Part 10

In the _Methodist Hymn-book_ 429 hymns are attributed to Charles Wesley; in the hymnals of other Churches there are to be found a number which are unknown in Methodism. It is safe to say that of Charles Wesley’s hymns about 500 are living still.

The first great service Wesley’s hymns rendered to Christian song was to raise the standard of feeling in matters of practical religion. John Wesley’s emendation of a line of Doddridge’s may illustrate the influence of Methodist hymns upon religious emotion. Doddridge wrote—

Ye humble souls, that seek the Lord, Chase all your fears away; And bow with pleasure down to see The place where Jesus lay.

Wesley changed ‘pleasure’ into ‘rapture’ in the hymn, and Methodism raised Christian emotion from the quiet satisfaction of Watts, Doddridge, and the elect souls who kept alive the faith during the drab years which preceded the Revival, to the ecstatic gladness of those to whom that great movement brought the brightness of a morning without clouds. The largest section of the hymn-book was headed ‘For Believers Rejoicing.’ No other Christian poet ever sang such songs, for no other has ever known the joy of the evangelist as Charles Wesley knew it.

In a rapture of joy My life I employ, The God of my life to proclaim; ’Tis worth living for this, To administer bliss And salvation in Jesus’s name.

Joyousness was the natural result of the gospel he preached. It was the good news of the assurance of personal salvation. Here John Wesley’s emendation of one of Watts’s famous hymns may serve as an illustration. Watts wrote—

My soul looks back to see The burdens Thou didst bear When hanging on the cursèd tree, And _hopes_ her guilt was there.

Wesley shows the difference between Methodism and Calvinism by the change of a word—

And _knows_ her guilt was there.

The Methodist doctrine of Assurance, the revival or rediscovery of the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit, gave to Christian experience a confidence which was more joyous than that of the ‘elect.’ The Wesleys never slurred the need of repentance—deep, poignant, practical; but there is a great gulf between the comparatively brief pangs of the Methodist penitent and the habitual depression of the devout Romanist ever searching through the dark places of the heart to find matter for confession. The shades of the prison-house did not linger long around the emancipated soul. Coming out of the gloom into the sunshine the road wound

Uphill all the way, Yes, to the very end.

The redeemed of the Lord returned to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy upon their heads. Notwithstanding all that may be said, and, to some extent, with justice, of the terrors, even the horrors, of early evangelical preaching concerning death, hell, and judgement, the Methodist hymns brought into Christian worship a brighter and more trustful tone than it had known for many generations. The Revival brought back the golden days, the joy of heart, which characterized the Apostolic Church, and the German Protestants at the Reformation. At the time of the Revival the Church of England, though largely Arminian in doctrine, was so incapable of fervour, so afraid of zeal, that it had practically no power over the masses, whilst by the classes Christianity was, as Bishop Butler said, regarded ‘not so much as a subject of inquiry,’ but ‘now at length discovered to be fictitious.’

In the Establishment there was hardly spiritual life enough to put real vigour even into religious controversy. Butler’s _Analogy_ is typical of the position of the ecclesiastical leaders of that day. They were content if they could demonstrate that the balance of probabilities was in favour of Christianity, and did not even desire to be anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows.

The most earnest and aggressive of the Nonconformists were stanchly Calvinistic, and, by their most cherished beliefs, were precluded from the magnificent visions of a redeemed world, which were at once the inspiration and the attraction of Methodist preaching.

Altogether outside theological controversy, and, for the most part, uncared for by the religious people of the day, lay the masses, ignorant, degraded, despised, who neither gave, nor were expected to give, heed to things higher than the needs of the ‘mere animal.’ Of them Charles Wesley only too truly said—

Wild as the untaught Indian’s brood The Christian savages remain.

The hymns ‘Exhorting and Beseeching to Return to God’ at once attracted the

Poor outcasts of men, whose souls were despised And left with disdain.

