MASTER NEGATIVE 92-80737 MICROFILMED 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: BETT, HENRY TITLE: THE HYMNS OF METHODISM . . PLACE: LONDON DATE: [ 1 920] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MTCROFORM TARHFT Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record l* ' »i "»' i' WTTHi iii /> i« w j.1. 1 . ,jf> i y i j pi > I n n i^iii w\ [;245 B466 i Restrictionc on Use: Bett, Henry. Bv^H.nr^^lff ^S'^^^^T ^ *^^^^ lit^^^^y relations. ±5y Henry Bett. [New and enl. ed.j London The En worth press [1920j -^^unuon, xne Ji,p- vii, 146, clj p. 19"". 1. Hymns. Title from Union Theol. Sem. Printed by L. C. \2\ A 21-312 TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: REDUCTION RATIO- IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA IIA IB IIB i^/^iiu. DATE FILMED: INITIALS HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATION.S, INC WOnnRRmnFrT , « « • • • • , , r « t < • » » « » » » * IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS • J ■ » *.i» >« <• < » ) • « » • , » ' •J ' « • • 1 » > 4 • ■ *■ », * BY HENRY BETT '. TLon6ott THE EPWORTH PRESS J. ALFRED SHARP / f ^ • t . # • ■ ► I « « • n . t TO MY WIFE 37 -2-lj-G(^l First Edition, 191 3 New and Enlarged Edition, 1920 ^ \ PREFACE The only considerable and competent work that has ever been done, so far as I am aware, upon the subject dealt with in the following pages, is contained in some papers which appeared in the Wesley an Methodist Magazine more than forty years ago, by the late Rev. John Wesley Thomas, the distinguished translator of Dante, and in some contributions to the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society in recent years by the late Mr. Charles Lawrence Ford, B.A. I have con- sulted these, but it is only fair to myself to say that more than nine-tenths of the references given in the book are the result of my own reading. About a fourth of the matter contained in this volume has appeared in the pages of the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, the Methodist RecordeYy and the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. I make grateful acknowledge- ments to the Editors of these pubhcations. HENRY BETT. Lincoln, 19 12. ( ■l( CONTENTS PAGE Introduction I. THE METHODIST HYMNS AND ENGLISH LITERATURE .... I II. THE SOURCE AND DATE OF THE EARLIEST METHODIST HYMNS ... 6 I. THE SCRIPTURES l6 II. THE FATHERS, THE LITURGIES, AND THE MYSTICS . . . . -39 III. THE POETS 71 Appendices I. JOHN Wesley's translations from THE GERMAN . . . . IIO II. QUIETISM AND CALVINISM . . . II3 III. ARCHAISMS IN THE HYMNS . . . 120 IV. THE HYMNS OF JOHN WESLEY . . . I29 V. SOME CLASSICAL ALLUSIONS IN THE HYMNS INDEX . 136 i -?fT 1^ ^i INTRODUCTION THE METHODIST HYMNS AND ENGLISH LITERATURE It was remarked by Archbishop Trench that the greatest hymn of the Middle Ages owes much of its modern recognition to the use that Goethe made of it in FausL Literary It was this circumstance which Recognition ' helped to bring it to the know- ledge of some who would not otherwise have known it; or if they had, would not have believed its worth, but that the sage and seer of this world had thus stood sponsor to it, and set his seal of recognition upon it/* It would appear that the hterary world is waiting for some such warranty before it realizes that in the early hymns of Methodism we possess a unique literature of devotion. The rare quality, literary and spiritual, of the hymns of the Wesleys has passed almost unrecognized for more than a hundred and fifty years, except among Methodists. * Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 273. B i THE HYMKS OF METHODISM i I I V There is a perverse tradition among men of letters that Methodism has no Hterature. Leslie Stephen contrasted the hterary result of the Oxford Movement and of the EvangeHcal Revival, and deplored, in the latter, ' the absence of any literature possessing more than a purely historical interest/* This is one of the most amazing judgements to which a critic ever com- mitted himself. It is surely beyond question, for those who know both books, that John Wesley's Journal is in its way as absolutely literature as Newman's Apologia, and what a gulf there is between the pale, ecclesiastical verse of Keble and the lyrical raptures of Charles Wesley ! The mere fact is that the hymns of Methodism constitute the finest body of devotional verse in the language, and that the very best of them belong to the exalted region of the Dies irae, dies ilia of Thomas of Celano, and the Jesu dulcis memoria of St. Bernard. The extraordinary fecundity of Charles Wesley as a writer of rehgious verse has certainly obscured our sense of the Hterary value of what he wrote. No poet can maintain the highest level throughout a dozen volumes. In the thousands of hymns he wrote there are inevit- ably many that are mere versification of evan- gehcal commonplace. But the general quaUty * History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century ^ vol. ii zii., p. lox. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 8 of the style is remarkably high, and scattered through this mass of work there are many scores of hymns, at the least, that are of the very highest order. The best work of Charles Wesley abides for the universal Church in the Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists of 1780— an anthology, selected mainly from the vast mass of his brother's work by John Wesley — of which so unprejudiced a critic as Dr. Martineau declared that it was ' after the Scriptures, the grandest instrument of popular religious culture that Christendom has ever produced.'* The writings of the early Methodists mark an epoch in English literature. The early eighteenth century was a period when almost every writer was chilled into con- Early Methodism ventionaUty by a false classicism, and Literature Addison represented the perfec- tion of EngHsh prose. And, as De Quincey once declared, in a very discerning paragraph, 'Addison, in particular, shrank from every bold and every profound expression as from an offence against good taste. He dared not for his Ufe have used the word " passion " except in the vulgar sense of an angry paroxysm. He durst as soon have danced a hornpipe on the top of the Monument as have talked of ** rapturous emotion." What would he have said? Why, *- sentiments that were of a nature to prove ^ In a letter to Miss Winkworth. 4 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM agreeable after an unusual rate." ' * The writings of the early Methodists marked the first return to simplicity and sincerity in prose. It was Edward FitzGerald who was the first to point this out, with characteristic insight and inde- pendence of judgement. * Another book I have had is Wesley's Journal,' he wrote to Professor Cowell. * If you don't know it, do know it ; it is curious to think of this Diary of his running almost coevally with Walpole's Letter-Diary, the two men born and dying too within a few years of one another, and with such different lives to record. And it is remarkable to read pure, un- affected, and undying EngHsh, while Addison and Johnson are tainted with a style which all the world imitated ! ' And as in the prose, so in the poetry of the age. Appearing at the very time when English poetry was most stilted and sterile, the h5mins of Methodism became the prelude of a lyrical revival. Wordsworth remarked that, with one or two negligible exceptions, ' the poetry of the period intervening between the pubhcation of Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature, and scarcely presents a famihar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feehngs had urged him * Works xi., p. 21 (1890I. The Methodist Hymns a Lyrical Prelade IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 5 to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagina- tion.' * It would be equally true to say that for a similar period, beginning and ending a little later, say, from the death of Henry Vaughan to the youth of Robert Burns, the lyrical note was never heard in these lands. Poetry had ceased to be 'simple, sensuous, and passionate.' Fire and fervour, the sense of wonder, the arresting note of reahty, had all gone. Lyrical sincerity and spontaneity reappear first of all in the hymns of Methodism. We hear again the authentic note of passion, and it betokens much for English poetry in the days to come. A single example will serve where scores might be adduced. Think of the verve, the imaginative boldness, the ecstatic fervour of stanzas like these in an age when English verse was dominated by the influence of Pope — the lines were published in 1749: 1 cannot see Thy face, and live, Then let me see Thy face, and die! Now, Lord, my gasping spirit receive ; Give me on eagle's wings to fly. With eagle's eyes on Thee to gaze, And plunge into the glorious blaze I The fullness of my great reward A blest eternity shall be. But hast Thou not on earth prepared Some better thing than this for me ? What, but one drop ! one transient sight I I want a sun, a sea of hght. * Essay, Supplementary to the Preface of the Poems, \l ^ j 6 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM II THE SOURCE AND DATE OF THE EARLIEST METHODIST HYMNS The earliest of the hymns of Methodism were written during John Wesley's residence in America. One of the most in- teresting passages in the first volume of the Standard Edition of Wesley's Journal is that in which we are given a page from Wesley's Diary for 1736, containing the text of four of his hymns. Hitherto the only knowledge we have had as to any hymn written in that year has been the reference in the Plain Account of Christian Perfection, where Wesley wrote : ' We embarked for America in the latter end of 1735. It was the next year, while I was at Savannah, that I wrote the following Hnes : John Wesley's Earliest Translations Is there a thing beneath the sun That strives with Thee my heart to share ? Ah ! tear it thence, and reign alone, The Lord of every motion there I * It was in 1736, therefore, that he made his great version of Tersteegen's Verborgne Gottes Liehe ^du, ' Thou hidden love of God, whose height,' which Emerson declared to be the greatest h5min in the language. Now we have to add the four hymns from the Diary for that year. ' We IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 7 do not know the date of the writing,' remarks Mr. Cumock, ' but it must have been some weeks earher than December, 1736.' These five hymns are the earliest of the hymns of Methodism : they are all translations from the German, they are all the work of John Wesley, and they all date from the first year of his sojourn in Georgia. Not only are these the first hymns of which we have any knowledge, but it is almost certain that they are the very first that John Wesley ever wrote. He began to learn German at the begin- ning of the voyage, on October 17, 1735, and the Diary for 1736 has many entries such as 'German,' ' verses,' ' translated German,' ' made verses.' These entries, which show that he was working at German hymns, begin in May, 1736, and these hymns date from the next few months. The hymns in the Diary (except the first) have niunbers attached — a valuable detail — and three of the four were previously known to be transla- tions from Freylinghausen, Richter, and Zinzen- dorf. The fourth had never been published before, and there was some doubt as to whether it was a translation or an original hymn of Wesley's, until the present writer discovered, in searching through Knapp's Evangelischer Lieder- schatz, that it was a version of Paul Gerhardt's Ich singe dir mit Herz und Mund. The first lines of these hymns, and the nimibers, as given in the Diary, are as follows • ! 1 8 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM * O Jesu, Source of calm repose.* 124 * My soul before Thee prostrate lies.* 215 ' Jesu, to Thee my heart I bow.' 306 ' To Thee with heart and mouth I sing.' Mr. Curnock suggested in a note that these numbers prefixed to the hymns might possibly give a clue to the ' original source whence they were drawn before translation.' Some time ago, the writer became the happy possessor of a copy of the 1737 edition of Das Gesang'Buch der Gemeine in Herrn- The Qerman Huth — the hymnal of the Moravians Source at Hermhut. This, except for a few corrections and an appendix, is an exact reprint of the first edition of 1735. On looking for the originals of the hymns in the Diary, it appeared that the numbers were the numbers of the pages in this book. On p. 724 (the printed number, 124, is a very natural mis- take, due to Wesley's faded writing) is Hier legt mein Sinn sich vor dir nieder, on p. 215 Reiner Brdut'gam meiner Seek, and on p. 306 Ich singe dir mit Herz und Mund. There are no tunes in the Hermhut Gesanghuch, but the names of familiar chorales are put at the head of some of the hymns, and at the beginning of the book there is a table in which the hymns are grouped according to metre, some of the sections having an asterisked number at their head. This number, as the preface explains, refers to the page of the Halle Gesafigbuch where IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 9 a suitable melody may be found. What is meant by the Halle Gesangbuch is evidently Freyling- hausen's hymnal, the accepted collection of the Pietists, whose head quarters were at Halle. In the Library of Richmond College are Wesley's copies of the Herrnhut Gesangbuch and of Frey- linghausen's Gesangbuch, We now know that Wesley had both books in his possession in Georgia in 1736, or, at any rate, had access to them there, for under the date, Sunday, Novem- ber 21, in that year, there is an entry in his Diary : ' Freyhnghausen's Gesangbuch with Dela- motte,' and the numbered hymns in the Diary prove that he used the Herrnhut Gesangbuch then. Most of those who were aware that Wesley possessed both books seem to have thought that these were merely two different hymnals, without any special relation, and it has been suggested that he drew upon each of them for his translations. But the unquestionable fact is that his copy of Freyhnghausen's Gesangbuch was Wesley's tune-book : it was simply the musical companion of the Herrnhut hymnal. There remains no possible doubt about this. All the thirty-three hymns that Wesley translated are found in the Herrnhut Gesangbuch, many of them are found nowhere else, and — ^as we have seen — ^where he attached a number it was that of the page in this book, despite the fact that two of the three numbered hymns are found in Frey- linghausen also. It is plain that he did not use I !i; 10 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Freylinghausen for the hymns which the book contained, but merely for the tunes. Seven of the hymns that Wesley translated are by Zinzendorf ; four by Gerhardt ; four by Scheffler ; two by Tersteegen ; two by Freyling- hausen ; two by C. F. Richter; one each by Ernst Lange, Joachim Lange, W. C. Dessler, J. J. Winckler, J. A. Rothe, Anna Dober, Maria Bohmer, Gottfried Arnold, Sigismund Gmelin, L. A. Gotter, and A. G. Spangenberg; and one is a cento from four hymns by Zinzendorf, Johann Nitschmann, and Anna Nitschmann.* It should be noted that the bulk of these writers are Pietists and Moravians. Freyling- hausen (1670-1739) was the son- Pietists and in - law and successor of A. H. Moravians Francke, the founder of the Orphan House at Halle. C. F. Richter (1676-1711) was the physician of the Orphan House. Joachim Lange (1670-1744) was Professor of Divinity at Halle. J. J. Winckler (1670-1722) was a Pietist clergyman. Gottfried Arnold (i 666-1714), a distinguished ecclesiastical historian, was a disciple of Spener, the founder of Pietism. Ludwig Andreas Gotter (1661-1735), who was Hofrat at Gotha, had relations with Pietism. Sigismund Christian Gmelin (1679-1707) was a Separatist who had a variegated career, but was in touch with * Sec Appendix I. for a complete list of the German hymns , and their writers. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 11 Pietists all his Hfe. Maria Magdalena Bohmer (i67?-i743) was a Pietist who contributed three hymns to Freylinghausen's collection. Then, in addition to Zinzendorf, there are three other Moravians whose hymns Wesley translated. J. A. Rothe (1688-175^) was ap- pointed by the Count to the pastorate of Berthelsdorf, the parish in which Hermhut was situated, Anna Dober (1713-39) {nee Schindler) was the wife of Leonhard J. Dober, one of the bishops of the Brethren, and A. G. Spangenberg (1704-1792), who had been Assistant Professor of Divinity at Halle, was the most learned and lovable of the Moravians, and became also one of their bishops. Thus, excepting the classical hymns of Ger- hardt (1607-1676), Scheffler (1624-1677), and Tersteegen (1697-1769), practically all the rest of the hymns that Wesley translated were the pro- duct of the two great and closely related spiritual movements that had their head quarters at Halle and at Herrnhut. The translations from the German were all published between 1737 and 1742. They were probably all written by 1739. Apparently Wesley disused German after his breach with the Moravians in 1740, In Novem- ber, 1745, when many German troops were en- camped on the Town Moor at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in consequence of the Rebellion, he wrote in his Journal ; ' I observed many Germans standing \i ^-0> ,V-4 ..aj^ Irl ■ i^t.