Part 2 — Chapter XVI THE WESLEYS AND THEIR ERA

I. THE INFLUENCE OF WATTS ON THE WESLEYS

The line of hymnic succession between Watts and the Wesleys was direct and not through Doddridge, for the latter’s hymns did not appear until 1754. One-half of John Wesley’s American Collection, the first hymnbook published in America, issued in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1737, after two years’ work in the new Colony of Georgia, consisted of Watts’ hymns. It goes without saying that Watts’ hymnbooks, with others like Tate and Brady’s New Version, George Herbert’s poems, the hymns of John Austin, of Henry More, and of Norris of Bemerton, were so well known, and so appreciated, that copies of them were included among the books carried to America. In early manhood they met the already elderly Watts, and as they walked they sang together. Indeed, with Dr. Benson we may “infer that Watts’ Psalms and Hymns, in connection with Tate and Brady’s New Version, furnished the materials for the singing of the ‘Holy Club.’”

It is evident from the list of hymnbooks, and from the list of Wesley’s selections for his American Collection, that Watts was not the only influence that gave the impulse and fashioned the Wesleyan ideals of the public song service. It is noteworthy that Barton and Mason were not included. The High-Church Anglican Wesleys were not so prejudiced against Watts’ Nonconformist hymns as to exclude them.

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II. THE HOME OF THE WESLEYS

With the Wesleys perhaps the strongest influence was that of the family and the home. Their grandfather, John Wesley, was a Nonconformist clergyman, and, what is more to the point, a poet. Their father, Samuel Wesley, was quite a voluminous poet (sixteen volumes), owing his Epworth rectorship to Queen Mary’s approval of his Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem. One of his hymns, “Behold the Saviour of mankind,” still appears in some of our current hymnals.

Their maternal grandfather was Rev. Samuel Annesley, LL.D., a scholarly Nonconformist clergyman. Their mother, Susanna Annesley, is recognized as a woman of extraordinary force of character, organizing ability, and intense piety, the “Mother of Methodism,” and even more gifted than her gifted but less steady and dependable husband. It will be noted that both grandfathers were dissenting clergymen.

The Epworth rectory life was intellectual, intensely devout, and full of the singing of psalms and hymns, for it was “a nest of singing birds.” When students at Oxford, John and Charles used to walk out into the meadows and sing songs and hymns together.[1]

III. THE MORAVIAN INFLUENCE

As we shall see, another extremely important influence was that of the Moravians on their personal religious experience, which under the Moravian guidance, on the Atlantic voyage and later, became intense and profound, furnishing tremendous motive power for all their work. The Moravian missionaries brought the realization of the power the Christian hymn can wield, and of the deep spirituality it may be used to express. It was not only the hymns the Moravian brethren sang that impressed John Wesley, but the spirit and genuineness of feeling with which they sang.

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IV. JOHN WESLEY

John Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703. He inherited his mother’s organizing and administrative ability, no less than her deep religious nature. He was to Methodist hymnody what John Calvin was to the Reformed psalmody, its initiator and director. He added a critical power and a practical sense of relation of means to ends his younger brother lacked—Charles Wesley wrote the hymns and John winnowed and edited them. At Oxford he was called the “Father of the Holy Club.” His aggressive spirit drove him to Georgia as a missionary, where he was a misfit, but where he was subjected to needed spiritual discipline, and to the influence of the Moravian pietism and absorption in spiritual things, so valuable for his symmetrical preparation for his future work. It led to his conversion—or, if you prefer, to his baptism of the Holy Spirit—and that of Charles, in 1738, which opened out to them both a new spiritual dimension. It also led to his interest in the Moravian “Gesangbuch,” or hymnbook, from the German of which he translated several hymns for his Charleston Collection. On his return to England he took an early opportunity to visit Herrnhut, Saxony, the parent society of the connection. He was delighted with the atmosphere of piety and Christian song which he found there. His pietistic and mystical tendencies were greatly strengthened by his intercourse with Count Zinzendorf and Rothe whom he there met.

On his return to London John Wesley kept up his association with the Moravian brethren for some time; but his active temperament could not long be content with their quiet, contemplative attitude, nor could he overcome his dislike for the emphasis they placed on the merely physical aspects of the life and death of Christ which they had brought over from the Roman Catholic mystics. So they presently parted company to the advantage of the aggressive spirit the Wesleys were developing.