Very surely, though very slowly, the glad evangel of the hymns which offer pardon and holiness and heaven to all won its way in the Churches. It is one of the most precious fruits of the Revival that now hardly any Church can forbear to sing them. Nor is it too much to say that Methodist hymns, even more than Methodist teaching, broke down the Calvinistic idea of the Church—

We are a garden walled around, Chosen and made peculiar ground; A little spot enclosed by grace Out of the world’s wide wilderness.

Again, John Wesley’s hymns gave a great impulse, and added a great sanction, to the expression of personal experience in hymns. They were unfettered by what has been well described as the ‘old traditions of reserved and reticent worship.’[114] For good or ill, there is little of reserve or reticence in Charles Wesley’s hymns.

What we have felt and seen With confidence we tell.

Many poets of the sanctuary have felt that the most sacred experiences of the penitent sinner and of the sanctified believer were not to be put into words, that to utter them was to expose to the coarse breath of the world what must perish in the very act of expression. It was not without an effort that Charles Wesley broke through this ‘reserve;’ yet he did, and that not only from a sense of duty, but from a conviction that to be silent would be a cowardly yielding to the temptation to shun the reproach of Christ.

And shall I slight my Father’s love? Or basely fear His gifts to own? Unmindful of His favours prove? Shall I, the hallowed cross to shun, Refuse His righteousness to impart, By hiding it within my heart?[115]

Moreover, many of Charles Wesley’s hymns—especially the more personal—were intended to be sung ‘secretly among the faithful,’ rather than in the congregation. They were written for the family gatherings of ‘the household of the faith,’ and thus were free from the restraints which might be necessary in compositions intended for larger and less sympathetic assemblies.

Wesley’s hymns represented and, to a considerable extent, created the specific Methodist type of religious thought, emotion, and expression. They were, also, the vehicle by which doctrine was conveyed to the minds of the uneducated masses. The great truths which it was the mission of Methodism to teach are conspicuous in the Methodist hymns. Justification by Faith, the Witness of the Spirit, Universal Redemption, Entire Sanctification, are all taught in Charles Wesley’s remembered hymns as they are in John Wesley’s forgotten tracts. If the hymns have ceased to be peculiarly Methodist, it is because Christian experience and teaching have been so largely influenced by them.

It is impossible not to compare Charles Wesley with his great predecessor, Isaac Watts. The day has gone by in which rival camps or choirs seek to exalt the one by disparaging the other. As we have seen, Watts’s _Psalms and Hymns_ were taken by the Wesleys on their mission to Georgia, and it can never be forgotten that, with his dying breath, John Wesley quoted the hymn which, from those early days, had been included in the hymn-books prepared by him for congregational use.

Watts was less careful of the technique of his poetry than Charles Wesley. His rhymes are often very bad, and occasionally are altogether forgotten, and this is true of hymns whose intrinsic value is such that they retain, and are likely to retain, their place in our hymn-books. Charles Wesley is not without sin in this regard, but a really bad rhyme is comparatively rare in his best compositions. He has less of poetic imagery than Watts, and has not so keen an eye for the beauties of the natural world. Charles Wesley never wrote a hymn that, in its own way, compares with

Eternal Wisdom! Thee we praise;

nor do I know any verse of his which equals in its rich, strong monosyllables, Watts’s

His every[116] word of grace is strong As that which built the skies; The voice that rolls the stars along Speaks all the promises.

Wesley was apt to use long and awkward words, sometimes of his own coining, rarely adding to the force, and always detracting from the practical value of the hymn.

It must also be admitted that Charles Wesley wrote some verses the taste of which is dreadful, though he never approaches the execrable coarseness of some Moravian hymns, or of the lines which Walter Shirley transfigured into ‘Sweet the moments rich in blessing.’ Both Watts and Wesley had a quiet rather than a keen sense of humour, but they had little of that appreciation of the comic which is so acute in our own time.[117]

Charles Wesley rarely, if ever, reaches the depth of prosaic commonplace which marks many of Watts’s hymns. He had a more sensitive ear and a more cultivated taste, and, what is perhaps more to the point, he had a faithful, though affectionate and admiring, critic in his brother. When John Wesley said of Charles that his least praise was his talent for poetry, he meant, not to disparage his hymns, but to bear the highest testimony possible to the gifts and graces of his mind and character.

