THE SINGERS OF THE REVIVAL.
Chief of all the auxiliary circumstances which aided the Great Revival,
beyond a question, was this: that it taught the people of England, for
the first time, the real power of sacred song. That man in the north of
England who, when taken, by a companion who had been converted, to a
great Methodist preaching, and being asked at the close of the service
how he had enjoyed it, replied, “Weel, I didna care sae mich aboot the
preaching, but, eh, man! yon ballants were grand,” was no doubt a
representative character. And the great and subduing power of large
bodies of people, moved as with one heart and one voice, must have
greatly aided to produce those effects which we are attempting to
realise. All great national movements have acknowledged and used the
power of song. For man is a born singer, and if he cannot sing himself
he likes to feel the power of those who can. It has been so in political
movements: there were the songs of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. And
the greatest religious movements through all the Christian ages have
acknowledged the power of sacred song, even from the days of the
apostles, and from the time of St. Ambrose in Milan. Luther soon found
that he must teach the people to sing. That is a pleasant little story,
how once, as he was sitting at his window, he heard a blind beggar sing.
It was something about the grace of God, and Luther says the strain
brought tears into his eyes. Then, he says, the thought suddenly flashed
into his mind, “If I could only make gospel songs which people could
sing, and which would spread themselves up and down the cities!” He
directly set to work upon this inspiration, and let fly song after song,
each like a lark mounting towards heaven’s gate, full of New Testament
music. “He took care,” says one writer, in mentioning the incident,
“that each song should have some rememberable word or refrain; such as
‘Jesus,’ ‘Believe and be saved,’ ‘Come unto Me,’ ‘Gospel,’ ‘Grace,’
‘Worthy is the Lamb,’ and so on.”
Until Watts and Doddridge appeared, England had no popular sacred
melodies. Amongst the works of the poets, such as Sir Philip Sidney,
Milton, Sandys, George Herbert, and others, a few were scattered up and
down; but they mostly lacked the subtle element which constitutes a
hymn. For, just as a man may be a great poet, and utterly fail in the
power to write a good song, so a man may be a great sacred poet, and yet
miss the faculty which makes the hymn-writer. It is singular, it is
almost indefinable. The subtle something which catches the essential
elements of a great human experience, and gives it lyrical expression,
takes that which other men put into creeds, sermons, theological essays,
and sets it flying, as we just now said, like “the lark to heaven’s
gate.” It ought never to be forgotten that Watts was, in fact, the
creator of the English hymn. He wrote many lines which good taste can in
no case approve; but here again the old proverb holds true, “The house
that is building does not look like the house that is built.” And the
great number of following writers, while they have felt the inspiration
he gave to the Church, have moulded their lines by a more fastidious
taste, which, if it has sometimes improved the metre or the sentiment,
has possibly diminished in the strength. We will venture to say that
even now there is a greater average of majesty of thought and expression
in Watts’s hymns than in any other of our great hymn-writers; although,
in some cases, we find here and there a piece which may equal, and some
one or two which are said to surpass, the flights of the sweet singer of
Stoke Newington. But the hymns of Watts, as a whole, were not so well
fitted to a great and popular revival, to the expression of a tumultuous
and passionate experience, as some we shall notice. They were, as a
whole, especially wanting in the social element, and the finest of them
sound like notes from the harp of some solitary angel. One cannot give
to them the designation which the Wesleys gave to large sections of
their hymns, “suitable for experience meetings.” Praise rather than
experience is the characteristic of Watts, although there are noble
exceptions. Our readers will perhaps remember a well-known and pleasing
instance in a letter from Doddridge to his aged friend. Doddridge had
been preaching on a summer evening in some plain old village chapel in
Northamptonshire, when at the close of the service was “given out,” as
we say, that hymn commencing:
“Give me the wings of faith to rise.”
