O all that pass by, To Jesus draw near;
He utters a cry, Ye sinners, give ear!
From hell to retrieve you, He spreads out His hands;
Now, now to receive you, He graciously stands.
Only a preacher, perhaps only an open-air preacher, could have written
such hymns. They are not hymns of the oratory, of the class-room, or
the village church; but of that vast cathedral whose roof is the blue
vault of heaven; they are songs of Moorfields, of Kingswood, of
Newcastle, and of Gwennap. Perhaps of all Wesley’s hymns these are the
most characteristically Methodist. Comparatively few are to be found
even yet in any but Methodist books, but in them they hold an
unchallenged place, and belong to the whole Methodist family, which
has had many a quarrel in Conference, has been many a time by schisms
rent asunder, but has never faltered in its loyal and steadfast
proclamation of the message of God’s everlasting love.
As a general rule each revision of a Nonconformist hymn-book renders
it less distinctive of the denomination it represents, and this is, to
some extent, true of the new Methodist hymn-book. It has lost the
section with which Wesley’s book opened, ‘Exhorting and Entreating to
Return to God,’ but it retains almost all the hymns. Modern writers
have seldom succeeded in hymns of this type. A few, however, rank with
the best of Charles Wesley’s, who himself never struck a note of
yearning sympathy for the erring more true and tender than Faber in
his ‘Come to Jesus.’
Souls of men! why will ye scatter
Like a crowd of frightened sheep?
Foolish hearts! why will ye wander
From a love so true and deep?
It is not one of the best signs of the times that hymns of invitation
are now for the most part provided by American singers and are of the
ephemeral class.