In considering somewhat in detail the hymns of Charles Wesley, it is convenient to treat of them in the classes into which they may be broadly divided. But even so it is obviously impossible to glance at more than a small number of his poems.

1.—Hymns of the Christian Year

The idea of an elaborate classification according to the Church seasons, so usual in modern Anglican hymnals, had not yet become popular. Bishop Ken’s _Hymns for all the Festivals of the Year_[118] (published in 1721, ten years after his death), the precursor and, to some extent, the inspiration of the _Christian Year_, was not intended for use as a hymn-book. Wither’s _Hymns and Songs of the Church_ (1623) provided for all the chief festivals, saints’ days, and other occasional services. About forty years later (1661) Dr. Eaton, Vicar of Bishop’s Castle, Salop, published _The Holy Calendar_, but his poems were not intended to be sung. The Wesleys issued a number of pamphlets containing hymns for the great festivals, and it would not be difficult to select from their various publications a ‘Christian year,’ in which every hymn was suitable for public worship. But the pieces would need to be gathered, for the brothers did not contemplate the use of their hymn-books in Church services; they were designed for the preaching-house, the open-air service, and the class-meeting. The Nonconformist Churches had adopted the custom early in the century, but in the Church of England hymn-singing was still, and for many years after, an irregularity, if not an offence.

First and greatest of Charles Wesley’s festival hymns is the Christmas carol

Hark! how all the welkin rings, ‘Glory to the King of kings.’

It was published in 1739, and is not impossibly one of the ‘many sweet hymns’ which were sung in the household of General Oglethorpe. Whitefield made some popular alterations, and included it in his _Collection_, in 1753. In 1782 it found a place in the Prayer-book, after the new version of the Psalms. It was omitted from Wesley’s _Collection_, but was inserted in the supplement of 1830—nearly a century after its composition.

In the same metre, and not inferior, are the hymns for Easter—

‘Christ, the Lord, is risen to-day,’ Sons of men and angels say!

and for Ascension Day—

Hail the day that sees Him rise, Ravished from our wishful eyes.

There are some good verses in the Whit Sunday hymn—

Granted is the Saviour’s prayer, Sent the gracious Comforter;

and in the little-known hymn for the Epiphany—

Sons of men, behold from far, Hail the long-expected Star![119]

but they are not equal to the others.

Of Charles Wesley’s hymns on our Lord’s Passion, the finest are those beginning

With glorious clouds encompassed round, Whom angels dimly see, Will the Unsearchable be found, Or God appear to me?

. . . . .

O Love divine! what hast thou done! The immortal God hath died for me The Father’s co-eternal Son Bore all my sins upon the tree; The immortal God for me hath died! My Lord, my Love is crucified.

. . . . .

O Thou who hast our sorrows borne, Help us to look on Thee and mourn, On Thee Whom we have slain, Have pierced a thousand thousand times, And by reiterated crimes Renewed Thy mortal pain.[120]

The popular hymn beginning

All ye that pass by, To Jesus draw nigh: To you is it nothing that Jesus should die?

is, owing to its cheerful metre, hardly suited to the solemn services of Good Friday, and was intended for the open air. It was headed ‘Invitation to Sinners,’ and was used by Whitefield with great effect when preaching at the Market Cross, Nottingham, and elsewhere.

John Wesley appointed many fast days, and was careful to fix them on Friday, but the observance of Lent does not seem to have been enforced, or even strongly recommended, in the Methodist Society. Hymns for saints’ days and for the minor festivals are unknown to the Wesley poetry.

2. Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.[121]

This pamphlet contains 166 hymns, many of which are admirable and very close paraphrases of passages in Brevint’s _Christian Sacrifice_, but others are independent of that devout treatise. Many lend themselves readily to use in ‘catholic’ services, and have often been quoted as indicating high sacramentarian views.[122]

On the other hand, such verses as the following must be taken in an entirely evangelical sense—

The cup of blessing, blessed by Thee, Let it Thy blood impart: The bread Thy mystic body be, And cheer each languid heart.

. . . . .

With solemn faith we offer up, And spread before Thy glorious eyes, That only ground of all our hope, That precious, bleeding Sacrifice, Which brings Thy grace on sinners down, And perfects all our souls in one.

. . . . .

By faith we see Thy sufferings past In this mysterious rite brought back: And on Thy grand oblation cast, Its saving benefits partake.

In these paraphrases there are naturally expressions which represent Brevint and not the Wesleys, except in so far as they indicate a general approval of his teaching. The hymns which most closely follow the treatise are often the least happy. Yet, when every deduction is made, this little book is one of the most edifying of devotional preparations for the Communion.

These hymns have had a permanent influence upon Methodist worship. Many of them were probably suggested by the Order of Administration in the Book of Common Prayer, the most beautiful of all the Anglican services. Both the brothers had a profound reverence for the Holy Communion, as the supreme act of Christian worship, and constantly impressed upon Methodists the duty of its regular observance. Never at any time was there a danger of the Methodist Societies cutting themselves off from the Catholic Church by neglect of the Sacraments, or of their becoming an exclusively evangelistic organization on the plan of the Salvation Army. This pamphlet, of which many editions were issued during the lifetime of John Wesley, shows how serious a view they desired their people to take of the value of this sacrament, whilst its great popularity suggests that the intelligence of the Methodists of a hundred and fifty years ago was very much above that with which we are accustomed to credit them. The republication of Brevint’s _Treatise_, in a small series of devotional manuals, edited by Dr. George Osborn, did not revive interest in it, as it might have done had a judicious selection from the hymns been included.[123]

Several hymns familiar to us in other sections of our hymn-books were written for, or included in, this series. The prayer for the Church militant, with its remembrance of and thanksgiving for those in trouble and for those who have ‘departed this life in Thy faith and fear,’ probably suggested the hymn—

What are these arrayed in white?

whilst the _Ter-Sanctus_ is the inspiration of—

Lift your eyes of faith and see Saints and angels joined in one.

The thought of communion with the Church triumphant was very precious to Charles Wesley, and there is a most beautiful and solemn appropriateness in the lifting of the eyes as well as of the heart, when, having claimed in faith the forgiveness of sins, we take our unchallenged place at the table of the Lord. The Holy Communion includes fellowship with those who have ‘crossed the flood’ and are for ever with the Lord.

Nor is the other aspect of the communion of saints forgotten. It is often easier for earnest souls to claim fellowship with the white-robed company of heaven than with those on earth who are divided from them by divergencies of doctrine and practice. But if, on the one hand, the Eucharist has been a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to theologians and ecclesiastics, on the other it is the bond of union between all ‘holding fast the Head.’[124] The true evangelic and the typically Wesleyan position is well stated in the verse—

Part of His Church below, We thus our right maintain; Our living membership we show, And in the fold remain,— The sheep of Israel’s fold, In England’s pastures fed; And fellowship with all we hold, Who hold it with our Head.[125]

This is the attitude our Church has consistently adopted. We do not claim exclusive privileges or profess that our boundaries are the walls of that city of God which lieth four square. We are but ‘part of His Church below,’ but we _are_ a part, and in obedience to our dying Lord’s command ‘we thus our right maintain.’ What matter though some deny the validity of our ‘orders,’ the efficacy of our sacraments, our title to a place in the Holy Catholic Church? They may drive us from their local altars, but they cannot exclude us from the Lord’s table. They may deny us a place in that family for which our blessed Lord was content to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men. What then? We do not deny theirs.

Fellowship with all we hold, Who hold it with our Head.

