Part 14

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.