^jieS. II ' I John Wesley and the German Language 12 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM disconsolate at the skirts of the congregation. To these I was constrained (though I had discontinued it so long) to speak a few words in their own language. Immediately they gathered up close together, and drank in every word/ This, of course, refers to dis- use of the spoken language, but it is significant that no German books are mentioned in the Journal after the earHest period, while French books are often referred to. Yet, on the other hand, he read Bengel's Erklarte Offenbarung Johannis as late as 1754, for use in his Notes on the New Testament. It is probable, however, that this was merely a case of furbishing up his German to read a book of which he was in special need. In his knowledge of German, as in so much else, Wesley was a pioneer. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century, at the time when the fame of Goethe and Schiller was filtering through into England, that Englishmen began to regard German as a language worth learning. It would be possible to count on the fingers of one hand the distinguished Englishmen who knew German in 1740. John Wesley's versions of German hymns are amongst the very finest examples of translated Translated ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ language. They stand Hymns *^® supreme test of a translator's art, for they are as vigorous and as poetical as the originals. They read as if they IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 13 had been written in English. His own standard of translation varied. Sometimes his version is as literal as it could be, to retain freedom of poetical movement, as, for example, in the stanza : O Love, Thou bottomless abyss ! My sins are swallowed up in Thee. Covered is my unrighteousness, Nor spot of guilt remains on me. While Jesu's blood, through earth and skies Mercy, free, boundless mercy, cries ! which renders the German verse : O Abgrund, welcher alle Siinden Durch Christi Tod verschlungen hat! Das heisst die Wunde recht verbinden, Da findet kein Verdammen statt, Weil Christi Blut bestandig schreit, Barmherzigkeit I Barmherzigkeit ! In other hymns, again, the EngHsh does little more than express the central thought of the German, as in the lines : Through Thy rich grace, in Jesu's blood Blessing, redemption, hfe we find. Our souls washed in this cleansing flood, No stain of guilt remains behind. Wlio can Thy mercy's stores express? Unfathomable, numberless ! which are a version of the German stanza: Du segnest uns in ihm, dem Herm, Mit iiberschwenghch reichem Segen, Und gehest unser Armut gem Mit deiner theurern Gnad' entgegen, Was sind wir doch, du allerschSnstes Gut, Dass dcine Lieb' so Grosses an uns tliut? ' il U mfi HYMNS OF METHODISM John Wesley learned some Spanish while in Georgia, in order to minister to a few Spanish Jews who were in the colony. He translated one Spanish hymn, 'O God, my God, my all Thou art!' — a fine version of Psalm Ixiii. The Spanish source has never been traced. The earUest of Charles Wesley's hymns appear to have been those entitled ' A Hymn for Mid- night' ('While midnight shades Charles Wesley's the earth o'erspread'), 'Written Earliest Hymns in the Beginning of a Recovery from Sickness ' (' Peace, fluttering soul! the storm is o'er'), and 'After a Recovery from Sickness' ('And live I yet by power divine?'). The first of these probably dates from the early months of 1738; the others were certainly written during that period. But the real beginning of Charles Wesley's work as the poet of Methodism came with the wonderful experience of May 21, 1738. Immediately there- after he wrote three hymns which have a new accent. 'Where shall my wondering soul begin? ' is almost certainly the hymn referred to in the entry in his Journal for May 24, 'Toward ten my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared, "I believe!" We sang the hymn with great joy.' 'And can it be that I should gain ' is coloured throughout by reminiscences of a passage in Luther's Galatians that he had read on May 17. 'What mom on thee with sweeter ray ' is entitled IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 15 f Congratulations to a Friend on beheving in Christ,' and was unquestionably addressed to his brother at this time. These hymns, the firstfruits of Charles Wesley's genius, were all first pubhshed in the Hyhins and Sacred Poems of 1739. From that year onward his hymns appeared in a stream of pubHcations that only ceased in 1785-— three years before his death. il ')* H CHAPTER I THE SCRIPTURES d-n-h j3p€cj>ovs TOL upa y/au/x/iara ot8as • In the year 1729/ wrote John Wesley, ' I began not only to read but to study the Bible.' The results of that devoted study of Many Allusions the Word of God are to be seen to Scripture in every page that he wrote. Both the brothers must have had a most profound, exact, and extensive acquaint- ance with the Scriptures. Indeed, it is only a close study of the Bible on our own part that can reveal to us the extent of their intimacy with it. There can hardly be a single paragraph anywhere in the Scriptures that is not somewhere reflected in the writings of the Wesleys. The hymns, in many cases, are a mere mosaic of bibhcal allu- sions. Here is a stanza — and many others would have served equally well — ^where there is a distinct quotation of Scripture in every line : Behold the servant of the Lord ! 1 wait Thy guiding eye to feel, To hear and keep Thy every word, To prove and do Thy perfect will ; Joyful from my own works to cease. Glad to fulfil all righteousness. 16 THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 17 These six lines recall the following six passages in the Authorized Version : * And Mary said. Behold the handmaid of the Lord ' (Luke i. 38). * I will guide thee with Mine eye ' (Ps. xxxii. 8). ' If a man love Me he will keep My words * (John xiv. 23). 'That ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God ' (Rom. xii. 2). * For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, a- God did from His ' (Heb. iv. 10). ' For thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- ness ' (Matt. iii. 15). But the most interesting points with regard to the Wesleys and the Authorized Version a e naturally their many divergencies from it. They often used, and The Prayer- sometimes deliberately preferred Book Psalter to use, the older version of the Psalms (substantially Coverdale's) which is re- tained in the Book of Common Prayer. As devout Churchmen they had been familiar with this from childhood, and in many cases their use of it was doubtless merely casual. But there are other instances in which they remembered both versions, and combined or contrasted them. Much of Charles Wesley's language and thought was coloured by renderings in this version. Thus the words of Ps. xxvii. 16 ' O tarry thou C •i 'I N \ 18 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM the Lord's leisure/ are recalled in many of his verses: Faiating soul, be bold, be strong, Wiiit the leisure of thy Lord ; Though it seem to tarry long, True and faithful is His word. And the language of Ps. xlv. 4, ' Gird Thee with Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O Thou most Mighty, according to Thy worship and renown/ is closely paraphrased in another hymn : Gird on Thy thigh the Spirit's sword, And take to Thee Thy power divine ; Stir up Thy strength. Almighty Lord, All power and majesty are Thine; Assert Thy worship and renown ; O all-redeeming God, come down ! In a poetical paraphrase of Ps. Ixxxiv., both versions of the eleventh verse are utilized, ' For the Lord God is a light and a defence ' (P.B.V.), ' For the Lord God is a sun and shield ' (A. V.) : The Lord protects and cheers His own, Their light and strength, their shield and sun He shall both grace and glory give. The earlier version of Ps. xcix. i, ' The Lord is King, b© the people never so impatient,' is remembered in the opening verse of a hymn — The Lord is King, and earth submits, Howe'er impatient, to His sway, Between the cherubim He sits, And makes His restless foes obey. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 19 So a clause from Ps. cxxxix. 23, ' Try me, O God, and seek the ground of my heart/ is remembered in another hymn — Try us, O God, atid search the ground Of every sinful heart ! Whate'er oi sin in us is found, O bid it all depart ! Many other examples might be quoted. There is one, however, of unusual interest. In Ps. Ixxiv. 12, where the Authorized Version with the Hebrew, Septuagint, and Vulgate, has 'For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth,' the Prayer-Book Version renders 'For God is my King of old; the help that is done upon earth, He doeth it Himself/ This is following Luther, * der alle Hilfe thut, so auf Erden geschieht,' and the Zurich Bible, 'du der alles heyl und hilff (das in der gantzen welt geschieht) allein thusV It is reproduced in one of the hymns : A feeble thing of nought. With lowly shame I own The help that upon earth is wrought Thou dost it all alone. John Wesley emphatically preferred this ren- dering. He wrote in his Journal, under the date October 14, 1785, ' I preached in the evening in the old Temple Church, on Ps. Ixxiv. 12. In the old translation it runs, "The help that is done upon earth, God doeth it Himself/' A i I' i' ' m t 20 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM glorious and important truth! In the new, " Working salvation in the midst of the earth." What a wonderful emendation ! Many such emendations there are in this translation ; one would think King James had made them him- self.' In another passage in the Journal, a year and a half later. April 22, 1787, he refers to the text and translation again: 'I opened and applied that glorious text, *' The heJp that is done upon earth, He doeth it Himself." Is it not strange that this text, Ps. Ixxiv. 12, is vanished out of the new translation of the Psalms ? ' Notwithstanding Wesley's uncritical scorn of the ' emendation,' it is the only correct rendering. He was very old, and very busy, or a glance at his Hebrew Bible would have shown him that the Authorized Version was unquestionably right. In the Notes on the New Testament Wesley freely revised the Authorized Version. And it has never yet been sufficiently recognized that in this (as in so much else) he was wonderfully ahead of his age. Wesley's ver- sion, issued in 1754, was a mar- vellous anticipation of the Revised Version of a hundred and thirty years later. We have tested three chapters, chosen haphazard, and find that in these chapters Wesley introduced sixty-one changes into the text. Out of these sixty-one John Wesley's Revision of the New Testament The Wesleys and the Greek Testament IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 21 changes he anticipated the reading of the Revised Version in thirty-two cases. Moreover, it is nearly always in the more serious alterations that the Revisers agree with him. There must be in the whole New Testament, say, 3»o^ changes in the text of the Authorized Version, in which Wesley anticipated the Revisers of 1881. And he anticipated them in the arrangement of the text into paragraphs. ^ ^ Behind all this there was, of course, an inti- mate knowledge of the Greek Testament. John Wesley was Greek Lecturer at Lincoln College, and that did not mean that he had to do with Hellenic studies (as some who have written about it have assumed), but that he lectured on the Greek Testament. One of the early Methodist preachers recorded that Wesley could always remember the Greek of a passage in the New Testament, even when he was at a loss for the exact language of the Authorized Version. And Charles Wesley, like his brother, had a devout scholar's knowledge of the New Testament in the original.* This intimacy with the Greek Testament appears in many dehghtful ways in their writings, as well as in the revised text given in the Notes on the New Testament. Naturally it ia most 1 Dr Ada- Clarke says that John Wesley used the mirificam edition of the Greek Testament, printed by Stephens, at Paris, in 1546. t! t . 'II Mistranslations in the Aatho- rized Version 22 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM easily discerned where the Authorized Version is defective. Many scores of examples might be quoted. There are a few absolute mistranslations in the Authorized Version. One of the worst is in Phil. ii. 7, where ' made Himself of no reputation ' represents the Greek kavrov €K€vo}(r€ 'emptied Himself.' The translators of 1611 were apparently afraid of the Apostle's bold and simple word. Wesley removed the futile circumlocution of the Authorized Version and gave the only possible rendering, as the Revised Version did later. Wherever the passage is referred to in the hymns, the proper equivalent of the Greek is given — He left His Father's throne above, So free so infinite His grace ! Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for Adam's helpless race. To Thee, who from the eternal throne, Cam'st emptied ol Thy glory down, For us to groan, to bleed, to die ! There is another passage in Philippians where the translation, inadequate to begin with, became still more unsatisfactory through the change in meaning of an EngHsh word. The Authorized Version of Phil. iii. 20 is * For our conversation is in heaven.' The Greek is iroXtTcu/uto, 'citizenship,' and the Re\dsed Version reads accordingly, * For IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 28 our citizenship is in heaven.' The poet evidently had the original in mind when he wrote— To me the victor's title give Among Thy glorious saints to live. And all their happiness to know, A citizen of heaven below. Again, one of the striking defects of the Authorized Version is its strange indifference as to the presence or absence of the Greek article — a characteristic The Greek largely due to the influence of Article the Vulgate. The Authorized Version of 2 Tim. iv. 7 is, ' I have fought a good fight,' but the Textus Receptus is, rhv dyi^va rhv KaXbv ' the good fight.' So Wesley rendered it in the Notes, and the force of the article is remem- bered in more than one hynm— I the good fight have fought, when shall I declare? The victory by my Saviour got 1 long with Paul to share. There is only one 'good fight —what the Apostle calls elsewhere ' the good fight of faith.' The very next verse of Scripture furnishes another example of the same thing. The Autho- rized Version translates ' Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.' But the Greek is 6 t^s 8iKaio(rvvr)s (rTc<^avo5 * the crown of righteousness.' So Wesley renders it in the Notes. And so constantly in the hymns : : i ( 24, THE HYMNS OF METHODISM The glorious crown of righteousness To me reached out 1 view, Conqueror through Him, I soon shall seize And wear it as my due. Again the Authorized Version frequently ig- nores that important canon of translation which ordains that different words in Different Words the original shall be rendered by in the Original different words in the version. It is well known that there are two words in the Greek Testament, both of which the Authorized Version renders ' crown/ 8idSrjp.a and <7T€<^avos. The former is the kingly ornament, the royal crown. The word only occurs thrice, in the whole of the New Testament, and all the three instances are in the Apocalypse— the ' seven diadems' of the dragon (Rev. xii. 3), the 'ten diadems ' of the beast (Rev. xiii. i), and the 'many diadems' of Christ (Rev. xix. 12). In each case Wesley, in the Notes, retained the original word, as the Revisers did in 1881. One of the hymns, too, remembers the word— And who in Christ are found. They His diadem shall wear, With hfe and glory crowned. The other word, avoavQv Tr)s fo)!??. The passage is quoted in many of the hymns, and the proper significance of the word is brought out in nearly every case. Be faithful unto death, Partake My victory, And thou shalt wear this glorious wreath. And thou shalt reign with Me. And so in references to 2 Tim. iv. 8 — The