This is a note too seldom heard in Communion hymns. I do not remember to have found it so clearly put anywhere else, though Major Turton’s prayer for unity comes graciously near to it.

For all Thy Church, O Lord, we intercede; Make Thou our sad divisions soon to cease; Draw us the nearer each to each, we plead, By drawing all to Thee, O Prince of Peace; Thus may we all one Bread, one Body be, Through this blest Sacrament of Unity.[126]

The _sacramental_ character of the Lord’s Supper as the sign and pledge of the believer’s consecration to the service of Christ is represented in the hymn beginning—

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, One in Three, and Three in One, As by the celestial host, Let Thy will on earth be done; Praise by all to Thee be given, Glorious Lord of earth and heaven.

which in some of its verses suggests the prayer known as the First Thanksgiving,[127] though it is based upon a beautiful paragraph of Brevint’s.

A few hymns under the heading ‘After the Sacrament’ form an unimportant supplement, but the long series really ends with a joyous song well-suited to be the happy close of the solemn commemoration of the sacrifice of Calvary and the renewal of the Christian’s oath of allegiance

Let Him to whom we now belong His sovereign right assert, And take up every thankful song And every loving heart.

This final note of glad thanksgiving reminds us that in our Communion Service the ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ immediately precedes the Benediction.[128]

3. Hymns of the Calvinistic Controversy.

From these Communion hymns we pass to a series of a very different type. The story of the Calvinistic controversy—which seemed to show that a theological fountain could at the same time send forth sweet water and bitter—belongs to Church history, not to hymnology. Yet we cannot pass it over, for none of the hymns of the Wesleys _meant_ so much as those which proclaimed the glad tidings of a free and full salvation. The controversy was civil war, a strife among brethren, and it is good to know that the love of Whitefield and the Wesleys was able to bear, though not without terrible strain, even this sore trial. From that great controversy we inherit the true eirenicon, the agreeing to differ, which is the best possible solution of many religious disputes. Whitefield and the Wesleys finally agreed to differ and continued to love. But for a time there was ‘a sharp contention so that they parted asunder one from the other.’

In 1740 John Wesley published, after some hesitation, his sermon on ‘Free Grace,’ and added a long, dull hymn by his brother on ‘Universal Redemption.’ In the same year the brothers issued a second series of _Hymns and Sacred Poems_, which contained this and other pieces, setting forth in the most emphatic terms the Arminian doctrine, and condemning in even more emphatic terms all who believed in what Calvin had called ‘_decretum horribile_.’ Whitefield was shocked by the Wesleyan doctrine itself, and was beyond measure distressed by what he saw must lead to a breach between himself and his dearest friends. His love and sorrow come out most attractively in his letters.

‘My dear, dear Brethren,’ he wrote, ‘why did you throw out the bone of contention? Why did you print that sermon against predestination? Why did you, in particular, my dear brother Charles, affix your hymn and join in putting out your late hymn-book?’[129]

John Wesley’s sermon carefully avoided reference to his friend. Whitefield, however, felt in honour bound to state his own views and to ‘answer’ Wesley’s sermon. To this reply he added a poor poem by Dr. Watts, which was intended to balance Charles Wesley’s hymn. Here are two of Watts’s verses—

Behold the potter and the clay, He forms His vessels as he please; Such is our God, and such are we, The subjects of His high decrees.

May not the sovereign Lord on high, Dispense His favours as He will; Choose some to life while others die, And yet be just and gracious still?

After this the battle became fast and furious. The two pamphlets of _Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love_[130] were issued in 1741, and Whitefield was in despair. He writes: ‘Dear brother Charles is more and more rash. He has lately printed some very bad hymns.’[131] From Whitefield’s point of view they were undoubtedly very bad, and even justify his charge that the Wesleys ‘dressed up’ the doctrine of election in ‘horrible colours.’ On the other hand, these hymns contain some of the finest specimens of evangelic hymn-writing to be found in the Wesley poetry.