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John Wesley was a scholarly man who had acquired all the culture of seven generations of intellectual family life and of the literary training of a great English university. He had the critical faculty well developed, a nice sense of the value of words, and the ability to marshal them for the expression of his thoughts. His sermons and his theological treatises reveal his logical and analytical mind. His feelings were strong, but not of the effusive character.

With this type of mind, it was not strange that as a hymn writer he would succeed better as a translator than as an original hymnist. His important contribution, therefore, consisted of translations from the German of Tersteegen, Gerhardt, Scheffler, Spangenberg, and Zinzendorf, and the amendment or even recasting of hymns by Watts, or of poems by George Herbert. Perhaps his greatest work in hymnody lay in encouraging as well as editing the work of his younger brother, Charles.[2]

In John Wesley’s plans to elevate the degraded population of England both spiritually and mentally, the hymn bears an important part. His keen and critical literary faculty was brought to bear upon its cultural as well as spiritual aspects, and his drastic corrections and revisions, as well as his translations, did much to lift the hymnody of his age to a higher literary plane.

V. CHARLES WESLEY

Charles Wesley was born at Epworth in 1707, being four and a half years younger than John. He inherited a full portion of the family religious nature, but with his mother’s mental energy he combined a double portion of the Wesley poetic temperament. With less of the rigid will of his older brother, he had a more sensitive spirit, a more emotional nature, a greater literary impulse. Critics scold that he wrote too much.[3] As well scold the mockingbird for being so prodigal of its notes or that it occasionally merely twitters.

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When he “got religion,” his religion made him sing. Did he rejoice? His joy found utterance in a joyous hymn, “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” Had he trials? What more natural than a hymn of prayer, “My God, my God, to Thee I cry”? Was there a riot about him? A hymn of steadfastness, “Thou hidden Source of calm repose,” sang in his heart. The impulse to write was not always accompanied by creative insight, so, of course, he wrote inferior hymns. The urge to write was too spontaneous that it should wait for the critical attitude. Let John supply that! Charles had the joy of writing and John winnowed the product. There was chaff, of course, but the golden wheat cannot grow without chaff.

It must not be assumed that Charles was only a hymn writer. Immediately on his conversion, he began to preach the need of the new birth, and for fifteen years he vied with John in field work in behalf of the new movement. With his background, his culture and education, his poetic nature and wealth of vocabulary and depth of experience, Charles might be expected to preach a vivid, glowing, flaming message—and such was his style. His meetings carried him into all parts of England, Wales, and Ireland.

What a team the Wesley brothers were! John with his masterly logical sermons and profound theological writings, Charles with his hymns and his sermons aflame with feeling, the Annesley organizing instinct in both of them. What a spiritual force they set in motion that transformed the spiritual and moral life of England and saved its soul—nay more, it swept around the whole earth, and determined the character of nations yet waiting to be born.

VI. CHARLES WESLEY’S HYMNS QUITE SUBJECTIVE

By the necessities of the situation, by the character of the work, and by his own temperament, Charles Wesley was led to write subjective, emotional hymns, keeping personal experience to the fore. But his emotionality was not shallow 185 sentiment, but spontaneous and genuine feeling, based on clear recognition of the actual truths of the Scriptures. In a very intense way he had actually experienced the sorrow for sin, the joy of salvation from its guilt and power, complete assurance of divine acceptance, the longing for divine communion, the sense of the love of God as it planned and fashioned his inner as well as his outward life, the certainty of safety from the power of sin in sanctification. He could write affecting invitations to sinners, for he knew their condition and danger, and also the results of peace and joy, of power and efficiency, that the acceptance of Christ would bring. The truths of the Gospel in passing through the crucible of his personality acquired an actuality, a poignancy of appeal, that made his hymns a mighty power, not only in the immediate campaigns of the Wesley brothers, but in the life and work of the Church in the generations to come.[4]

VII. WATTS AND CHARLES WESLEY

That was the difference between Wesley and Watts. The latter was objective, reasonable, formal. The majesty of a sovereign God appealed to him. He delighted in the infinite perfections of the divine nature. He surveyed the wondrous cross. He trembled before it, as did the children of Israel before the Holy Mount. His attitude was that of the Old Testament. Watts viewed the sovereignty of God objectively; Wesley felt the facts of salvation as actual experiences.