glorious wreath which now I see The Lord, the righteous Judge, on me Shall at that day bestow. In John xiii. 10 the Authorized Version is; ' He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.' This fails to dis- tinguish between the two Greek verbs upon * Hi lil 26 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM which the whole meaning of the passage turns, and which should be rendered as in the Revised Version, ' He that is bathed (6 XcA-ov/icvos) needeth not save to wash {viyl^axrBai) his feet/ The point is remembered in a h5min — If bathed in Thine atoning blood, Am 1 not every whit made clean? My care is now to wash my feet, And if I humbly walk with Thee, Sin I need never more repeat, Or lose my faith and purity. There is a remarkable example of this in regard to Heb. iv. 9, ' There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God' (A.V.). The word here translated ' rest,' a-apparur^ih^ is one which means ' a keeping of the Sabbath,' and it stands in deliberate contrast to the ordinary word ' rest,' KaTairawrw, which occurs eight times in the imme- diate context. The only satisfactory translation, of course, is one which marks the difference, like that of the Revised Version, ' A promise being left of entering into His rest ... For we which have believed do enter into rest ... As I sware in My wrath. They shall not enter into My rest . . . There remaineth therefore a sabbath-rest for the people of God.' Now recall the lines : Lord, I believe a rest remains To all Thy people known, A rest where pure enjoyment reigns, And Thou art loved alone. m THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 27 O that I now the rest might know, BeUeve, and enter in ! Now, Saviour, now the power bestow, And let me cease from sin. Remove this hardness from my heart. This unbelief remove; To me the rest of faith impart. The sabbath of Thy love ! In I Peter v. 7 two different Greek words are used where the Authorized Version would suggest the same word : ' Casting all your care (/xcpt/xvav) upon Him, for He careth (/xcAct) for you.' The first word should, of course, be rendered 'anxiety,' or 'trouble.' The point is remem- bered in a hymn based upon the passage— O Lover of sinners, on Thee My burden of trouble I cast, Whose care and compassion for me For ever and ever shall last. Again, the Authorized Version did not always do justice to the vivid or unusual character of a word in the text. It rendered Phil. iv. 7, ' The peace of God Vivid or Un- . . . shall keep your hearts.' The usual Words Revised Version ' guard ' is much better, but the Apostle's word, ^povpri I ( 28 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM this in dealing with Phil. iv. 7 in the Notes His comment is ' Shall guard, as a garrison does a city/ Again the point was recollected m a hymn — ., . ^ My strength, the joy Thy smiles impart, Thy peace doth garrison my heart. The Authorized Version of Matt, xxviii. 19 is, ' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,' but the word does not here represent the usual Greek verb (which occurs in the next sentence, teachj ing (ScSduTKovTcs) them to observe all things what- soever I have commanded you '). but ,xa0r,revcrare ' make-ye-disciples-of.' This is remembered m a hymn * At the Baptism of Adults '— We now Thy promised presence claim, Sent to disciple all mankind, Sent to baptize into Thy name, We now Thy promised presence find. The Authorized Version of a phrase in Col. i. 13 is 'His dear Son,' but the Greek is literally translated by the Revised Version, ' the Son of His love.'^ John Wesley was clearly thinking of the exact language of the Apostle when he wrote — Son of Thy Sire's Eternal Love, Take to Thyself Thy mighty power, Let all earth's sons Thy mercy prove, Let all Thy bleeding grace adore ! It is well known that the word in John xiv. 18, I ' We are the sons of God's grace. He alone is the Son of Hii love.' (Dr. Forsyth, Positive Preaching, p. 254) IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 29 rendered ' comfortless ' in the Authorized Version, and 'desolate ' in the Revised Version, is 6pavov^, hterally, orphans. This is remembered in a hymn for Whit-Sunday— . . . Orphans we Awhile Thine absence mourn. But we Thy face again shall see. But Thou wilt soon return. The Authorized Version renders John xvi. 33, ' But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,' and the Revised Version retains the reading. But the exact and vivid sense of dWa eap7r

History of Interpretation, p. 30. I f The Very Words of the Apostles 82 THE HYI^INS OF METHODISM Such are some of the cases in which the Wesleys anticipated later scholarship in the exact and sensitive rendering of important phrases of ^'Xhlr'are also several striking instances in which, while no question of accurate translation arises, the ipstssima verba of the New Testament writers are re- called. SuchistheaUusioninone of the hymns to Titus iii. 4. * the kindness of God our Saviour, and His love toward man' (R.V.), where the latter phrase is a translation of one Greek word l.Xa.ep..ia, our word philanthropy The original text of the passage is remembered m the hues— WTien that philanthropy divine Into a sinner's heart doth shine, It shows the wondrous plan, The wisdom m a mystery Employed by the great One and Three, To save His lavourite, man. In Eph. vi. II and 13- the whole armour of God '-the two words represent one Greek word, .avcXra. which we have in English as panoply The splendid word is remembered and used m the lines — stand then in His great might, With aU His stren th endued; But take, to arm you for the fight. The panoply of God. One of the books of the Apocrypha-the finest IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 33 of them all— has considerably influenced the hymns. There are numerous al- lusions in the verse of the Wesleys The • Wisdom to the language of the Wisdom of of Solomon ' Solomon. One of John Wesley's translations, the fine version of Scheffler's Du mvergleichlich Gut, combines two recollections of this book in two hues — High throned on heaven's eternal hill, In number, weight, and measure still Thou sweetly orderest all that is; And yet Thou deign'st to come to me. And guide my steps, that I, with Thee Enthroned, may reign in endless bliss. This recalls both, 'But Thou hast ordered all things in number, and measure, and weight' (Wisdom xi. 20), and 'Wisdom reacheth from one end to another, and mightily and sweetly doth she order all things' (Wisdom viii. i). Neither reference is in the German — Du bist die Weisheit selbst die ewighch regieret, Der tiefeste Verstand, der alles gliicklich fiJhret. One of the most affecting titles given to our Lord in the hymns is from the same source. ' But Thou sparest all, for they are Thine, O Lord, Thou Lover of Souls ' (Wisdom xi. 26). This is used again and again : Jesu, Lover of my soul. Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high. /' 84 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Lover of Souls ! Thou know'st to prize What Thou hast bought so dear ; Come then, and in Thy people's eyes. With all Thy wounds appear 1 The fine rhapsody in Wisdom iii. 1-4- '^^\ the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God . For though they be punished m the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortahty, is remembered in the verse — The promised land, from Pisgah's top. I now exult to see: My hope is full (O glorious hope !) Of immortality. And the noble passage in Wisdom xi. 24, ' For Thou lovest all the things that are, and abhorrest nothing which Thou hast made, for never wouldest Thou have made anythmg if Thou hadst hated it,' is behind the stanza— O may I love like Thee! In all Thy footsteps tread 1 Thou hatest all iniquity, But nothing Thou hast made. The first allusion to any book other than the Bible in the hymns of Charles Wesley is a remini- scence, often repeated, of Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians—z. reference rather to the Reformer's emphasis than to his language. There is a manuscript of 1738 in the archives of the Brethren from the hand ot Luther's Galatians ' IN THEm LITERARY RELATIONS 35 William Holland, one of the earhest of the Enghsh Moravians, in which he writes : ' Being providentially directed to Martin Luther's Com- mentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, I carried it round to Mr. Charles Wesley, who was then sick at Mr. Bray's, as a very precious treasure that I had found.' Charles Wesley writes in his Journal, under the date Wednesday, May 17, 1738: 'To-day I first saw Luther on the Galatians, which Mr. Holland had accidentaUy fit upon. We began, and found him nobly full of faith.' On the evening of the same day he writes: 'I spent some hours this evening in private with Martin Luther, who was greatly blessed to me, especially his conclusion of the second chapter. I laboured, waited, and prayed to feel "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me:' ' Luther spends some beautiful pages over these words of the Apostle, ' words full of great and mighty comfort.' He writes: 'Therefore thou shouldest so read these little words me and for me, as to meditate well upon them, and deem that they have much in them. Use thyself to lay hold of this little word me with a sure faith, and apply it to thyself, and do not doubt that thou art of the number named in this little word me,* ^ n ^ J Three days after Charles Wesley had first read these words, on Sunday, May 21, he found the peace of God. Luther's loving insistence upon the Apostle's words is remembered and I i i 36 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM reflected in more than one hymn written at the time. O Filial Deity, Accept my new-bom cry! See the travail of Thy soul, Saviour, and be satisfied: Take me nov/, possess me whole, Who for me, for me hast died ! And can it be that 1 should gain An interest in the Saviour's blood ? Died He for me, who caused His pain ? For me, who Him to death pursued ? Amazing love ! how can it be That Thou, my God. should'st die for me? And throughout a hymn written exactly a yeai later, in May, 1739, and entitled ;For the Anni- versary Day of one's Conversion : Then with my heart I first believed. Believed with faith divine; Power with the Holy Ghost received To call the Saviour mine. I felt my Lord's atoning blood Close to my soul appUed ; Me, me, He loved—the Son of God— For me, for me, He died! Tohn Wesley's Notes on the New Testament were largely indebted to the Gnomon of Bengel ^^ that great light of the Christian world ately gone to his reward) Bengelius,' as he is called m the preface. It is a striking proof of Wesley s scholarship and shrewdness that he should have selected as the basis of his exposition a work IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 37 which, in the language of Dr. Sanday, 'stands out among the exegetical hterature not only of the eighteenth century, but of all centuries, for its masterly terseness and precision, and for its combination of spiritual insight with the best scholarship of the time.' In his notes on the Apocalypse Wesley Bengel's Expo- used in addition to the Gnomon sition of the Bengel's German exposition of Apocalypse the book, the Erkldrte Offenbarung Johannis, und vielmehr Jesu Christi, as it is quaintly entitled. On Rev. ii. 1 7 Bengel has this beautiful note : 'A new name. So Jacob after his victory received the new name of Israel. The word new is very characteristic of the Revelation (ein rechi apocalypiisches Wort) : a new name, a new song, a new heaven, a new earth, new Jerusalem, all things new. Which no one knoweth hut he that receiveth it. Jesus Himself had a new name, known only to Himself. Would'st thou know what the new name shall be ? Overcome ! Before that thou askest in vain: thereafter thou wilt soon read it, written on the white stone.' Charles Wesley assisted in compiUng the Notes, and this comment, the last two sentences of which were translated by the elder brother, evidently impressed him ; for eight years later, in the Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, he published a hymn which para- phrases Bengel's note : HI lllr 38 THE HYMNS OF IVIETHODISM Dost thou desire to know and see What thy mysterious name shall be? Contending for thy heavenly home, Thy latest foe in death o'ercome ; Till then thou searchest out in vain What only conquest can explain. But when the Lord hath closed thine eyes, And opened them in Paradise, Receiving thy new name unknown, Thou read'st it wrote on the white stone, Wrote on thy pure humanity, God» Three in One, and One in Three. CHAPTER n THE FATHERS, THE LITURGIES, AND THE MYSTICS VTTo IIvcv/xaTOS ^Aytov €p6/l€V0C €Xd\r)(Tav ol ayioi 0coi) avdpiairoL. There are many allusions in the hynms to the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Samuel Wesley the elder, in a letter to a young clergyman containing Ignatius detailed advice as to his studies — a letter which John Wesley published, with a preface, many years later — declared that ' the blessed Ignatius's Epistles can never be enough read, or praised, or valued, next to the inspired writings.' And John Wesley devoted thirty pages of the first volume of the Christian Library to the Epistles of Ignatius. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should be several echoes of a passage in his Epistle to the Romans (vii. 2), ' Living I write unto you, but it is as loving to die. For my Love has been crucified (6 Ijubs c/ows co-Tavpwrac) and there is left in me no fire of earthly love at 11 i 40 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM all/ The famous phrase becomes the refrain of the hymn, 'O Love Divine, what hast thou done?' — The immortal God for me hath died: My Lord, my Love is crucified — and it is recalled in several other hymns. It had been previously used in an old German hymn which John Wesley is not likely to have seen, and it is quoted in one of the Spiritual Songs of John Mason, which was certainly known to both brothers : My Lord, my Love is crucified, He all the Pains did bear; But in the Sweetness of His Rest, He makes His Servants share. Tertullian Another hymn contains an echo of Tertullian — Though earth and hell the woid gainsay The Word of God can never fail ; The Lamb shall take my sins away, 'Tis certain, though impossible ; The thing impossible shall be, All things are possible to me. The passage is in Tertullian's treatise De Came Christi. He is arguing against Marcion, whose contention was that the humiliation imphed in the fact of the Incarnation was unworthy of God. Tertullian answers this in a passage splendidly paradoxical and profoundly spiritual : ' Spare the whole world's one only hope, thou IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 41 who art destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is of gain to me. . . . The Son of God is born ; we are not ashamed, because we ought to be ashamed. And the Son of God died ; it is perfectly credible, because it is absurd. And being buried He rose again; it is certain, because it is impossible.' (Natus est Dei Filius ; non pudet quia puden- dum est ; et mortuus est Dei Filius ; prorsus credibile est quia ineptum est ; et sepultus resur- rexit ; certum est quia impossibile.) The hymn, however, merely quotes the famous phrase that is known to all the world. A passage in Tertullian's Apology (c. 39), ' Look ye, say they, how these Christians seem to love one another ! ' is also recalled in a hymn which is probably by John Wesley — In them let all mankind behold How Christians lived in days of old ; Mighty their envious foes to move, A proverb of reproach — and love. Here it is hardly probable that this is a direct reference to the passage, for John Wesley wrote to his mother from Marienborn while on his journey to Herrnhut, quoting the words arid attributing them to Julian the Apostate : 'Eighty-eight of them [the Moravians] praise God with one heart and one mouth at Marien- born ; another little company at Runne'sburg, an hour off ; another at Budingen, an hour from 42 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM thence ; and yet another at Frankfort. I now understand those words of poor JuHan, " See how these Christians love one another! " ' The phrase is quoted as proverbial in the introduc- tion to Arndt's True Christianity, and in at least one other of the works included in the Christian Library. Another passage in the Apology is referred to in more than one hymn : ' If Tiber overflows, and Nile does not ; if heaven stands * The Christians still and withholds its rain, and to the Lions ! ' the earth quakes ; if famine or pestilence take their marches through the country, the word is, Away with these Christians to the lions ! ' (c. 40.) 