The first Wesleyan hymn-book is earlier than the Evangelical Revival.
When John Wesley sailed for Georgia, he took with him Herbert’s
_Poems_, Watts’s _Psalms and Hymns_, and John Austin’s _Offices_. From
these and some other books he prepared ‘the first hymn-book compiled
for use in the Church of England.’[108] It was published at
Charlestown in 1737, and is entitled, _A Collection of Psalms and
Hymns_. The book is a ‘Christian week’ rather than a Christian year,
being divided into three sections—for Sunday; for Wednesday and
Friday; for Saturday. It is in many respects a most interesting
volume. There is little trace of ‘catholic’ doctrine, unless it be in
the verses taken from Austin’s _Office of the Saints_, and there is
less of sacramental teaching than in the present _Methodist
Hymn-book_.
Of the seventy hymns half are by Dr. Watts, and amongst these are his
version of Ps. c, with Wesley’s famous first lines—
Before Jehovah’s awful throne,
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;
and the cxlvi., which Wesley repeated with his dying breath. Seven
hymns are by John Austin; six are moderately successful attempts to
make some of Herbert’s matchless poems available for use in public
worship. The Wesleyan portion of the book consists of five hymns by
Samuel Wesley, senior; five by Samuel Wesley, junior; and five
translations from the German by John Wesley himself. Charles Wesley’s
hymns are conspicuous by their absence. Probably the explanation is
that, as he had already sailed for England, his MSS. were not at his
brother’s disposal.
In 1738, on his return to England, John Wesley published another small
hymn-book, with the same title and a similar arrangement, though the
contents are different. This is, I think, the only one of his many
hymn-books in which Ken’s hymns are included. In 1739 the brothers
issued their first joint publication, ‘_Hymns and Sacred Poems_,
published by John Wesley, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and
Charles Wesley, M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. London.
Printed by William Strahan, and sold by James Hutton, bookseller, at
the Bible and Sun without Temple Bar; Mr. Bray’s, a brazier, in Little
Britain, M DCC XXXIX.’ In this volume Charles Wesley’s first published
poems appeared, and from this time he is the recognized poet of the
Revival.
Charles Wesley was born at Epworth Rectory on December 18, 1707.
Notwithstanding poverty, debt, difficulty, and persecution, there was
probably no more truly Christian home in England. The cultivation of
personal religion and simple faith in God found congenial soil here,
and doubtless in other obscure country parsonages. The Rector of
Epworth was a poet of some gifts, which the whole family inherited in
greater or less degree. His eldest son—sixteen years older than
Charles—was a minor poet and hymn-writer, and the younger members of
the family grew up in an atmosphere which must have made it natural
for them to write verses.
We have, however, no indication of precocious hymn-writing on the part
of Charles Wesley, nor, indeed, of any poetic composition till he was
seven-and-twenty, when he writes to convey a protest against his
sister’s marriage. Probably he did not discover his special talent
till he was in Georgia, where the Governor’s wife wrote, ‘Mr. Wesley
has the gift of verse, and has written many sweet hymns, which we
sing.’[109]
But if Charles Wesley wrote little poetry before his American mission,
he had received much of the training which was in due season to yield
such abundant fruit. The gracious influences of the Lincolnshire
rectory, of the Oxford Methodists, of his Moravian fellow passengers,
all helped to mould his fervent spirit. The poet within him could not
long be silent, and had already awoke when he received the baptism of
the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, 1738. This was the time of
his evangelical conversion, when he passed out of the state of the
anxious and conscientious servant into the glorious liberty of the
child of God. From that time the word of Christ dwelt in him richly.
‘The wealth of God’[110] was bestowed upon him, and out of the
abundance of a heart enriched by the indwelling word he poured forth
psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in an almost ceaseless stream. Had
Charles Wesley never passed through this experience he would have been
one of our greatest ecclesiastical hymn-writers, and would have ranked
with Heber and Keble, but there would have been no distinctively
Methodist hymnody, and the Evangelical Revival would have been
immeasurably poorer. Moreover, he did very much to preserve the
standard of good taste, as well as the fervour of religious feeling,
in primitive Methodism.
Charles Wesley, a Christ Church student, came to add sweetness to
this sudden and startling light. He was the ‘sweet singer’ of the
movement. His hymns expressed the fiery conviction of its converts
in lines so chaste and beautiful, that its more extravagant features
disappeared. The wild throes of hysteric enthusiasm passed into a
passion for hymn-singing, and a new musical impulse was aroused in
the people which gradually changed the face of public devotion
throughout England.[111]
Charles Wesley would probably have accepted Keble’s judgement as to
the value of ‘a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical
religion,’ but his standard allowed a much wider range and warmer glow
to feeling than was possible to the poet of the later Oxford Movement.
Both the Wesleys shrank with the instinct of the scholar and the
gentleman from extravagance and vulgarity. Their energies were often
devoted to restraining the exuberant manifestations of the fervour of
their converts; and though they dared not deal too strictly with what
they believed to be indications of genuine spiritual emotion, they
deprecated undue excitement, and regarded hysterical testimonies in a
very different light from that in which Edward Irving viewed the
speaking with tongues.
Saved from the fear of hell and death,
With joy we seek the things above;
And all Thy saints the spirit breathe
Of power, sobriety, and love.