We can suppose the melody to which it was sung to have been very rude;
but it was, perhaps, new to the people, and the preacher was affected as
he saw how, over the congregation, the people were singing earnestly,
and melted to tears while they sang; and at the close of the service
many old people gathered round Doddridge, their hearts all alive with
the hymn, and they wished it were possible, only for once, to look upon
the face of the dear old Dr. Watts. Doddridge was so pleased that he
thought his old friend would be pleased also, and so he wrote the
account of the little incident in a letter to him. In many other parts
of the country, no doubt, the people were waiting and wishful for
popular sacred harmonies. And when the Great Revival came, and
congregations met by thousands, and multitudes who had been accustomed
to song, thoughtless, foolish, very often sinful and licentious, still
needed to sing (for song and human nature are inseparable, apparently,
so far as we know anything about it, in the next world as well as in
this), it was necessary that, as they had been “brought up out of the
horrible pit and miry clay,” “a new song of praise” should be put in the
mouth. John Wesley had heard much of Moravian singing. He took Count
Zinzendorf’s hymns, translated them, and immensely improved them; he was
the first who introduced into our psalmody the noble words of Paul
Gerhardt. Some of the finest of all the hymns in the Wesleyan collection
are these translations. Watts was unsparingly used. Wesley’s first
effort to meet this necessity of the Revival was the publication of his
collection in 1739.[9] And thus, most likely without knowing the
anecdote of Luther we have quoted above, Wesley and his coadjutors did
exactly what the Reformer had done. They gave effect to the Revival by
the ordinance of song, and preached the Gospel in sweet words, and often
recurring Gospel refrains.
Footnote 9:
See Appendix.
The remark is true that there was no art, no splendid form of worship or
ritual; early Methodism and the entire evangelic movement were as free
from all this as Clairvaux in the Valley of Wormwood, when Bernard
ministered there with all his monks around him, or as Cluny when Bernard
de Morlaix chanted his “Jerusalem the Golden.” Like all great religious
movements which have shaken men’s souls, this was purely spiritual, or
if it had a secular expression it was not artificial. Loud amens
resounded as the preacher spoke or prayed, and then the hearty gushes
of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in some litany or Te
Deum in new-born verse from some of the singers of the last revival.
Amongst infuriated mobs, we read how Wesley found a retreat in song, and
overpowered the multitude with what we, perhaps, should not regard
melody. Thus, when at Bengeworth in 1740, where Wesley was set upon by a
crowd, and it was proposed by one that they should take him away and
duck him, he broke out into singing with his redoubted friend, Thomas
Maxfield. He allowed them to carry him whither they would; at the bridge
end of the street the mob retreated and left him; but he took his stand
on the bridge, and striking up—
“Angel of God, whate’er betide,
Thy summons I obey,”
preached a useful and effective sermon to hundreds who remained to
listen, from the text, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
But the contributions of Watts and Wesley are so well known that it is
more important to notice here that as the Revival moved on, very soon
other remarkable lyrists appeared to contribute, if few, yet really
effective words. Of these none is more remarkable than the mighty
cobbler, Thomas Olivers, a “sturdy Welshman,” as Southey calls him. He
is not to be confounded with John Oliver, also one of the notabilities
of the Revival. Thomas was really an astonishing trophy of the movement;
before his conversion he was a thoroughly bad fellow, a kind of
wandering reprobate, an idle, dissipated man. He fell beneath the power