'Away with them,' the world exclaim, * The Christians to the lions cast ! ' The stream is troubled by the lamb, And must be so, while time shall last. The Lamb, they say, disturbs the stream. The world confounded is by them Who its confusions end : Yet stiU, * Away with them,' they cry, ' The Christians bum or crucify. Or to the Uons send ! ' It is curious that both these hymns which have the allusion to TertuUian's words should also con- tain a reference to one of Aesop's Aesop fables, the story of the wolf who complained that the stream of which he was drinking was disturbed by a lamb IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 43 farther down — a mere pretext for devouring the alleged disturber. It has been suggested that the Jerome lines — ■ To damp our earthly joys. To increase our gracious fears. For ever let the Archangel's voice Be sounding in our ears : The solemn midnight cry, Ye dead, the Judge is come. Arise, and meet Him in the sky. And meet your instant doom ! — recall a passage of Jerome : ' Quoties diem ilium considero, toto corpore contremisco, sive enim comedo, sive bibo, sive aliquid ahud facio, semper videtur ilia tuba terribilis sonare in auribus meis, Surgite, mortui, venite ad judicum/ {In xvii. Johannis.) Charles Wesley may very probably have met with the words, apart from any patristic reading, for they are quoted in the Latin in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and in English by Chaucer in the Persones Tale : ' For as Seint Jerome sayth : at every time that me remembreth of the day of dome, I quake : for whan I ete or drinke, or do what so I do, ever semeth me that the trompe sowneth in min eres : riseth ye up that ben ded, and cometh to the jugement/ In John Austin's Offices (1668) (partly re- published in the Christian Library) there is a hymn of which one verse runs- I 44 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM O quicken, Lord, our Faith, Of these great Joys and Fears ; And make the last Day's Trumpet be Still sounding in our Ears, But Charles Wesley's stanza is more than an echo of this : it carries the allusion to Jerome's language farther than Austin's hues do, to Surgite, mortui, venite ad judicum. The lines in one of the hymns on heaven — A brother dead to God^ By sin alas! undone, —recall the famous story of St. John and the robber, told by Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History (iii. 23) — a book which Eusebius John Wesley records reading for the second time in November, 1741. Inquiring of a bishop in the neighbour- hood of Ephesus as to the welfare of a young man whom he had previously committed to the bishop's special charge, the Apostle received the answer, ' He is dead.' Being further questioned, the bishop said, ' He is dead to God, for alas ! he is become a villain, and is fled to the mountains to be a robber.' Whereupon the Apostle hastened to the mountain fastnesses, and never rested until he had brought back the young man in penitence, and restored him to the Church. (It may be added that the story is told in Wesley's abridgement of Cave's Primitive Christianity in the Christian Library.) IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 45 When we reach Augustine we are on surer ground. The \Vesleys evidently knew the Con- fessions well. It was one of the highly interesting list of books Augustine which had to be provided (by the direction of an early Conference) for the use of Wesley and the preachers at the three centres of London, Bristol, and Newcastle. Wesley once prepared for the press an edition of it in the original Latin, probably intended for the scholars of Kingswood School. In 1745 Wesley maintained a long correspon- dence with * Mr John Smith ' — supposed to be the nom de guerre of Dr. Seeker, Bishop of Oxford. In one of his letters Wesley quoted, as an instance of what he meant by his doctrine of assurance, a whole chapter of the Confessions, ' which,' he writes, *I was reading yesterday/ It is the great passage which ends with the words, * And Thou criedst to me from afar. Yea, verily, / am that I am. And I heard, as the heart heareth, nor had I room to doubt, and I should sooner doubt that I live, than that Truth is not ' (vii. 10). This great spiritual classic has left considerable traces in the hymns of both brothers. A passage in the first book recalls some of Charles Wesley's most impassioned ' Confessions* lines. Augustine wrote : ' Hide not Thy face from me. Let me die (that I die not) that I may see Thy face ! ' (Moriar ne moriar, ut earn videam) (i. 5). There is a very similar passage 46 THE HYIVINS OF METHODISM in the Soliloquies : ' But why dost thou hide Thy face ? Haply Thou wilt say, " No man can see Me and Hve/' Ah, Lord, let me die, that I may see Thee ; let me see Thee, that I may die.' (Sed cur faciem tuam abscondis? Forte dicis * non videhit me homo et vivet ' (Ex. xxxiii. 20). Eia, Domine, moriar ut te videam. Videam, ut hie moriar) (Solil. c. i.). This became a favourite thought with the poet of Methodism, and inspired many stanzas such as : I cannot see Thy face and live ! Then let me see Thy face, and die! Now, Lord, my gasping spirit receive ! Give me on eagles' wings to fly; With eagles' eyes on Thee to gaze. And plunge into the glorious blaze. And if there were any doubt about the connexion between such lines as these and the words of the great African Father, it would be dispelled by the fact that another hymn which echoes the thought — Live only Christ in me, not I ; O let me see Thy face, and die! — was headed, when published in the Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1742, * Moriar ut te videam! ' ' Let me die that I may see Thee ! ' Here the phrase is evidently quoted from the Soliloquies. Another reminiscence of the Confessions occurs in John Wesley's translation of Tersteegen'g IN THEm LITERARY RELATIONS 47 great hymn, 'Thou hidden love of God, whose height.' The lines — My heart is pained, nor can it be At rest, till it finds rest in Thee — deliberately recall the famous passage : ' Thou dost arouse us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it find rest in Thee!' (i. i). Here the allusion is John Wesley's own; there is nothing of it in Tersteegen's German, the last lines of which are — Ich bin nicht stille, wie ich soil Ich f iihl es ist dem Geist nicht wohl, Weil er in dir nicht stehet. There is a further reminiscence of Augustine in another of John Wesley's translations from the German. The lines— Ah! why did I so late Thee know. Thee, lovelier than the sons of men! — recall the classic passage: 'Too late I loved Thee, Beauty so old and yet so new, too late I loved Thee!' (x. 27). Here it is Scheffler himself who is responsible for the allusion to Augustine, for it is clearer in the German than in the English : * Ach, dass ich dich so spat erkennet, Du hochgelobte Schonheit du ! ' A phrase in one verse of John Wesley's trans- lation of Scheffler's Du unvergleichlich Gut has 'IV ' w , *-- ~» 48 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM been coloured by the translator's remembrance of the same passage m Augustine. Angelus wrote * Du bist die Schonheit selbst, Du kannst nichts Schonres finden! Es kann dich nichts als nur Dein' eigne Schonheit binden.' But die Schonheit selbst becomes in Wesley's translation, with a memojy of Augustine's pulchritudo antiqua: Primeval Beauty ! in Thy sight, The first-born, fairest sons of light See all their brightest glories fade ! In the hymn ' For an Unconverted Child ' the lines occur : Regard my endless griefs and fears Nor let the son of all these tears Be finally undone. This is an unmistakable allusion to the story told by Augustine in the Confessions (iii. 12) about his mother and the Bishop. Monica and Monica besought the Bishop to the Bishop see her son, and strive to bring him from the error of his ways. The Bishop replied that it was best to leave him alone, and pray for him. ' When she would not be satisfied, but urged him more, with entreaties and many tears, that he would see me, and dis- course with me; he, a little displeased at her importunity, saith, "Go thy ways, and God be with thee : it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish." Which answer she took (as IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 49 she often mentioned in her conversations with me) as if it had been a voice from heaven/ And there is at least one other of Augustine's wonderful phrases in the Confessions that influ- enced the verse of Charles Wesley. It is a part of a great supplication: 'Narrow is the home of my soul ; enlarge it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; do Thou repair it* (i. 5). This is reflected in the lines — Thou know'st the way to bring me back, My fallen spirit to restore ; O for Thy truth and mercy's sake. Forgive, and bid me sin no more ; The ruins of my soul repair. And make my heart a house of prayer. There are other passages in the Soliloquies which seem to have influenced the hymns. 'Aegrotus sum, ad medicum clamo: caecus sum, ad lucem 'Soliloanies' propero : mortuus sum, ad vitam suspiro. Tu es medicus, tu lux, tu vita. Jesu Nazarene, miserere mei' (c. ii.). It is difficult to read this without thinking that some remem- brance of it was in Charles Wesley's mind when he wrote — Jesu, my all in all Thou art; My rest in toil, my ease in pain, The medicine of my broken heart, In war my peace, in loss my gain. My smile beneath the tyrant's frown, In shame my glory and mv crown: 50 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM In want my plentiful supply, In weakness my almighty power, In bonds my perfect liberty, My light in Satan's darkest hour, In grief my joy unspeakable, My life in death, my heaven in hell. And here is another characteristic passage : ' Quoniam si quid boni est parvum vel magnum, donum tuum est, et nostrum non est nisi malum ' (c. XV.). The thought seems to be reproduced in the lines — All power is Thine in earth and heaven, All fullness dwells in Thee alone; Whate'er I have was freely given, Nothing hut sin I call my own. And, once more, Augustine's words : ' Et video nunc quia donum tuum est ' (c. xv.) seem to be reflected in John Wesley's translation of Scheffler's Ich will dich Hebe, meine Starke (there is an un- questioned allusion to Augustine, in the preceding verse, which we have already mentioned) : And now if more at length I see, 'Tis through Thy hght, and comes from Thee. Augustine's fine comment upon our Lord's first miracle (In Joan. Ev, Tract, viii. i) is quoted in _ ... « another hymn. ' For He who made Exposition of xl X J X XT- _ , , wme on that day at the marriage * . feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the selfsame does this every IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 51 year in vines. . . . But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year : it has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence/ Charles Wesley wrote, in a hymn upon John ii. 7: When wine they want, the Almighty Lord Water instead of wine demands : He both created by His word, Nothing His sovereign will withstands ; And every year in every vine He changes water into wine. In one of the hymns there is a singular idea as to the intercourse of heaven: Where glorified spirits by sight Converse in their holy abode. This, it has been suggested, may be derived from a passage in Hudibras (the Heroical Epistle)— di strange source! — For what can earth produce, but love, To represent the joys above? Or who but lovers can converse. Like angels, by the eye-discourse? But the notion really comes from Plotinus, and it is quite likely that Charles Wesley may have met with it there. The passage is in the fifth Ennead Plotinus (viii. 4), ' They speak not one with the other; but, as we understand many things by the eyes only, so does soul read soul in heaven, 52 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM where the spiritual body is pure, and nothing is hidden, and nothing feigned.' There are two rather recondite allusions in a stanza of one of the hymns on the Passion: Dies the glorious Cause of all, The true eternal Pan, Falls to raise us from our fall. To ransom sinful man: Well may Sol withdraw his light. With the SufEerer sympathize, Leave the world in sudden night, While his Creator dies ! The first reference is to the story recorded by Plutarch (De Oraculorum Defectu) that in the reign of Tiberius a pilot named Thamus Plutarch was steering his ship round the coast of Epirus, when he heard voices proclaiming, ' Thamus, Thamus, great Pan is dead!'* (Ilav o /xcyas T€OvrjK€v.) The other allusion is fainter. There is a Dionysius the legend that Dionysius the Areo- Areopagite pagite, perceiving a disturbance in nature at the time of the Crucifixion, said, H to Belov TraVxct, rj n} TTM-xovTi (Tvinraxrx^h^ ' Either the Divinity suffers, or sym- pathizes with the sufferer ! ' It would seem that a recollection of this has coloured the line, 'Well may Sol withdraw his light, With the Sufferer sympathize,' » Cf. Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar (May), and Gloss. ■ Cf . Brev. Rom., Oct. 9 (Lectio 4), and Hooker, Eccl. Pol. I. iii. 4. The Hymns and the Eccle- siastical Year IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 53 It is a striking fact that Methodism has supplied Enghsh Christendom with hymns for all the great festivals of the ecclesiastical year. At Christmas * Hark ! the herald angels sing ! * is heard in every land where the English language is spoken. It is the same at Easter with ' Christ the Lord is risen to-day ! ' and much the same on Ascension Day with ' Hail the day that sees Him rise,' and on Whit Sunday with ' Granted is the Saviour's prayer.' Some time ago an interesting suggestion was made by an Anglican hymnologist ' with regard to two of these hymns. It was suggested that * Hark ! the herald angels sing ! ' was possibly inspired by a hymn from the Menaion of the Greek Church, xP'^'^^^ ycvi/arat • So^ao-arc. This forms a part of the Canon for Christmas Day. It was written by St. Cosmas, the foster-brother of St. John Damascene, who hved in the first half of the eighth century. Unhappily, there is not a great deal that can be urged in support of this attractive suggestion. There is little like- ness between the Greek and the English, not more than we might expect to find between any two hymns for the Nativity, and hardly as much as exists, for example, between Wesley's English and the Latin of Peter the Venerable in the hymn Coelum gaude, terra plaude. » Moorsom, Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern, pp. 83, 64. *-t I/' 54 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM It was also suggested by the same writer that Charles Wesley may have had in mind, when writing ' Hail the day that sees Him rise/ the hymn of ,Fortunatus (or a fourteenth-century imitator of his), Salve festa dies toto venerahilis aevo, Qua Deus ad coelos scandit et astra tenet. Here, again, there is very little resemblance — none whatever, in fact, except the initial phrase. But these suggestions, baseless as they seem to be, are enough to raise in one's mind the whole question of a possible indebted- Mediaeval ness, on the part of the Wesleys, Hymns to the great hymns of the Middle Ages. At first sight, such a rela- tion does not seem at all likely. In the eighteenth century the whole of the mediaeval hymnody was almost a terra incognita. It was only with the rise of romanticism in literature, at the end of that century, that these hymns began to come to their own. One may say that Scott's use of Thomas of Celano's great dirge (in which he followed Goethe) was almost the beginning of modern interest in mediaeval hymns. And it was nearly half a century later when these hymns began to be recovered for the use of the English Churches by Dr. Neale, and other High Anglican and CathoHc scholars. In the age of the Wesleys there was very little knowledge in England of the Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, and still less of the Greek hymns, found in the service- books of the Eastern Church. On the face of it, IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 55 therefore, these hymns are not likely to have been known to the brothers. On the other hand, there are some small but significant facts. John Wesley translated a German hymn which itself was a translation from the Latin. ' Jesu, Thy soul renew my own,' is a version of Scheffler's Die Seele Christi heil'ge tnich, which again was a version of the mediaeval Anima Christi sandifica me. These lines are entitled in the Roman Breviary ' The Aspirations of St. Ignatius to the Most Holy Redeemer,' but the ascription to the founder of the Society of Jesus is an error. The lines probably date from the fourteenth century. It is surely possible that John Wesley was aware of the Latm original. . -r^ .v • Again, when Charles Wesley was m Dublm m 1747 he wrote in his Journal : ' I spoke with great freedom to the poor Papists, urging them to repentance and St. Thomas the love of Christ, from the Aquinas authority of their own Kempis, and their own Liturgy.' This can only mean that he was a student of the Breviary— a very sug- gestive fact. Doubtless it was there that he read the splendid story of the ecstasy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which impressed him so much, and left its mark upon more than one hymn. The mci- dent is told in one of the lessons for the samt's festival.