hymns in the _Methodist Hymn-book_ will make him known to a still
wider circle. I have marked many of his hymns for quotation, for they
have been dear to me from my boyhood, when I made acquaintance with
them through George Dawson’s hymn-book. Those I quote are chosen, not
because they are specially suitable for use in public worship, but
because there is so much of force and freshness in both thought and
expression. The hymn on ‘Free Grace’ has also a motto from Cromwell—‘I
have had plentiful wages beforehand, and I am sure I shall never earn
the least mite.’

  Lord! dost Thou ne’er Thy servants bless
    Until their work is done?
  Dost Thou withhold Thy tenderness
    Till they the meed have won?

  Lord! dost Thou reckon with Thine own
    Like taskmasters below?
  First must the handiwork be shown?
    Wilt Thou the wages owe?

  Nay, Lord! to Thy dear servants fall
    The wages long before;
  The Taskmaster Celestial
    Hath paid them o’er and o’er.

  How can they reckon up the grace
    Each hour, each minute brings?
  How store Thy gifts? how find a place
    For all their precious things?

  Hath not the Son their ransom paid,
    And brought them near to God?
  Yes! hath not the sweet Spirit made
    Their souls His dear abode?

  O boundless treasure all unearned!
    O wages given for nought!
  Bestowed ere once their hearts have yearned,
    Ere once their hands have wrought.

  With eager love these souls may burn,
    These hands their utmost strain;
  Still, Lord, one mite they cannot earn;
    Thy love doth grace remain.

  O! mourn Thy servants that there fall
    No earnings to their lot?
  Because Thy grace hath given them all,
    Lord, can they give Thee nought?

  Thine own no heavenly burden spare!
    Withhold no task divine,
  And let our eager love declare
    The unbought grace of Thine.

My last quotation is made for the sake of its quaint, sturdy,
half-humorous Independency. The text is, ‘Render unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar’s.’

  Lord! Thy gracious voice hath spoken,
    Lord! Thy faithful ones obey;
  Not by us be rudely broken
    Christ’s command or Caesar’s sway!
  God too greatly cannot task us,
    Tribute glad we bring the Lord;
  Service slight must Caesar ask us,
    Tribute small can we afford.

  Yet each holier soul desireth
    Nobler Caesars to appear;
  Each diviner hour requireth
    Powers and thrones more glorious here.
  All our tribute, all our treasure,
    We would spend where we can love;
  Jesus! come and be our Caesar!
    Sovereign here as Lord above.

  Low before Thy kingdom’s splendour
    Make the world’s poor kingdoms bow!
  Lord, to Thee our all we render—
    Thou our gracious Caesar, Thou!
  Thy mild monarchy victorious
    Half Thy word shall needless make,
  Our least service shall be glorious—
    All our tribute God shall take.

I have already referred to Mr. Gill’s national hymn

  Lift thy song among the nations,
    England of the Lord beloved,

which is based on the text, ‘He hath not dealt so with any nation.
Praise ye the Lord.’[197]

A few other hymns by English Nonconformist writers may be found, some,
e.g. Thomas Binney’s ‘Eternal Light,’ being of a very high order. Mr.
Spurgeon wrote a good many hymns and psalm-versions, but they are not
likely to be widely used. One, intended as a paraphrase of Ps. xli.,
might, perhaps, find a place among hymns of Philanthropy, where our
hymnals are still weak.

  Jesus, poorest of the poor,
    Man of sorrows, Child of grief!
  Happy they whose bounteous store
    Ministered to Thy relief.

  Jesus, though Thy head is crowned,
    Crowned with loftiest majesty,
  In Thy members Thou art found
    Plunged in deepest poverty.

  Happy they who wash Thy feet,
    Visit Thee in Thy distress;
  Honour great and labour sweet,
    For Thy sake the saints to bless.