of Whitefield, whom he heard preach from the text, “Is not this a brand
plucked out of the fire?” He had made comic songs about Whitefield, and
sung them with applause in tap-rooms. As Whitefield came in his way, he
went with the purpose of obtaining fresh fuel for his ridicule. The
heart of the man was completely broken, and he felt so much compunction
for what he had done against the man for whom he now felt so deep a
reverence and awe, that he used to follow him in the streets, and though
he did not speak to him, he says he could scarcely refrain from kissing
the prints of his footsteps. And now, he says, at the beginning of his
new life, what we can well believe of an imagination so intense and
strong, “I saw God in everything: the heavens, the earth and all therein
showed me something of Him; yea, even from a drop of water, a blade of
grass, or a grain of sand, I received instruction.” He was about
seriously to enter into a settled and respectable way of business when
John Wesley heard of him; and although he was converted under
Whitefield, Wesley persuaded him to yield himself to his direction for
the work of preaching as one of his itinerant band, and sent him into
Cornwall—just the man we should think for Cornwall, fiery and
imaginative: off he went, in 1753. He was born in 1725. He testifies
that he was “unable to buy a horse, so, with my boots on my legs, my
great-coat on my back, and my bag with my books and linen across my
shoulders, I set out for Cornwall on foot.” Henceforth there were
forty-six years on earth before him, during which he witnessed a
magnificent confession before many witnesses. He became one of the
foremost controversialists when dissensions arose among the men of the
Revival. He acquired a knowledge of the languages, especially of Hebrew,
and was a great reader. Wesley appointed him as his editor and general
proofreader; but he could never be taught to punctuate properly, and the
punctilious Wesley could not tolerate his inaccuracies as they slipped
through the proof, so he did not retain this post long. But Wesley loved
him, and in 1799 he descended into Wesley’s own tomb, and his remains
lie there, in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel. He wrote more prose
than poetry; but, like St. Ambrose, he is made immortal by a single
hymn. He is the author of one of the most majestic hymns in all
hymnology. Byron and Scott wrote Hebrew melodies, but they will not bear
comparison with this one. While in London upon one occasion, he went
into the Jewish synagogue, and he heard sung there by a rabbi, Dr.
Leoni, an old air, a melody which so enchanted him and fixed itself in
his memory, that he went home, and instantly produced what he called “a
hymn to the God of Abraham,” arranged to the air he had heard. And thus
we possess that which we so frequently sing,
“The God of Abraham praise!”[10]
It is principally known by its first four verses; there are twelve.
“There is not,” says James Montgomery, “in our language a lyric of more
majestic style, more elevated thought, or more glorious imagery; * * *
like a stately pile of architecture, severe and simple in design; it
strikes less on the first view than after deliberate examination, * * *
the mind itself grows greater in contemplating it;” and he continues,
“On account of the peculiarity of the measure, none but a person of
equal musical and poetical taste could have produced the harmony
perceptible in the verse.” There will, perhaps, always be a doubt
whether Olivers was the author of the hymn,
“Lo! He comes with clouds descending.”
If Charles Wesley were the author, he undoubtedly derived the
inspiration of the piece from Olivers’ hymn, “The Last Judgment:”[11] it
is in the same metre, and probably Wesley took the thought and the
metre, and adapted it to popular service. What is undoubted is that
Olivers, who is the author of the metre, is also the author of the fine
old tune “Helmsley,” to which the hymn was usually sung until quite
recent times; the tune was originally called “Olivers.”