^ As St. Thomas prayed, he heard the ^ Drev. Rom., Mar. 7 (Lectio 5). \ ir^' 56 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Saviour's voice saying, 'Thou hast written well of Me ; what reward wouldst thou have ? ' and he exclaimed in answer, ' Thyself, Lord, nothing but Thyself ! ' This is recalled unmistakably in such lines as — Give me Thyself ! from every boast, From every wish set free. Let all I have in Thee be lost, But give Thyself to me 1 and Nothing beside my God I want. Nothing in earth or heaven ! And if Charles Wesley knew the Breviary, he must have known the Latin hymns in it. Ac- cordingly, we are not surprised to find that the language of the great hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote, has apparently coloured several of our hymns. A phrase in the first line, latens Deltas, appears in a hymn for the Nativity : He laid His glory by, He wrapped Him in our clay, Unmarked by human eye, > The latent Godhead lay. Then, later in the hymn, the Angelic Doctor wrote: Me immundum munda tuo sanguine, Cujus una stilla salvum facere Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere, — ^lines which have been translated very literally thus : IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 57 Unclean I am, but cleanse me in Thy blood ! Of which a single drop, for sinners spilt, Can purge the entire world of all its guilt. This mystical notion of the efficacy of a single drop of the Redeemer's blood became a favourite thought with Charles Wesley : By all Thou hast done for my sake. One drop of Thy blood I implore. Now, now let it touch me, and make The sinner a sinner no more ! And again : sprinkle it, Jesus, on my heart ! One drop of Thine all-cleansing blood Shall make my sinfulness depart, And fill me with the Ufe of God ! At least a dozen other examples might be given of the presence of this thought in our hymns. It should be said, in fairness, that the thought occurs in some of the older English poets, notably Donne, who has it more than once : Now Thou art Ufted up, draw me to Thee, And at Thy death, giving such liberal dole, Moist with one drop of Thy blood my dry soul. But Donne undoubtedly got it from St. Thomas Aquinas, and so may Charles Wesley, as we have seen. And since he knew the Latin hymns in the Breviary, he may very well have knov^Ti other mediaeval hymns not found there. 58 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM John Wesley certainly did know the old Nativity hymns, Ptier natus in Bethlehem, and In dulci juhilo, for they are found, with some modern Latin hymns written by Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1649 ~ ^7^7) » i^ FreyHnghausen's Gesangbuch. And the brothers may have encountered in their reading other Latin hymns of the Middle Ages. At any rate here is another extra- Adam of ordinary parallel. In a hymn by St. Victor Adam of St. Victor there is the striking phrase, applied to the Holy Spirit: Tu qui daior es et donum, *Thou who Giver art and Gift ' ; and in another h3min by the same writer there is a variation of the same phrase, Tu donum, tu donatoty *Thou the Gift, Thou the Giver.' This recurs constantly in Charles Wesley's hymns for Whit-Sunday: Life Divine in us renew, Thou the Gift and Giver too. For Thee our hearts we lift^ And wait the heavenly Gift • Giver, Lord of life Divine, To our dying souls appear. Grant the grace for which we pine. Give Thyself, the Comforter. I come athirst and faint Thy Spirit to receive, Give me the Gift for which I pant, Thyself the Giver give. m THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 59 There are in the hymns many reminiscences of the English Liturgy, as we ^^^ ^^^^^^^ should expect. Liturgy Meet and right it is to sing, In every time and place. Glory to our heavenly King, The God of truth and grace, is a paraphrase of the Preface and the Sancius of the Communion Office : ' It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty . . . Therefore with angels and archangels . . . ' Similarly — Glory be to God on high, God, whose glory fills the sky, is a paraphrase of the Gloria in Excelsis of the Communion Office : ' Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will toward men. We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee. . . / Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Thy Godhead we adore, is a poetical version of the Gloria Patri. The language of the Litany is paraphrased in the stanza — Thou loving, all-atoning Lamb, Thee, by Thy painful agony. Thy bloody sweat, Thy grief and shame. Thy Cross and passion on the tree, Thy precious Death and Life, I pray Take all, take all my sins away ! 60 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM And there are numerous other examples of an influence which, in the case of devout Churchmen like the Wesleys, was inevitable. There is a strain of essential mysticism in the hymns of the Wesleys. The recognition of this fact would correct a frequent Mysticism in mis-judgement. LesHe Stephen the Hymns wrote : ' Mysticism seemed to John Wesley to be simply folly. His feet were on the solid earth, and he preferred the plain light of day to the glooms and glories loved by more imaginative natures.' * Even so learned and so candid a writer as Dr. Gwatkin thinks that Wesley's teaching was ' as clear and full of common sense as Matthew TindaVs Deism, and as characteristically wanting in a sense of mystery.' * Now it is perfectly true that Wesley was a man of his century, that he had a precise and logical intellect, and that he hated vagueness. It is also true that he said hard things, again and again, about ' the mystic divines,' driven thereto by the disastrous effects of an errant Quietism among the Societies. But it should be remembered that there is much on the other side. Some of the finest of John Wesley's transla- tions from the German are versions of the pro- foundly mystical hymns of Tersteegen and * History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Ccniury, vol, ii. xii., p. 87. ^The Knowledge of God^ vol. ii., p. 245. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 61 Schefller. And then there is the unmistakable accent of mysticism in much of Charles Wesley's verse. The latest French writer on Methodism, Dr. Augustm Leger, has remarked upon this : * Qui veut aimer Dieu, doit aimer toutes choses en Dieu seul : Un en tons, et tons en Un, for- mule que r^peteront a satiete les vers des Wesley.' * Surely they were mystics who wrote : O sovereign Love, to Thee I cry ! Give me Thyself, or else I die 1 Save me from death; from hell set free; Death, hell, are but the want of Thee, and Eager for Thee I ask and pant, So strong the principle divine, Carries me out with sweet constraint, Till all my hallowed soul is Thine ; Plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea And lost in Thy immensity ! and — Nothing else in earth or skies. In time, or in eternity : Heaven itself could not suffice I seek not Thine, but Thee. Then John Wesley was early and deeply im- bued with mystical teaching. He read the Theologia Germanica and some of the writings of Tauler in early life, and at Oxford was a professed disciple of William Law. He greatly admired » La Jeunesse de Wesley, p. 191. k 62 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM the writings of the Cambridge Platonists (a dis- tinction in itself for one who hved in the eighteenth century) and printed some of John Smith's Sermons in the Christian Library. In the same collection he issued an abridgement of the Guida Spirituale of Molinos, the Spanish mystic. There does not appear to have been any other edition in English between 1699 and 1775. He was specially interested in two mystics of the preceding century, and refers to their life and doctrine again and again — ^Antoinette Bourignon and Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon. He read Antoinette Bourignon 's Treatise of Solid Virtue and Light of the World in April 1736, while in Georgia. He in- Antoinette eluded the former work in the Bourignon Christian Library in 1754, and many years before he had pub- lished translations of some of the author's devotional verse. Scattered through her volu- minous works are five hymns, two of which were translated and included in the Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1739, Venez, Jesus, mon salutaire, * Come, Saviour Jesus, from above,' and Adieu, Monde, vray pipeur, 'World, adieu, thou real cheat r The identity of the translator is a pretty problem in criticism. The hymns are claimed for Dr. Byrom, on the strength of two facts. First, they are included in his Mis- cellaneous Poems (1773). But, as these were IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 63 collected and published ten years after his death, this is not absolutely conclusive evidence. Byrom might have copied out the verses because they in- terested him by their mysticism, and after his death they might thus have been very easily mistaken for his own. (Yet Wesley read the Miscellaneous Poems when they appeared in 1773, and made no remark on the presence of these hymns.) In the second place, there is a letter of Byrom's to Charles Wesley dated March 3, 1738 : ' As your brother has brought so many hymns translated from the French, you will have a sufficient number, and no occasion Byrom or to increase them by the small Wesley? addition of Mademoiselle Bourig- non's t'vo little pieces. I desire you to favour my present weakness, if I judge wrong, and not to publish them.' This seems to us to suggest unmistakably Byrom's authorship of the trans- lations. There remains the difficulty that no other translations from the French are known to have been in John Wesley's possession. Is it possible that this was a slip of Byrom's for * many hymns translated from the German,' of which he had previously heard ? The sense would then be, * since he has so many translated hymns, he will . need no more.' Byrom did not himself begin to learn German until several years after this, which would make the mistake as to the language more conceivable. But, on the other side of the question, there is the fact that Byrom wrote to if' 64 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM his son on April 26, 1739, referring to the Hymns and Sacred Poems pubhshed in that year by the Wesleys in these terms: 'They have together printed a book of hymns, amongst which they have inserted two of M. Bourignon's, one of which they call '' A Farewell to the Worid," and the other " Renouncing all for Christ " (Come, Saviour Jesus), I think, from the French/ The style of the two hymns is unquestionably more like that of John Wesley than like that of Byrom. If the versions were by Byrom, they were certainly somewhat altered by Wesley. An incident related in Antoinette Bourignon's autobiography has influenced the language of one hymn. When the Flemish Quietist was a child, struck by the unlikeness of the life around her to what she read of in the Gospels, she said to her parents, ' Where are the Christians ? Let us go to the country where • Where the the Christians live I * This is re- Christians live I ' membered in a hymn on ' Primi- tive Christianity ' : Ye different sects, who all declare Lo ! here is Christ ! or * Christ is there I * Your stronger proofs divinely give. And show me where the Christians live 1 When John Wesley was on his way to Herrn- hut in July 1738 he recorded in his Journal : ' In the afternoon we came to Weymar, where we had more difficulty to get through the city than is IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 65 usual, even in Germany ; being not only detained a considerable time at the gate, but also carried before I know not what great man (I believe the Duke) m the Square; who after many other questions, asked what we were going so far as Herrnhut for: I answered, "To see the place where the Christians Hve/' He looked hard, and let us go/ Moore, in his Life of Wesley (i. 329), says that the ' great man ' was * Frederick, afterwards King of Prussia, then Prince Royal, as Mr. Wesley was informed.' It would be attractive to think of an encounter between two men so famous, and so different, as Frederick the Great and John Wesley; but unfortu- nately there is little to warrant us in such a fancy. Henry Moore was the intimate friend of Wesley, as well as his biographer, and it is not easy to understand how he could be mistaken in the matter, but there is no hint of 'the great man ' being Frederick in the Journal, either in the passage quoted, or in several later passages which refer unflatteringly to the great King of Prussia. Moreover, it is difficult to understand how he could be doing the work of a city magis- trate at Weimar, which was not in Prussian occupation, as Halle was. And finally, Frederick would appear to have been in another part of the country altogether at that time, spending most of July and August in that year upon F John Wesley and Frederick the Great fV. 66 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM ^ a visit to the Duchy of Cleves and Loo in Holland. In 1776 John Wesley published An Extract of the Life of Madame Guion, He had long been a critical student of her life and writings. In 1742 he records in his Journal that he read Madam Guyon's Les Torrents Spirttuels. It would seem probable that Charles Madam Guyon Wesley read it a few years later, for there appear to be traces of it in some hymns published in the Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1749. The imagery of the following passages runs through the whole of the Spiritual Torrents. * All have a loving impatience to purify themselves, and to adopt the necessary ways and means of returning to their source and origin, like rivers, which after leaving their source, flow on continuously, in order to precipitate themselves into the sea.' . . . ' Finally . . . they reach the sea, where they are lost to be found no more . . . it is the sea, and yet it is the river, because the river, being lost in the sea, has become one with it.' This thought is reflected in the lines- Wherefore to Thee I all resign ; Being Thou art, and love, and power ; Thy only will be done, not mine ! Thee, Lord, let earth and heaven adore I Flow back the rivers to the sea^ And let our all he lost in Thee I IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 67 and in the lines — Our love from earthly dross refine ; Holy, angeUcal, divine. Thee its great Author let it show, And hack to the pure Fountain ftow^ A drop of that unhounded sea, O Lord, resorb it into Thee ! Another favourite image appears in this passage: 'Therefore the heart of man is per- petually in motion, and can find no rest until it returns to its origin and centre, which is God : like fire, which, being removed from its sphere, is in continual agitation, and does not rest till it has returned to it.' This is reflected in another stanza of the last hymn quoted: A spark of that ethereal fire. Still let it to its Source aspire : To Thee in every wish return. Intensely for Thy glory bum. While all our souls fly up to Thee, And blaze through all eternity ! William Law was a mystic if there ever was one, and he was the early master of both brothers. They parted company with him, it IS true, but he had an abiding William Law influence upon them. As late as 1768, John Wesley published a volume of extracts from Law's later writings. Many illustrations of Law's influence might be given. There are some favourite ideas of Charles Wesley's which appear 68 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM in the hymns again and again. Such is the thought that the regenerate soul is a reflection of the Holy Trinity: O that we now, in love renewed, Might blameless in Thy sight appear 1 Wake me in Thy simiHtude, Stampt with the Triune character'. Flesh, spirit, soul, to Thee resign, And hve and die entirely Thine ! And when we rise, in love renewed, Our souls resemble Thee, An image of the Triune God To all eternity. Made like the first happy pair, Let us here Thy nature share Holy, pure, and perfect be, Transcripts of the Trinity. . . a sinless saint In perfect love renewed ; A mirror of the Deity, A transcript of the One in Three, A temple filled with God ! Charles Wesley once commented upon these last lines, which had been criti- ' Transcripts of cized. In a letter to his wife he the Trinity ' wrote— You and the other objectors do not understand those lines. ' A transcript of the One in Three ' is the definition of man unfallen, and of man restored to the divine image. The exprt;S3ion is Mr. Law's, not mine ; who proves ai trinity throughout all nature IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 69 The thought recurs perpetually in the writings of William Law.