Pure love to God Thy members find,
Pure love to every soul of man;
And in Thy sober, spotless mind,
Saviour, our heaven on earth we gain.[112]
If Charles Wesley impressed himself upon the Methodist Revival to its
great benefit, the Revival in its turn most advantageously affected
his hymn-writing. In many of his poems it is easy to trace the
influence of the Anglican Prayer-book or the Moravian prayer-meeting,
but the typically Methodist hymns show little trace of either; they
are songs of the open-air service or of the class-room. Beecher’s
statement that Charles Wesley’s ‘hymns are only Moravian hymns
re-sung’ is more than a gross exaggeration.
In the early days of Methodism, Charles Wesley was as energetic and as
successful an evangelist as John. He loved the stir, the tumult, the
triumph of those great outdoor gatherings, where testimony must be
borne before mobs who might at any time endanger the property and even
the lives of preacher and hearers. In this regard the poet of the
Evangelical Revival had a great advantage over the poet of the
Tractarian Movement. Keble is one of the singers of the country
parsonage. At Fairford and Hursley he found, as Cowper at Olney,
The calm retreat, the silent shade,
With prayer and praise agree;
but Charles Wesley was moved to his highest flights of praise by
hard-won victories amongst his wild hearers in Cornwall, or
Moorfields, at Kingswood, or Walsall. The depths of his soul were
moved when he saw the first signs of penitence in the unwonted tears
which cut white channels in the begrimed faces of the colliers, whom
he taught to sing
But O the power of grace Divine!
In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannas join,
And blasphemies are turned to praise!
Nor must we overlook the influence of the Methodist class-meeting upon
Charles Wesley’s hymns. That institution was of the essence of
Methodism. It provided a ‘Holy Club,’ or a number of holy clubs, in
every place where converts had been gathered. True to his mission as
the poet of Methodism, he provided hymns for the Societies in their
private meetings as well as in their vast evangelistic gatherings. The
hymn-book naturally begins with the section headed ‘Exhorting and
Beseeching to Return to God,’ but the majority of the hymns are for
the penitent, the mourner, the believer, and for the backslider—the
man in whom old habits have proved too strong, who has wandered back
to sin, but longs to turn to God again. Charles Wesley shared with
John the pastoral oversight of the converts, often spending many weeks
in Dublin, Newcastle, or Bristol, or passing rapidly through Cornwall
or the Black Country, not only preaching the gospel, but carefully
examining, encouraging, and sifting the societies. The class-meeting
gave the distinctive tone to Methodist devotion, and Charles Wesley
was quick to sympathize with the varying moods of religious experience
related by the members. His hymns were often written for use by the
Society in its stated gatherings or by Christian friends meeting
socially in each other’s houses. In every revision of the _Methodist
Hymn-book_ it has been recognized that ample provision must be made
for such occasions, and that hymns might be very useful and, in fact,
extensively used though never heard in public worship.
The Wesleys were singularly open to impressions from those whom they
met, or whose books they read. Anglican, Moravian, Mystic by turns,
they only gradually developed into Methodists. In their first joint
publication they note that ‘some verses ... were wrote upon the scheme
of the Mystic divines’ whom they ‘had once in great veneration, as the
best explainers of the gospel of Christ.’[113] George Herbert, John
Norris (that other less famous parson of Bemerton), Henry More, and
such German hymn-writers as Freylinghausen, Christian Friedrich
Richter, and W. C. Dessler, were their first masters of Christian
song; but Charles Wesley soon found his own wings, and ceased to
belong to any school of poets, though to the end traces of other men’s
writings are to be found—amounting occasionally to actual verbal
quotation, e.g. from Milton, Young, Tate and Brady.
It is not possible to assign dates for the composition of many of
Charles Wesley’s hymns after the early years of the Revival, except
those called forth by some special occasion, such as the ‘Earthquake
Hymns,’ and those for the troubled days of the Insurrection of 1745.
At such times the hymns must have been written as a kind of task-work,
and the result is rarely more than commonplace. The poet seemed to
think it his duty, as the laureate of Methodism, to provide suitable
hymns for the special services rendered necessary by stirring events,
and usually wrote one or two in each of the favourite metres. These
were issued in small pamphlets at a few pence, and no doubt sold very
extensively, as did John Wesley’s prose tracts, through which he
‘unawares became rich.’
It is difficult for a Methodist preacher of the fourth generation,
whose earliest and most sacred associations are hallowed by memories
of Wesley’s hymns, to attempt an impartial, not to say a critical,
survey of them. If, then, I seem to place too high an estimate on the
Wesley poetry as compared with the hymns of others, I trust it may be
credited rather to early training and inherited affection than to
denominational partiality.
It may at once be granted that Charles Wesley wrote far too easily and
too diffusely to secure permanent remembrance for the majority of his
hymns. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, might disappear without serious
loss to the spiritual and devotional life of the Church. It may be
admitted, further, that he did not know which were his best and which
his worst productions, and that John Wesley’s editing might with
advantage have been more severe. The printing-press was dangerously
convenient to Charles Wesley, and the certainty of extensive sale for
everything he published, combined with the enthusiasm with which their
people received what the brothers wrote, either in prose or verse,
presented a temptation to rapid and frequent publication which few
poets could resist. Moreover, much that he wrote was designed for
immediate use, and had to be written, printed, published ere the
occasion passed. Yet it is probable that not much would have been
gained by elaborate revision. Charles Wesley was too tender-hearted to
treat his literary offspring as David treated the Moabites, measuring
two lines to put to death and one full line to keep alive, though both
he and Dr. Watts might not unwisely have adopted some such heroic
measure.
His hymns were often written at white heat, but they underwent
constant revision by their author, and generally they had a further
revision by his brother. The poet himself records eight revisions of
his Short Hymns on the Gospels and Acts, which he noted were ‘finished
April 24, 1765,’ and revised for the last time May 11, 1787.