  Thou wilt deeds of love repay;
    Grace shall generous hearts reward
  Here on earth, and in the day
    When they meet their reigning Lord.[198]

Bernard Barton (1784-1849), the Quaker poet, is best known by his hymn
on the Holy Scriptures—‘Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace.’ To my
mind his best hymn is the bright song of the Christian soldier.

  He who would win a warrior’s fame
  Must shun, with ever-watchful aim,
      Entangling things of life;
  His couch the earth, heaven’s arching dome
  His airy tent, his only home
      The field of martial strife.

  Unwearied by the battle’s toil,
  Uncumbered by the battle’s spoil,
      No dangers must affright;
  Nor rest seduce to slothful ease,
  Intent alone his chief to please,
      Who called him forth to fight.

  Soldier of Christ, if thou wouldst be
  Worthy that epithet, stand free
      From time’s encumbering things;
  Be earth’s enthralments feared, abhorred,
  Knowing thy leader is the Lord,
      Thy chief the King of kings.

Methodism has not in later days been rich in hymn-writers. After
Thomas Olivers there is but one great name, that of William M. Bunting
(1805-66). Little as he is known outside his own Church, his hymns are
amongst the best loved and best used in Wesleyan Methodism. I cannot
but think that some day he will be recognized as one of the glorious
choir of the universal Church. He was an extremely delicate man, and
his natural bent was pensive and self-depreciatory. He once said to a
friend, ‘There is one thing I shall miss in heaven, the mystic joys of
penitence.’ His great penitential hymn,

  Holy Spirit! pity me,
  Pierced with grief for grieving Thee,

even if it be thought too personal for use in public worship—I do not
think it is—might well be placed among hymns for private devotion. In
the services of a minister’s ‘quiet day’ it would be most impressive.

  Blessèd are the pure in heart,
  They have learned the angel art,
  While on earth in heaven to be,
  God, by sense unseen, to see,

though not a direct prayer, is a long meditation, the kind of
spiritual song which ought to be in all our hymn-books. His Baptismal
hymn is very fine.

  O crucified, triumphant Lord!
    Thy sceptre and Thy cross we own;
  And, taught by Thine apostle’s word,
    Repose our faith on Thee alone.

  The sign of faith ordained by Thee
    We Thy confessors scorn to shun;
  All men our fellowship shall see,
    Our Lord, our faith, our symbol, one.

It is one of the strongest if not the tenderest of hymns for infant
baptism, and will bear comparison with Dean Alford’s, ‘In token that
thou shalt not fear,’ with this advantage, that it is not addressed to
the infant, but to Him whose Name is named upon it.

William Morley Punshon’s (1824-81) _Sabbath Chimes_ suffered from
comparison with the _Christian Year_, but his hymns for Sunday morning
and evening—especially the latter—are not unworthy of a place amongst
the many good hymns we include under this heading. Both are wisely
shortened in hymn-books. Some readers will be glad to see the
following verses from the Sabbath Evening hymn as they were originally
published, though I do not suggest that the familiar cento is not
better for use in the congregation.

  We woke to-day with anthems sweet
  To sing before the mercy-seat,
  And, ere the darkness round us fell,
  We bade the grateful vespers swell.

  Whate’er has risen from heart sincere,
  Each upward glance of filial fear,
  Each litany, devoutly prayed,
  Each gift upon Thine altar laid;

  Each tear, regretful of the past,
  Each longing o’er the future cast,
  Each brave resolve,—each spoken vow,—
  Jesus, our Lord! accept them now.

  Whate’er beneath Thy searching eyes
  Has wrought to spoil our sacrifice;
  Aught of presumption, over bold,
  The dross we vainly brought for gold;

  If we have knelt at alien shrine,
  Or insincerely bowed at Thine,
  Or basely offered blind and lame,
  Or blushed beneath unholy shame;

  Or,—craven prophets,—turned to flee
  When duty bade us speak for Thee;—
  ’Mid this sweet stillness, while we bow,
  Jesus, our Lord! forgive us now.

  Oh, let each following Sabbath yield
  For our loved work an ampler field,