Footnote 10:
See Appendix
Footnote 11:
See Appendix
It is but a natural step from Thomas Olivers to his great antagonist,
Augustus Toplady; he also is made immortal by a hymn. He wrote many fine
ones, full of melody, pathos, and affecting imagery. Toplady, as all our
readers know, was a clergyman, the Vicar of Broad Hembury, in
Devonshire. He took the strong Calvinistic side in the controversies
which arose in the course of the Great Revival; Olivers took the strong
Arminian side. They were not very civil to each other; and the scholarly
clergyman no doubt felt his dignity somewhat hurt by the rugged contact
with the cobbler; but the quarrels are forgotten now, and there is
scarcely a hymn-book in which the hymn of Olivers is not found within a
few pages of
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”
To this hymn has been given almost universally the palm as the finest
hymn in our language. Where there are so many, at once deeply expressive
in experience, and subdued and elevated in feeling, we perhaps may be
forgiven if we hesitate before praise so eminently high. Mr. Gladstone’s
translation into the Latin, in the estimation of eminent scholars, even
carries a more thrilling and penetrative awe.[12] But Toplady wrote many
other hymns quite equal in pathos and poetic merit. The characteristic
of “Rock of Ages” is its depth of penitential devotion. A volume might
be written on the history of this expressive hymn. Innumerable are the
multitudes whom these words have sustained when dying; they were among
the last which lingered on the lips of Prince Albert as he was passing
away; and to how many, through every variety of social distinction, have
they been at once the creed and consolation! It is by his hymns that
Toplady will be chiefly remembered. For years he was hovering along on
the borders of the grave, slowly dying of consumption; and he died in
1778, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. It was his especial wish
that he should be buried with more than quiet, that no announcement
should be made of the funeral, and that there should be no especial
service at his grave: it testifies, however, to the high regard in which
he was held that thousands followed him to his burial in Tottenham Court
Road Chapel; and when we know that his dear friend Rowland Hill
conducted the service, we can scarcely be surprised, or offended, that
he broke through the injunctions of his friend, and addressed the
multitude in affectionate commemoration of the sweet singer.
Footnote 12:
See Appendix.
[Illustration:
AUGUSTUS TOPLADY.
]
Toplady we should regard as the chief singer of the Revival, after
Charles Wesley, although entirely of another order; not so social as
meditative, and reminding us, in many of his pieces, of the
characteristics we have attributed to Watts. His midnight hymn is a
piece of uncommon sublimity; portions of it seem almost unfit for
congregational singing; but for inward plaintive meditation, for reading
in the evening family prayer, when the hushed stillness of night is over
the household, and the pilgrim of life is about to commit himself to the
unconsciousness of sleep, the verses seem tenderly suggestive:
“Thy ministering spirits descend,
And watch while Thy saints are asleep;
By day and by night they attend,
The heirs of salvation to keep.
Bright seraphs despatched from the throne,
Fly swift to their stations assigned;
And angels elect are sent down
To guard the elect of mankind.
“Their worship no interval knows;
Their fervour is still on the wing;
And, while they protect my repose,
They chant to the praise of my King.
I, too, at the season ordained,
Their chorus forever shall join,
And love and adore without end,
Their gracious Creator and mine.”
We have noticed in a previous chapter that when Whitefield separated
himself from Wesley, the Revival took two distinctly different routes.
We only refer to this again for the purpose of remarking that as Toplady
was intensely Calvinistic in his method of Divine grace, so his hymns,
also, reflect in all its fulness that creed; yet they are full of
tenderness, and well calculated frequently to arouse dormant devotion.
“Your harps, ye trembling saints;” “Emptied of earth I fain would be;”
“When languor and disease invade;” “Jesus, immutably the same;” “A
debtor to mercy alone,” and many another, leave nothing to be desired
either on the score of devotion, poetry, or melody.
In a far humbler sphere, but representing the same faith and fervour as
Toplady, and also carried away young, was Cennick. In an article in the
_Christian Remembrancer_, on English hymnology, written very much for
the purpose of throwing contempt on all the hymn-writers of the Revival,
Cennick is spoken of as “a low and violent person; his hymns peculiarly
offensive, both as to matter and manner.” Some exceptions are made by
the reviewer for “Children of the Heavenly King.” We may presume,
therefore, that to this writer, “Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb,” is one
of the “peculiarly offensive.” This is not wonderful, when in the next
page we read that “the hymns of Newton are the very essence of
doggerel.” This sounds rather strange, as a verdict, to those who have
felt the particular charm of that much-loved hymn, “How sweet the name
of Jesus sounds!” It is not without a purpose that we refer to this
paper in the _Christian Remembrancer_—evidently by a very scholarly
hand—because its whole tone shows how the sacred song of the Revival
would be likely to be regarded by those who had no sympathy with its
evangelical teaching. The writer, for instance, speaking of Wesley’s
hymns, doubts whether any of them could possibly be included by any
chance in English hymnology! “Jesus, lover of my soul,” is said, “in
some _small_ degree to approximate to the model of a Church hymn!” Of
the Countess of Huntingdon’s hymn-book, the writer says, “We shall
certainly not notice the raving profanity!” It is not necessary further
either to sadden or to irritate the reader by similar expressions; but
the entire paper, and the criticisms we have cited, will show what was
likely to be the effect of the hymns of the Revival on many similar
minds of that time. In fact, the joy of the Revival work arose from
this, that no person, no priest, nor Church usage, was needed to
interpose between the soul and the Saviour. Faith in Christ, and His
immediate, personal presence with the soul seeking Him by faith, as it
was the burden of the best of the sermons, so it was, also, of all the
great hymns.