^ In An Appeal to all who doubt the Truths of the Gospel, he writes — How could the Holy Trinity be an object of Man's worship and adoration, if the Holy Trinity had not pro- duced itself in Man? . . . Our redemption consists in nothing else but in the Bringing forth this new Birth in us . . . that, being thus born again in the Likeness of the Holy Trinity, we may be capable of its threefold Blessing and Happiness. In Christian Regeneration he writes — We have before shown, that Man was created a living Image of the Holy Trinity in Unity, that the Divine Birth arose in him, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost saw themselves in him, in a creaturely Manner. . . . There appears a surprising Agreeableness and Fitness, in the Means of our Redemption, namely, that we could oiily be saved by the eternal Son of God ; that He could only save us by taking our Nature upon Him, and so uniting it with Him, that His Life, or Birth, might again arise in us, as at the first, and so we become again a perfect Uving Image of the Holy Trinity. The notion also occurs in Byrom's writings. In An Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple there are the lines describing Adam — Formed in the likeness of the sacred Three, He stood immortal, powerful, and free; Image of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, i' The destined sire of a new heavenly host. * Cf. St. Augustine De Civ. Dei, xi 26. TO THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Byrom and Law had ploughed Jacob Bohme with the same heifer. They got the thought from Jacob Bohme, who wrot< So near tliee, indeed, is God, that the birLn of the Holy Trinity takes place in thy heart also, and there all Three Persons are born. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost {Aurora, c. X., 58) ,./!»■•■ CHAPTER HI THE POETS (is Kttt TIV€S TWV Ka$* VfiaS TTOLTfTtaV ctp^/cacrt . . . There are occasional reminiscences of the Latin poets in the hymns, naturally, for the Wesley s were good classical scholars. Charles Wesley once defended himself against the abuse of that virago, his brother's wife, by reciting Virgil at the top of his voice. Judging by their quotations, Virgil was his favourite Latin poet, as Horace was his brother John's. The most distinct allusion to Virgil that we have traced is in a hymn which paraphrases a famous passage in ^^^ the sixth book of the Aeneid (724-729) : Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentis Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra Spiritus intus aUt, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet. Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum Et quae marmoreo fen monstra sub aequore pontus. 7« 72 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM It is evident that this has coloured the thought of some of the following lines : That all-infonning breath Thou art Who dost continued hfe impart. And bid'st the world persist to be ; Garnished by Thee yon azure sky And all those beauteous orbs on high Depend in golden chains from Thee. Thou art the Universal Soul, The plastic power that fills the whole, And governs earth, air, sea, and sky ; The creatures all Thy breath receive. And who by Thy inspiring hve. Without Thy inspiration die. Spirit immense, eternal Mind, That on the souls of lost mankind Dost with benignest influence move. Pleased to restore the ruined race. And new-create a world of grace In all the image of Thy love ! The most striking allusion to Horace is in the hymn, ' Stand the omnipotent decree ! '— which, while a paraphrase of a Horace passage in Young's Night Thoughts, IS yet influenced by the ode, 'Justum' et tenacem propositi virum ' Si fractus illabatur orbis, Inpavidum ferient ruinae. (iii. 3.) Let this earth dissolve and blend in death the wicked and the just, Let those ponderous orbs descend And grind us into dust. Rests secure the righteous man I IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 73 The English poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have influenced the hymns very considerably, especially Milton, George Herbert, Dry den, Prior, and Young. The influence of Milton is visible everjnvhere in the hymns. The great Puritan poet is the source of many of their striking phrases, and his influence upon Milton the poetic style of the Wesleys is greater, perhaps, than that of any other writer. John Wesley apparently knew a great part of Paradise Lost by heart. At Kingswood, in 1750, he ' selected passages of Milton for the eldest children to transcribe and repeat weekly.' Later — in 1763 — he published An Extract from Milton's Paradise Lost, and in the Preface declared that ' Of all the poems which have hitherto appeared in the world, in whatever age or nation, the preference has generally been given by impartial judges to Milton's Paradise Lost,' One or two passages in which the hymns reflect the language of the great poet are well known. Thus : O dark, dark, dark, I still must say Amid the blaze of gospel day. is a reminiscence of the wonderful plaint of the blinded giant in Samson Agonistes : ^ Samson Agonistes ' Scarce half I seem to hve, dead more than half, O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon I! 74 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without all hope of day I And the fine stanza : With Thee conversing, I forget All time, and toil, and care; Labour is rest, and pain is sweet. If Thou, my God, art here, deliberately recalls the words of Eve to Adam With thee conversing, I forget aU time. All seasons and their change ; all please alike. There are many other examples, however, less obvious than these, or at any • Paradise Lost ' rate less noticed, which are yet unmistakable allusions to Milton. For instance: Thine arm hath safely brought us A way no more expected Than when Thy sheep passed through the deep By cyystal walls protected, reminds us of the lines : As on dry land, between two crystal walls, Awed by the rod of Moses so to stand Divided till his rescued gain their shore. The quoted phrase, by the way, occurs a second time in Paradise Lost. The first apostrophe in O unexampled Love ! O all-redeeming Grace! How swiftly didst Thou move To save a fallen race ! . . IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 75 is from the same source: . . . O unexampled Love! Love nowhere to be found less than divine 5 In the lines: But above all lay hold On faith's victorious shield, Armed with that adamant and gold Be sure to win the field, the poet of Methodism has borrowed his vivid phrase from the description of the arch-fiend Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced Came towering, armed in adamant and gold. In the verse: With glorious clouds encompassed round, Whom angels dimly see, Will the Unsearchable be found. Or God appear to me ? there is a remembrance of the address to the Most High put into the mouths of our first parents in the fifth book of the poem : Unspeakable ! Who sitt'st above these heavens To us invisible, or dimly seen. The one majestic phrase in the stanza: From heaven angelic voices sound, See the almighty Jesus crowned ! Girt with omnipotence and grace And glory decks the Saviour's face I * 5, 76 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM is from the discourse of Raphael : meanwhile the Son, On His great expedition now appeared. Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned. Behind Milton's phrase there is, of course, the language of Ps. Ixv. 6. The stanza in one of the hymns on hoHness : He wills that I should holy be. That hohness I long to feel. That full, divine conformity To all my Saviour's blessed will, borrows a phrase from the address of Michael : .... Judge not what is best By pleasure, though to Nature seeming meet Created, as thou art, to nobler end, Holy and pure, conformity divine. Charles Wesley wrote, in anotlier hymn : For every sinful action Thou hast atonement made, The rigid satisfaction Thy precious death hath paid. The Striking phrase is a quotation from Milton: Die he or justice must ; unless for him Some other, able, and as wilUng, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death. .i,°f.^ ^^^'^ "^^'"^ "^^^^"^ ^^^^^ ^^ *^^ hymns Of the Wesleys is particularly unfortunate ; we meaa that awkward ellipsis ' the stony ' ; IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 77 The stony from my heart remove. And give me, Lord, O give me love. Or at Thy feet I die. It sounds unpleasantly like Mr. Swiveller's references to the rosy and the mazy. But the Wesleys were following the Miltonic usage, seen, to give one example only, in the lines : . . . For from the mercy-seat above Prevenient grace descending had removed The stony from their hearts. A phrase from the magnificent lines with which the third book of Paradise Lost begins was used by the Wesleys again and again : Hail, holy Light ! offspring of heaven first-bom 1 Or of the Eternal co-eternal Beam. This is remembered in the beginning of a hymn : Eternal Beam of Light Divine, Fountain of unexhausted Love, and in the closing lines of one of John Wesley's splendid translations: Thou Beam of the Eternal Beam^ Thou purging Fire, Thou quickening Flame ! There is nothing corresponding to this in lersteegen's German. It is John Wesley's re- membrance of Milton. Doubtless the word had behind it, in the thought of both Milton and Wesley, the airavyacriia of the Apostolic writer in Heb. i. 3. If ■ ) 11 f 78 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM George Herbert was a favourite poet with both the Wesleys. They adapted a considerable number of pieces from The Temple George Herbert as hymns, and included them in their early pubUcations. They must have been famihar with Herbert from childhood, for he was one of the writers most beloved by Susanna Wesley, and probably they hardly knew when they were echoing his words. The Hne in Obedience: O let Thy sacred will All Thy dehght in me fulfil I is borrowed in John Wesley's translation of Zinzendorf's Du ewiger Ahgrund der seligen Liebe: The dictates of Thy sovereign will, With joy our grateful hearts receive ; All Thy delight in us fulfil ; Lo ! all we are to Thee we give. The first stanza of A True Hymn: My joy, my life, my crown ! My heart was meaning all the day. Somewhat it fain would say : And still it runneth muttering up and dowi With only this, ' My joy, my life, my crown ! ' has influenced the language of another of John Wesley's translations, his great version of Schef- fler's Ich will dich lieben, meine Starke, where, in the last verse : Thee will I love, my joy, my crown, Thee will I love, my Lord, my God I IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 7S represents : Ich will dich lieben, meine Krone, Ich will dich lieben, meinen Gott. And, curiously enough, in still another hymn from the German, John Wesley's version oi Joachim Lange's Jesu, susses Licht, the Hues : O God, what offering shall I give To Thee, the Lord of earth and skies ? My spirit, soul, and flesh receive, A holy, living sacrifice ; Small as it is, 'tis all my store ; More shotdd'st Thou have, if I had tnore, suggest a recollection of Herbert's Praise : To write a verse or two is all the praise That I can raise : Mend my estate in any ways Thou shalt have more. The last lines of the verse in Lange's German are merely ' Dass soil mein Opfer sein, Weil ich sonst nichts vermag.' A phrase in The Pulley : Let us (said He) pour on Him all we can : Let the world's riches, which dispersed he. Contract into a span, is remembered and used nobly in a hymn for the Nativity: . Our God, contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man. li' ' t 80 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM The lines in Longing : Lord Jesu, Thou did'st bow Thy dying head upon the tree, are recalled in the verse : Vessels, instruments of grace, Pass we thus our happy days 'Twixt the mount and multitude, Doing or receiving good ; Glad to pray and labour on, Till our earthly course is run, Till we, on the sacred tree. Bow the head, and die like Thee, The line in Sunday: O let me take thee at the bound. Leaping with thee from seven to seven. Till that we both, being tossed from earth, Fly hand in hand to heaven I is remembered in another hymn : Let us all together rise. To Thy glorious life restored. Here regain our paradise, Here prepare to meet our Lord ; Here enjoy the earnest given, Travel hand in hand to heaven ! And the thought in Praise : Small it is, in this poor sort To enrol Thee : E'en eternity is too short To extol Thee, IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 81 is remembered in a version of one of the Psalms : And all eternity shall prove Too short to utter all His love* Some of the reminiscences of Dryden's lines in the h5mins are striking and unmistakable, and altogether the allusions are enough to show a pretty close acquaintance Dryden on the part of the Wesleys with nearly all that the poet wrote. Charles Wesley's fine evening hymn: All praise to Him who dwells in bliss, Who made both day and night : Whose Throne is darkness in the abyss Of uncreated light, deliberately borrows a great line from The Hind and the Panther: But, gracious God, how well dost Thou provide For erring judgements an unerring Guide ! Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of hght, A blaze of glory that forbids the sight. One of the hymns for the Nativity recalls another line from the same poem, for Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate Deity ! is an echo of Dryden's argument for Transub- stantiation — Could He His Godhead veil in flesh and blood, And not veil these again to be our food ? G 82 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM The hymn: Love Divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heaven, to earth come down, Fix in us Thy humble dweUing, All Thy faithful mercies crown, owes both its trochaic metre and the form of its first Hne to the ' Song of Venus ' in King Arthur : Fairest Isle, all isles excelling, Seat of pleasures and of loves ; Venus here will choose her dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian groves. One of the hymns for Advent : stupendous height of heavenly love. Of pitying tenderness divine ! It brought the Saviour from above, It caused the springing day to shine, The Sun of Righteousness to appear. And gild our gloomy hemisphere, adopts a phrase from the juvenile and affected Elegy upon the Death of Lord Hastings : Lived Tycho now, struck with this ray (which shone More bright i' th' mom than others beam at noon). He'd take his astrolabe and seek out here. What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere. The verse : The things unknown to feeble sense, Unseen by reason's glimmering ray With strong commanding evidence, Tb^ir heavenly origin display, IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 83 owes a phrase to the Religio Laid: So reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day. The hymn: O God of God, in whom combine The heights and depths of love divine, With thankful hearts to Thee we sing : To Thee our longing souls aspire, In fervent flames of strong desire : Come, and Thy sacred unction bring! borrows an entire hne from Dryden's translation of the Veni, Creator Spiritus : Come, and Thy sacred unction bring To sanctify us while we sing ! One of the penitential hjmins echoes a phrase of Dryden's which he used in a very different connexion. Wesley wrote : The godly grief, the pleasing smart, The meltings of a broken heart, evidently remembering a lively love-song in The Maiden Queen : I feel a flame within which so torments me That it both pains my heart and yet contents me ; 'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it. That I would rather die than once remove it. And there are several other cases where single phrases or striking epithets of Dryden's have passed, perhaps unconsciously, into the hymns. So Wesley's * O'er earth in endless circles roved,' ■'«■•.. ,-4 '•■c III Si iiii- ■ .1 ll< \h 84 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM is an echo of Religio Laid, 'Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll ' ; and ' the all- atoning Lamb' (which occurs frequently in the hymns) borrows the epithet from a hne in Absalom and Achitophel: Th3n, seized with fear, yet stiU affecting fame. Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name. Cowley There are one or two allusions to Cowley. In the verses entitled Life occur the lines: But angels in their full-enlightened state, Angels who hve, and know what 'tis to be I Who all the nonsense of our language see, And words, our ill-drawn pictures, scorn. When we, by a foohsh figure, say. Behold an old man dead ! then they Speak properly, and say. Behold a man-child bom , This is recalled in one of the finest of the Funeral hymns : When from flesh the spirit freed. Hastens homeward to return, Mortals cry, ' A man is dead / * Angels sing, 'A child is born/* There is a sHghter parallel in Prior, a favourite poet with both the Wesleys : And while the buried man we idly mourn, Do angels joy to see his better half return ? A hymn, popularly supposed to have been written at Land's End, has the lines : IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 85 Lo ! on a narrow neck of land 'Twixt two unbounded seas I stan'' Secure, insensible. Cowley has the thought in Life: Vain, weak-built isthmus which dost proudly rise Up betwixt two eternities. The comparison was frequent in the eighteenth century. Prior wrote in Solomon: Amid two seas on one small point of land, Wearied, uncertain, and amazed we stand. And Pope, in the Essay on Man : Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great. Addison has the thought in the Spectator, in language which supplies the closest parallel of aU: In our speculations of Eternity, we consider the Time which is present to us the Middle, which divides the whole time into two equal Parts. For this Reason, many witty Authors compare the present Time to an Isthmus or narrow Neck of Land that rises in the midst of an ocean, immeasur- ably diffused on either Side of it. There are several other evidences in the hymns of that familiarity with Addison's Spectator which we should expect on the part of the Wesleys. A line of Addison's version of Ps. xxiii. (which Wes- ley republished in the Collection of Psalms and Hymns of 1738) : Addison's ' Spectator ' - ill > , I' It 104 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM lines which Pope repeated with a variation in the Essay on Man : Converse and love mankind might strongly draw. When love was liberty, and nature law, were evidently in Charles Wesley's mind when he wrote : Implant it deep within, Whence it may ne'er remove^ The law of liberty from sin, The perfect law of love. Thy nature be my law. Thy spotless sanctity, And sweetly every moment draw My happy soul to Thee. It is difficult for us in these days to under- stand the immense vogue of Young's Night Thoughts in the eighteenth Young century. Young's turgid plati- tudes are so wearisome to a modem reader that it needs an effort to discern the real poetic power which sometimes underiies the bombastic hues, and which goes some way toward justifying the rather fantastic judgement of D. G. Rossetti, that Young was the greatest poet of his century. But there can be no doubt as to the extent of Young's fame and influence in that age. Charles Wesley set his daughter to learn by heart long passages of Young's poem, and he himself more than once transcribed the whole of it. He said expressly : ' No writings but the inspired are more useful to me.' And IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 105 some of the greatest names of that century might be quoted in support of Charles Wesley's high estimate of Young. He was in good company, at least, in his admiration for a poet who influenced Goethe, who was quoted on the scaffold by Camille Desmoulins, and to the study of whose writings Burke himself ascribed his own splendid style. One of the hymns : stand the omnipotent decree ! Jehovah's will be done ! Nature's end we wait to see. And hear her final groan ; Let this earth dissolve, and blend In death the wicked and the just. Let those ponderous orbs descend. And grind us into dust, is a deliberate paraphrase of a passage in the Night Thoughts: '''right Thoughts' li so decreed, the Almighty Will be done, Let earth dissolve, yon pond'rous orbs descend. And grind us into dust ; the soul is safe ; The man emerges. The lines : they see On earth a bounty not indulged on high. And downward look for Heaven's superior praise, are recalled in the verse : Ye seraphs, nearest to the Throne, With rapturous amaze, On us, poor ransomed worms, look down For Heaven's superior praise. Ill ! ' 106 THE HYJMNS OF METHODISM And the vivid but unfortunate image in the lines : Thou who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand From out the flames, and quench it in Thy Blood, is reproduced in many stanzas, such as : I want an even strong desire, I want a calmly fervent zeal, To save poor souls out of the fire, To snatch them from the verge of hell. And turn them to a pardoning God, And quench the brands in Jesu's blood! Young's apostrophe : Happy day that breaks our chain I That manumits, that calls from exile home, reappears in a hymn as : happy, happy day. That calls Thy exiles home ! The heavens shall pass away. The earth receive its doom ; Earth we shall view, and heaven destroyed. And shout above the fiery void. The verse : His love, surpassing far The love of all beneath. We find within our hearts, and dare The pointless darts of death, borrows a phrase from Young's hne : Death's pointless darts, and hell's defeated storms. IN THEm LITERARY RELATIONS 107 The lines : the rush of years Beats down their strength ; their numberless escapes In ruin end, are remembered in a hymn which is a paraphrase of Jer. xxiii. 24 : The rush of numerous years hears down The most gigantic strength of man : And where is all his wisdom gone When dust he turns to dust again ? Here Charles Wesley wrote ' heats down,' and the word was altered to ' hears down ' by John Wesley in his revision. There are also several recollections , in the hymns of Young's Last Day, The apostrophe : Triumphant King of Glory ! Soul of bUss ! What a stupendous turn of fate is this ! is recalled in the hymn for Easter : King of Glory ! Soul of bliss ! Everlasting life is this. Thee to know. Thy power to prove. Thus to sing, and thus to love. And the lines : Drive back the tide, suspend a storm in air, Arrest the sun, but still of this despair, are adapted in another hymn, with a mystical sense of which Young was utterly incapable : A:i,JWtT. ..».. ",", ...,,•■ ,j»:v"j#" ■., .. ..i.. 108 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM 4 Thou my impetuous spirit guide, And curb my headstrong will; Thou only canst drive back the tide, And bid the sun stand still The hymn (the only one on this diead subject included in the Collection of 1780) : Terrible thought ! shall I alone, Who may be saved, shall I, Of all, alas ! whom I have known. Through sin for ever die ? is based upon a neighbouring passage in the same poem : thy wretched self alone Cast on the left of all whom thou hast known, How would it wound ? Many other examples of Young's influence might be quoted. Apart from distinct allusions to his lines, he enriched the language of Charles Wesley by favourite phrases, such as ' the starry crown,' 'the mighty void,' and by favourite words such as ' triumph ' and ' pomp '—the latter occurring almost as incessantly in Young as in the hymns. It is not the least part of the spiritual privilege of Methodists that these magnificent hymns have so many links with literature. Links mi\ Dryden caUed Ben Jonson ' the Literature great plagiary,' and spoke of 'tracking his footsteps in the snow.' The Wesleys were great plagiarists, in IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 109 the same honourable sense, and it has not been an unpleasant or an unfruitful task, we trust, to trace somewhat of their indebtedness, in thought and language, to the great writers of the past. It has been rightly said that one of the great charms of Milton is the 'implicit lore' of his verse — the amount of scholarship that is held in solution in his stately lines. There is a similar charm in the verse of the Wesleys : one is always finding fresh evidence, embedded in the hymns, of their wide reading and exact knowledge. These spiritual songs, like Prospero's isle, are full of echoes. The hymns of Methodism stand alone, in many respects, in the religious Hterature of the world. They are unique in their intimate connexion with one of the greatest spiritual movements of history, for the very genius of the Evan- gelical Revival is in their burning fines: they enshrine what has been well called 'the holy, compassionate, believing spirit of early Methodism.' And, while they constitute the greatest body of devotional verse in the language, they are wholly the work of those astonishing and apostolic men who were not only brothers by blood, but also brothers In honour, as in one community. Scholars and gentlemen. The Hymns of Methodism are Unique APPENDICES I JOHN WESLEY'S TRANSLATIONS FROM THE GERMAN The following is a complete list of John Wesley's translations from the German: Extended on a cursed tree. O Welt, sieh hier dein Leben (Gerhardt). Jesa, Thy boundless love to me. O Jesu Christ, mein schonstes Licht (Gerhardt). Commit thou all thy griefs. Befiehl du deine Wege (Gerhardt). To Thee with heart and mouth I sing.* Ich singe dir mit Herz und Mund (Gerhardt). Thee will I love, my strength, my tower. Ich will dich lieben, meine Starke (Scheflaer). O God, of good the unfathom'd Sea. Du unvergleichhch Gut (Scheffler). Thou, Jesu, art our King. Dich, Jesu, loben wir (Schefiler). Jesu, Thy soul renew my own. Die Seele Christi heil'ge mich (Scheffler). Thou hidden love of God, whose height. Verborgne Gottes Liebe du (Tersteegen). Lo I God is here, let us adore. Gott ist gegenwartig (Tersteegen). O God, Thou bottomless Abyss. O Gott, du tiefe sonder Grund (Ernst Lange). O God, what offering shall I give. O Jesu, siisses Licht (Joachim Lange). * This hymn Wesley never published, no IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS IH Jesu, whose glory's streaming rays. Mein Jesu, dem die Seraphinen (Dessler). Shall I, for fear of feeble man. Sollt' ich aus Furcht vor Menschenkindern (Winckler). rhou Lamb of God, Thou Prince of Peace. Stilles Lamm und Friedefiirst (Richter). My soul before Thee prostrate lies. Hier legt mein Sinn sich vor dir nieder (Richter). Jesu, source of calm repose. Wer ist wohl wie du (Freylinghausen). Monarch of all, with lowly fear. Monarch aller Ding (Freylinghausen). Jesu, Thy blood and righteousness. Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit (Zinzendorf). O Thou, to whose all-searching sight. Seelen-Brautigam, O du Gottes Lamm (Zinzendorf). Jesu, to Thee my heart I bow. Reiner Briufgam meiner Seele (Zinzendorf). O God of God, in whom combine. Herz, der gottlichen Natur (Zinzendorf). Eternal depth of love divine. Du ewiger Abgrund der seligen Liebe (Zinzendorf). Thou whom sinners love, whose care. VerUebter in der Siinderschaft (Zinzendorf). All glory to the Eternal Three. Schau von deinem Thron (Zinzendorf). 1 thirst, Thou wounded Lamb of God.* Now I have found the ground wherein. Ich habe nun den Grund gefunden (Rothe). * This hymn is a cento from four German hymns, Zinzendorf's *Ach, mein verwundter Fiirste ! ' (verses 1-2 of the English), J. Nitschmann*s * Du blutiger Versiihner!* (verses 3-6), Zinzendorf s ' Der Gott von unserm Blunde' (verse 7), and Anna Nitschmann's ' Mein Konig ! deine Liebe ' (verse 8). All these four hymns are in the same supplement {A nhang) of the Herrnhut Gesangbuch. I \ 112 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Holy Lamb, who Thee receive. Du heiliges Kind (Dober). What shall we ofiEer our good Lord. Der Konig ruht und schauet doch (Spangenb«rj). Regardless now of things below. Eins Christen Herz (Maria M. Bohmor). Meek, patient Lamb of God, to Thee. O stilles Gottes Lamb (Gottfried Arnold). O Thou who all things canst control. Ach, triebe aus meiner Seele (Sigismund Gmelin). High praise to Thee, all gracious God. Sei hochgelcAt, barmherz'ger Gott (Gotter). I have proved that every line that Wesley translated from the German is found in the Herrnhut Gesangbuch — with one small and interesting exception. Spangenberg's hymn, Der Konig ruht und schauet doch, is found in one of the supplements ; but the last lines of the follow- ing stanza in Wesley's version do not correspond with the German : He prospers all His servants' toils, But of peculiar grace has chose A flock, on whom His kindest smiles And choicest blessings He bestows; Devoted to their common Lord, True followers of th« bleeding Lamb, By God belovtd, by men abhorred — And HERRNHUTH is the favourite name I In his copy of the Hymns and Sacred Poems of 1742, preserved at Richmond College, Wesley afterward annotated the last line : ' It was I But how is the fine gold become dim ! ' IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 113 The last lines of the stanza in the Herrnhut Gesangbuch are : Und schenket ihm mit frohem Muth, Geist, Seer, und Leib, Ehr, Gut, und Blut. This might be rendered : Who have to Him with joyous mind Their bodies, souls, and all resigned. Only two explanations are possible. Either Wesley deUberately varied from the German, and introduced this reference to Herrnhut himself, which does not seem likely, since the rest of the hymn is a pretty close and regular translation ; or Spangenberg wrote something of the kind originally, which was modified before being inserted in the Herrnhut Gesangbuch, In that case it must be supposed that Wesley saw Spangenberg's manuscript while in Georgia or at Herrnhut itself. II QUIETISM AND CALVINISM There were two movements, more or less within the Methodist Societies, during the hfetime of the Wesleys, that threatened to wreck their work. The first emanated from Molther and the Moravians, the second from Whitefield and his followers. A perverted Quietism, introduced by Molther, caused the breach with the Moravians, and gave the Wesleys a great deal of trouble for some years afterwards, especially in 1739 and 1740. Those who came under the spell made much X 114 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM of the text— the locus classicus of Quietism— * Be still, and know that I am God.' ' Stillness ' meant to cease from the means of grace, and even from the reading of the Scriptures and prayer, because of the peril of trusting in them. Those who were ' stiir would call themselves nothing but ' poor sinners ' or ' happy sinners ' —greatly to the disgust of honest John Nelson, whose robust common sense held ' the poor sinnership ' in hearty contempt. Two passages from Charles Wesley's Journal for April, 1740, will sufficiently illustrate the situation and the peril. 