The origin and the authors of several eminent hymns are certainly
obscure. To Edward Perronet must be assigned the authorship of the fine
coronation anthem of the Lamb that was slain: “All hail the power of
Jesus’ name!”
Another, which has become a universal favourite, is “Beyond the
glittering starry globe.” This is a noble and inspiring hymn; only a few
verses are usually quoted in our hymn-books. Lord Selborne divides its
authorship between Fanch and Turner. We have seen it attributed to
Olivers; this is certainly a mistake. The _Quarterly Review_, in a very
able paper on hymnology, reproducing an old legend concerning it, traces
it to two brothers in a humble situation in life, one an itinerant
preacher, the other a porter. The preacher desired the porter to carry a
letter for him. “I can’t go,” said the porter, “I am writing a hymn.”
“You write a hymn, indeed! Nonsense! you go with the letter, and I will
finish the hymn.” He went, and returned, but the hymn was unfinished.
The preacher had taken it up at the third verse, and his muse had
forsaken him at the eighth. “Give me the pen,” said the porter, and he
wrote off,
“They brought His chariot from above,
To bear Him to His throne;
Clapped their triumphant wings, and cried,
‘The glorious work is done!’”
Unfortunately the author of the paper in the _Quarterly Review_ appears
never to have seen the hymn in its entirety. The verse he cites is not
the eighth, but the twenty-second, and it has been mutilated almost
wherever quoted; the verse itself is part of an apostrophe to the
angels, recalling their ministrations round our Lord:
“Tended His chariot up the sky,
And bore Him to His throne;
Then swept your golden harps and cried,
‘The glorious work is done!’”
Whoever wrote the hymn had the imagination of a poet, the fine pathos of
a believer, and a strong lyrical power of expression.
Anecdotes of the origin of many of our great hymns of this period are as
interesting as they are almost innumerable; those of which we are
speaking are hymns of the Revival—to speak concisely—perhaps commenced
with the Wesleys, and closed with Cowper and Newton. It must not be
supposed that there were no singers save those whose verses found their
way into the Wesleyan or other great collections of hymns; there were
James Grant, Joseph Griggs, especially notable, Miss Steele, the author
of a great number of hymns of universal acceptance in all our churches,
and which are more like those of Doddridge than any other since his day.
Then there was John Stocker,—but we would particularly notice Job
Hupton, the author of a hymn which has never been included in any
hymn-book except _Our Hymn Book_, edited by the author of this volume,
but which is scarcely inferior to “Beyond the glittering starry sky.”
“Come, ye saints, and raise an anthem,
Cleave the skies with shouts of praise,
Sing to Him who found a ransom,
Ancient of eternal days.
Bring your harps, and bring your odours,
Sweep the string and pour the lay;
View His works! behold His wonders!
Let hosannas crown the day!”
The hymn is far too long for quotation. Job Hupton was a Baptist
minister in the neighbourhood of Beccles, where he died in 1849, in the
eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth of his ministry.
Thus there was set free throughout the country a spirit of sacred song
which was new to the experience of the nation: it was boldly
evangelical; it was devoted, not to the eulogy of Church forms and days;
there was not a syllable of Mariolatry; but praise to Christ, earnest
meditation upon the state of man without His work, and the blessedness
of the soul which had risen to the saving apprehension of it. This forms
the whole substance of the Divine melody. It has seemed to some that the
most perfect hymn in the English language is, “Jesus! lover of my soul.”
Sentiments may differ, arising from modifications of experience, but
that hymn undoubtedly is the very essence of all the hymns which were
sung in the days of the Great Revival. For the first time there was
given to Christian experience that which met it at every turn. Watts
found such a choir, and such an audience for his devotions, as he had
never known in his life; and “Charles Wesley,” says Isaac Taylor, “has
been drawing thousands in his wake and onward, from earth to heaven.”
The hymns met and united all companies and all societies. The bridal
party returned from church, singing,
“We kindly help each other,
Till all shall wear the starry crown.”
If they gathered round the grave, they sang;—and what a variety of
glorious funereal hymns they had! But that was a great favourite:
“There all the ship’s company meet,
Who sailed with their Saviour beneath;
With shoutings each other they greet,
And triumph o’er sorrow and death.”
Few separations took place without that song,
“Blest be the dear uniting love,
That will not let us part.”
While others became such favourites that even almost every service had
to be hallowed by them; such as,
“Jesus! the name high over all,
In hell, or earth, or sky;”
while an equal favourite almost, was,
“Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer’s praise!”
They must soon have become very well known, for so early as 1748, when a
sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars,
smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey of the
prison said he had never seen such people before. The Methodists had
been among them; they had all yielded themselves to the power of “the
truth as it is in Jesus,” and on their way to Tyburn they all sang
together,
“Lamb of God! whose bleeding love
We now recall to mind,
Send the answer from above,
And let us mercy find;
Think on us, who think of Thee,
And every struggling soul release;
Oh! remember Calvary,
And let us go in peace!”
The hymns found their way to sick beds. The old Earl of Derby, the
grandfather of the present peer, was dying at Knowsley. He had for his
housekeeper there a Mrs. Brass, a good and faithful Methodist; the old
Earl was fond of talking with her upon religious matters, and one day
she read to him the well-known hymn, “All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw
nigh.” When she came to the lines,
“The Lord in the day of His anger did lay
Our sins on the Lamb, and he bore them away,”
the Earl looked up and said, “Stop! don’t you think, Mrs. Brass, that
ought to be, ‘The Lord in the day of his _mercy_ did lay’?”
The old lady did not admit the validity of his lordship’s theology; but
it very abundantly showed that his experience had passed through the
verse, and reached to the true meaning of the hymn. An old blind woman
was hearing Peter McOwan preach. He quoted these lines:
“The Lord pours eyesight on the blind;
The Lord supports the fainting mind.”
The poor old woman was not happy until she met the preacher, and she
said, “But are there really such sweet verses? Are you sure the book
contains such a hymn?” and he read the whole to her. It is one by Watts:
“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath.”
Innumerable are the anecdotes of these hymns; they inaugurated really
the rise of English hymnology; and it is not too much to say that, as
compared with them, many more recent hymns are as tinsel compared with
gold. A writer truly says: “They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit
in its most hushed and plaintive mood. They roll and bear it aloft, in
its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a
mighty organ swell; among the mines and quarries, and wild moors of
Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in chambers
of death, in the most joyous assemblages of the household, they have
relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; and even in other
lands soldiers and sailors, slaves and prisoners, have recited with what
joy these words have entered into their life.”
Thus the great hymns of this period grew and became a religious power in
the land, strangely contradicting a verdict which Cardinal Wiseman
pronounced some years since, that “all Protestant devotion is dead.”
While we give all honour to the fine hymns of Denmark and Germany, many
of the best of which were translated with the movement, it may, with no
exaggeration, be said that the hymnology of England in the eighteenth
century is the finest and most complete which the history of the Church
has known.
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