'April 8: I got home, weary, wounded, bruised, and faint, through the contradiction of sinners; poor sinners, as they call themselves, these heady, violent, fierce contenders for still- ness. I could not bear the thought of meeting them again.' ' AprH 25 : Many here (in London) insist that a part of their Christian calling is liberty from obeying, not hberty to obey. The unjustified, say they, are to be still : that is, not to search the Scriptures, not to pray, not to communicate, not to do good, not to endeavour, not to desire : for it is impossible to use means without trusting in them. Their practice is agreeable to their principles. Lazy and proud themselves, bitter and censorious toward others, they trample upon the ordinances and despise the commands of Christ.' There are many allusions to ' stillness ' in the hymns. One is headed ' The True Stillness ' : IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 115 Still for Thy loving kindness, Lord, I in Thy TempJc wait: I look to find Thee in Thy word, Or at Thy table meet. Here in Thine own appointed ways I wait to learn Thy will ; Silent I stand before Thy face, And hear Thee say, * Be still ! ' * Be still, and know that I am God I * 'Tis all I live to know ! To feel the virtue of Thy blood, And spread its praise below 1 Another hymn has the lines. Place no longer let us give To the old Tempter's will : Never more our duty leave, While Satan cries, ' Be still ! ' Stand we in the ancient way, And here with God ourselves acquaint : Pray we, every moment pray. And never, never faint. Another hymn is a lament over those who had lapsed into ' stilhiess ' : Whom still we love with grief and pain. And weep for their return in vain. In vain, till Thou the power bestow, The double power of quickening grace I And make the happy sinners know Their Tempter, with his angel face; Who leads them captive at his will. Captive — but happy sinners still I 11' Hi m 116 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM Another is entitled * A Poor Sinner ' : I would be truly still, Nor set a time to Thee, Bu,t act according to Thy will, And speak, and think, and be. I would with Thee be one ; And till the grace is given, Incessant pray, Thy will be done. In earth as 'tis in heaven. The other movement was the Calvinistic propaganda. Many of the hymns of Methodism reflect the life-long controversy of the Wesleys with the Calvinists. It was undoubtedly these great hymns that were largely accountable for the diffusion of Arminian doctrine throughout evangelical Christendom. In this respect they mark a theo- logical epoch. For the work of the Weslej^s was the death of Calvinism, or at least of its baser nature. The Calvinism that survives in the world to-day is a thing refined, rarefied. The baser sort of Calvinism is so utterly extinct in our daj^ — thanks to Methodism — that it is difficult for us to realize that it ever existed. The purified spirit of Calvinism that lives in the modern representatives of the Retormed Churches we can admire greatly. The deep sense ot the sinfulness of sin, the profound apprehen- sion of grace as utterly and unutterably IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 117 undeserved, the humihty and the reverence which attend upon these thoughts — all these are spiritual characteristics for which we cannot be too thankful. And we could willingly detect more of all these notes in modem religion. There, indeed, hes at once the source and the strength of all that is best in Calvinism. The doctrine of Calvin is the doctrine of Augustine, extended to its relentless issue, and it is in the religious experience of Augustine that we must seek the germ of his doctrine. It was Augustine's deep conviction of sin and his sense of absolute helplessness apart from the overmastering and overwhelming grace of God — it was this, passing into his writings, and, after many centuries, developed with pitiless logic, by a mind much more formal and much less subtle than his, which became Calvinism. At this time of day we can afford to recognize that the noble source of the doctrinal perversion was nothing less than that deep instinct of the Christian soul which is expressed in the language of Toplady : Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy Cross I cling I This is the better side: there was a worse. There is plentiful evidence of that in the early literature of Methodism. Charles Wesley once quoted from Calvin's Institutes (1. iii. c. 24) a frightful passage concerning the reprobate, 'God speaketh to them that they may be the 118 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM deafer : He gives light to them that they may be the bhnder ; He offers instruction to them that they may be the more ignorant ; and uses the remedy that they may not be healed/ And else- where the poet of Methodism records that during his exposition of a controverted passage of Scripture at Bristol one of his hearers ' even called for damnation upon his own soul if Christ died for all, and if God was willing THAT ALL MEN SHOULD BE saved: This was the faith, and this the temper of eighteenth-century Calvinism. And this was where the early Methodists joined issue with the ' doctrines of grace.' What the Wesleys contended for was a universal gospel ; what they denied vehemently was that doctrine of election which, as John Wesley said, amounted to this : ' One in twenty (suppose) of mankind are elected ; nineteen in twenty are reprobated. The elect shall be saved, do what they will; the reprobate shall be damned, do what they can.' It is characteristic that the reasons for which the Wesleys opposed Calvinism were all practical reasons. It disturbed the peace of the Societies, and they were forced to fight it for the sake of peace. It appeared amongst the early Methodists as an ahen propaganda, and it had to be encountered. Then it led undoubtedly to serious laxity of conduct : the Antinomian peril was very real in the early days of Methodism, and it was largely the result of Predestinarian doctrine. vi IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 119 Antinomianism was not then the mere ghost of dead heresy or the bold paradox of exalted pietism, but a hideous danger, which the Wesleys met everywhere. And then the doctrinal grounds of opposition were also practical. Neither of the Wesleys had much interest in speculative theology. But they preached an ilHmitable salvation ; they denied that there was any limit whatever to the gospel, except such as was set by the unwillingness of men to accept salvation. They taught that the forgiving love of God was boundless. The literature of the controversy between Methodism and Calvinism is to-day largely forgotten. It is as well so. The pamphlets and sermons of 1740 and 1770, the publications of Wesley, Fletcher, and Olivers on the one side, and of Whitefield, Toplady, and Sir Richard Hill on the other, have only an antiquarian interest. All that really survives to-day from that remote contest is a batch of hymns — ^Toplady 's ' Rock of Ages ! cleft for me,' and many of the stirring stanzas that Charles Wesley wrote at the time. Several of these familiar hymns, indeed, can scarcely be understood as they ought unless we remember the implicit protest against a limited gospel which they contain. Thf' world He suffered to redeem ; For all He hath the atonement made : For those that will not come to Him The ransom of His Hfe was paid ! ^pl 120 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM O for a tnimpet voice On all the world to call ! To bid their hearts rejoice In Him who died for all! For all my Lord was crucified, For all, for all my Saviour died I O let Thy love my heart constrain Thy love for every sinner free, That every fallen soul of man May taste the grace that found out rae; That all mankind with me may prove Thy sovereign, everlasting love. But if it be asked where in these hymns of controversy Charles Wesley's most effective pro- test against the doctrine of Calvin is to be found, there can be little doubt, we think, that it is in precisely those lines which express the deepest depth of humihty, the Hnes in which he writes of the grace of God : Throughout the world its breadth is known, Wide as infinity ! So wide, it never passed by one, Or it had passed by me. Ill ARCHAISMS IN THE HYMNS The style of Wesley's hymns is distinctly the most modem poetical style of the period. There are, however, a few archaisms, all of which are dealt with, we believe, in the foUowing notes. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 121 In the examples from the hymns, the numbers given are those of the Collection of Hymns for the Use of tJie People called Methodists (1780). I. Words Used with an Obsolete Pronun- ciation. Acceptable Thou our sacrifice receive, Acceptable through Thy Son. Hy. 415-1, The older pronunciation, as in Milton : Thy perfect gift, so good, So fit, 80 acceptable, so divine. {Paradise Lost, X., 139.) Cemented Cemented by love divine, Seal our souls for ever Thine ! ' 498-1. The older pronunciation, as in Shakespeare : The fear of us May cement their divisions, and bind up The petty difference. {Antony 6- Cleopatra, II., i. 48.) But this pronunciation was already giving way before Wesley's time. Witness the lines of Swift, in the City Shower (1710) : Sole coat ! where dust cemented by the rain, Erects the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain ! 122 THE HYMNS OF MI.THODISM Confessor His friends and confessors to own, And seat us on our glorious throne. 471-5. This is the historical pronunciation, which did not give way until the beginning of the nine- teenth century. After this, for a while, both pronunciations were current, and there was an attempt to distinguish the two senses of the word by the differing accents — confessor, one who witnesses for religion in the face of danger — the meaning of the word in the hymn — confessor, one who makes or receives confession of a fault. But Wesley's pronunciation was universal up to his time, and for years after. So in Dryden (using the word in the second sense) : For sundry years before did he complain, And told his ghostly confessor his pain. [Hind and Panther, III., 210.) Obdurate Give the sweet relenting grace. Soften this obdurate stone ! 98-1. The older pronunciation, as always in Shake- speare and Milton : His baleful eyes, That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. {Paradise Lai, I., 58). IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 123 Successor Where shall I wander now to find, The successors they left behind ? The older pronunciation, as in Dryden : I here declare you rightful successor. And heir immediate to my crown. {Secret Love, V., i) 2. Words Used in an Obsolete Sense. Prevent He prevents His creatures' call, Kind and merciful to all. 228-1 This, of course, is the old and primary sense of the word, as in the collect : Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with Thy most gracious favour. And in Izaak Walton, who records that he rose early to go fishing, ' preventing the sunrise.' Propriety Whate'er I have was freely given; Nothing but sin I call my own : Other propriety disclaim. Thou only art the great I AM. 323-4- This is the Latin sense of the word— what we \ 124 THE HYiAINS OF METHODISM mean now by ' property, proprietorship.* So, in Milton : Hail, wedded Love, mysterious law, true source Of human ojffspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else ! {Paradise Lost, IV., 750.) Resent My inmost bowels shall resent The yearnings of Thy dying love. 24-14. When the word was first introduced into the language, in the seventeenth century, it simply meant, as the French ressentir still does, to feel — * to have a sense or feeling of that which had been done to us, but whether a sense of gratitude for the good, or of enmity for the evil, the word said nothing ' (Trench, Select Glossary, p. 186). It was only gradur.lly that the sense of the word was narrowed to express angry feeling alone. The earlier and wider significance of the word (as in the hymn) is seen in these examples : It was mighty well resented and approved of. (Pepys' Diary, 13th February, 1669.) 'Tis by my touch alone that you resent What objects yield dehght, what discontent. (Beaumont, Psyche IV., 156.) Unitarian The Unitarian fiend expel, And chase liis doctrine back to heU. 431-3 IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 125 Remarks have often been ignorantly made on the bitter intolerance of these lines, which many have understood as referring to the teaching of those whom we now call Unitarians. The fact is, of course, that they refer solely to Mahometamsm. The hymn is headed, in the Collection of 1780, • For the Mahometans ' (in the pamphlet m which it was originally published, 'For the Turks'), and it is fuU of specific ajusions to Mahomet, ' That Arab-thief, as Satan bold, Who quite destroyed Thine Asian fold. The use of 'Unitarian' in reference to Moslem doctrme is quite correct, and, in the eighteenth century, was quite common. Gibbon, in descnbmg the rise of Islam, refers again and again to the march of the Unitarian armies, the advance of the Unitarian banners. Those Christians who deny the Divinity of Christ were always called Socinians in Wesley's time ; it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that they began to be generally called Unitarians. Indeed the next hymn but one to this in the Hymns of Intercession for all Mankind (1758), is entitled 'For the Arians, Socinians, Deists, Pelagians, &c.' 3. Obsolete Grammatical Usage. There is one grammatical archaism which frequently recurs in the hymns-the use of the Preterite for the Passive Participle, as m : 126 THE HYMNS OF METHODISM The Sun of Righteousness on me Hath rose with healing in his wings. 136-10. HoHness unto the Lord, Still be wrote upon our heart. 415-2. and innumerable other examples. Wesley, in his Short English Grammar, pub- lished in 1748, gives ' rose ' and ' strove ' as being both the Imperfect and the Passive Participle of ' rise ' and ' strive.' He gives ' writ ' or ' wrote * as the Imperfect, and ' written ' as the Participle of 'write.' In the Gentleman's Magazine of 1758 there is a witty poem by Dr. Byrom, The Passive Participle's Petition : Till just of late, good Enghsh has thought fit To call me written, or to call me writ; But what is writ or written, by the vote Of writers now, hereafter must be wrote. And what is spoken, too, hereafter spoke. And measures never to be broken, broke. I ne\er could be driven, but in spite Of Grammar, they have drove me from my right. None could have risen, to become my foes ; But what a world of enemies have rose ! Who have not gone, but they have went about, And, torn as I have been, have tore me out. The poem, which was probably suggested by The Hufnble Petition of Who and Which, in the Spectator, ends with the appeal : Let all the learned take some better heed, And leave the vulgar to confound the due Of preter sense, and participle too. IN THEIR LITERARY RELATIONS 127 Dr. Lowth also protested against this usage, and declared: 'This abuse has been long growing upon us, and is continually making further en- croachments.' On the other hand, Home Tooke, in the Diversions of Purley (1786), maintained that it was not a growing usage, but one which had greatly decreased ; that it was not an innova- tion, but ' the idiom of the language ' ; and that examples of it might be given ' from every writer in the English tongue/ The pioneer of English philology was right. Byrom was mistaken in thinking the usage of recent introduction. It occurs more or less in all English writers until the middle of the eighteenth century. So Shake- speare, where Queen Katherine says in Henry VIII (ii. 4. 30) : Or which of your friends Have I not strove to love, although I knew He were mine enemy ? and where Edmund says in King Lear (i. 2, 93) : I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your honour. And often in Dryden : I made a sacred and a solemn vow To offer up the prisoners that were took. {Indian Queen, II., i.) Nevertheless, we have a strong impression that the practice of using the Preterite instead of the Participle was commoner in the early eighteenth century than it had ever been before, .. , . Ill, 112, 113 Hill, Sir Richard, 119 Hill, Rowland, 87 James, William, 9^ Jerome, St., 43 Johnson, Dr., loi Jonson, Ben, 108 Julian the Apostate, 41 Knapp, Dr. Albert, 7 Lange, Ernst, 10, in Lange, Joachim, 10, 79, m Lavington, Bishop, 87 Law, William, 61-67 Leger, Dr. Augustin, 61 Lowth, Bishop, 127-128 Loyola, St. Ignatius 55 Luther, 14, 34, 35 Luther's Version, 19 Martineau, Dr. 3 Mason, John, 40 Milton, 73-77, 109, 121, 122. 124 Molinos, 62 Molther, P. H., 113 Moore, Henry, 65 Moorsom, R. H., 53 Nelson, John, 114 Neri, St. Philip, 93 Nitschmann, Anna, 10, in — www .;*' /'. yitsqhiji^^ii i.;}ic^ ii\ » . • • -• I. • * * « I Homer, 141 Hooker, 52 Horace, 71, 72, 136, 138, Olivers, Thomas, 119 Tor» . »• • » • > J , • 1 39 ».»,»«oi- •>*j*' Hugo. Victor, 89 *./ : '' ^PAscal,. S^ \ Pepys, 124 Ignatius, St., 39 * • ]>e>er* t^e Vf nej^ble, .53 • • * "» a • . » » » « I 'A ' >\ 146 Petersen, Johann Wilhelm, 58 Piozzi, Mrs., 87, 88 Plotinus, 51 Plutarch, 52 Pope, 85, 93, 102-104 INDEX Swift, 120 Swinburne, 100 Tersteegen, 6, 10, II, 47, 60, 77, no Tertullian, 40-42 Fope, 05, y:5, — -^ Thackerav 100 Prayer-Book Psalter, 17-20 ^^^^J^'^,,^^^^^ ci Prior, 84, 85, 96-102 ^'^^^^^^ Thomas of Celano, 2, 54, Tooke, Home, 127 Toplady, A. M., 119 Trench, Archbishop, i, 25, 124 Virgil, 71, 136, I37, ^o Vulgate, 19, 23 Walton, Izaak, 123 Wesley, Charles, passim SANDAV, Dr., 37 Wesley, John, passim Scheffler Johann, 10, 11, 33, Wesley, Samuel, 39 47.50,55,61,78,110 Wesley, Samuel, junior, 93- QUIETISM, 60, II 3-1 16 Revised Version, 20-32 RicheUeu, Cardinal, 89 Richter, C. F, 7, 1°. "^ Roberts, Evan, 93 Rothe, J. A., 10, 112 Rossetti, D. G., 104 96 Whitefield, G., Ii9 Winckler, J. J-, 10, in Scott, Sir Walter, 54 Seeker, Archbishop, 45 £!"« "X. I", X.7. Wis^on. 0/ 5o;o.o„, 33-34 Q ,^^ Wordsworth, 4 128, 129 Spangenberg, A. G., 10, n. 112 Spectator, 85, 86, 89, 126 Spener,.io, ;'' . . : Spenser,*. 53 C.i ' ' : '. Steele, Richard, 68 StepheO,Le^i*i, ^./oo- 'Stillness./ 1^711^ ,.: Xavier, St. Francis, 93 YouWG, 104-108 ZiNZENDORF, Count, 7, lO, ■ : 78, III ; ;iurich : Bible, 19 Printed by The Southampton Times Co., Ltd., 70 Above Bar, Southampton COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES This booU is due on ^^^^i'^-^^'^f^.^TZrr^^^^^ expiration of a definite P^ „f '" JJ^^if ^"^gement with provided by the library rules or by special arr*. b the Ubrarian in charge. cae