Charles Wesley was subjective; he expressed the feelings that the truths of the Gospel produced in him.[5]

God to him also was great, but as a Saviour, companion, friend. Why should he tremble? He was not Moses viewing the burning bush, but John leaning on the breast of Jesus. He shared the ecstasies of the apostles and disciples portrayed in the New Testament.[6]

So Watts gives dignity and majesty to the early topics of our hymnbooks on the attributes of God, his worship, the awe of 186 the soul in the presence of its sovereign Lord in hymns like “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” “Great God! how infinite thou art,” “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “Our God, our help in ages past,” while Charles Wesley fills the sweeter, tenderer, more intimate departments of salvation, forgiveness, communion with God, with the odor of the spikenard of his heart in hymns like “Depth of mercy! can there be,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” “Love divine, all loves excelling.” How well these singers of the Lord’s song supplement each other, and how much more symmetrical and complete are our hymnals because both have written in their own lines and styles!

Which is the greater hymn writer? That is a mooted question that need not be decided here. In Scriptural content the older man is superior, as, at his best, he is in majesty of style. For formal services of worship his hymns are more fitting and impressive. On the other hand, Wesley was superior in quantity and in the number of hymns of high quality. It must be granted that he is more poetical, more graceful, more suave and human. His range is more extensive, his emotion deeper and more noble. In immediate results on the lives of the people Charles Wesley is incomparably richer than Watts, for his hymns then and since turned multitudes unto righteousness.[7]

VIII. THE ISSUES OF THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

Space is wanting, and the profit would be slight, to give a catalogue of the sixty-four original issues of hymns that John published from 1737 to 1790, the mass of them for the use of the evangelistic campaign. They were largely occasional, issued to meet a pressing but only temporary need. They varied from a single sheet containing but a single hymn (Charles Wesley’s hymn praying for his brother’s long life) to the two volumes with two thousand and thirty short hymns 187 on Scripture passages. It was not until 1780 that a regular hymnbook “for the use of the people called ‘Methodists’” was issued, containing five hundred and twenty-five hymns.

IX. THE METHODIST TUNES

So practical a mind as that of John Wesley, who had from childhood engaged in sacred song, would not be expected to overlook the great importance of the tunes to which the new hymns were to be sung. In 1742 he printed a Collection of Tunes in which only three of the Old Version tunes appeared. Tunes were freely borrowed from the musical Supplement to the New Version, six were secured from German Moravian sources, and a few were new. Tunes were later supplied by Handel and Lampe; popular melodies which the Wesleys picked up in their preaching tours were also adopted.

Some twenty years later fugal tunes became popular among the churches, but became known as “Old Methodist Tunes,” although they had never been officially recognized and had first been written in Scotland.

When we regard the quantity and quality of the Wesleyan hymns, or their adaptation to the spiritual and evangelistic purposes for which they were written, or the body of teaching they conveyed, or the spiritual fervor they created and are still creating in millions of souls, or the influence they exerted on all subsequent hymnody, we do not find the sweeping statement of Dr. James Martineau, the Unitarian divine and hymnbook editor, as exaggerated: “After the Scriptures, the Wesley Hymn Book appears to me the grandest instrument of popular religious culture that Christendom has produced.”

X. INFLUENCES OPPOSING THE WESLEYAN HYMNS

The contemporary prejudice against the Wesleyan hymnody was very strong and bitter. There were many influences against them: the conservative devotion to the psalm versions, “New” and “Old,” the Nonconformist loyalty to the psalms 188 and hymns of Watts, the Established Church’s resentment against the revolters against established rule and custom within her bounds, the formalist objection to what seemed to them the fanatical, extravagant, and effusive type of piety, the emotional, subjective, experiential style of the hymns, and (worst of all!) the low social class that constituted the bulk of the followers of the Wesleys. The result was that both in Great Britain and in America the Wesleyan hymns crept very slowly into the hymnbooks of the churches outside the Methodist movement. It was many years before any appeared in the English church hymnals; even when they did, Charles Wesley’s name did not appear with them; it even happened that other writers were credited with them. In America, where the Methodists were the Salvation Army of their day, the Wesleyan hymns were slow of recognition. This was partly due to the general, almost fanatical, devotion to Watts’ hymnody.

The Arminian attitude of the Wesleys, as against the rigid Calvinism of both the Established and the Nonconformist churches, led to acrid theological discussions that intensified the opposition to the movement they headed. Even among those favorable to the spiritual reformation was there an element antagonistic to the Wesleys. Whitefield, Toplady, and the Countess of Huntingdon were leaders in this revolt.

The fact that Charles Wesley rather monopolized the writing of hymns undoubtedly had its adverse influence. John Wesley did not encourage others to write.[8] This accounts for the fact that comparatively few of their immediate associates wrote hymns, and some of these drifted into other relations. What else could a man expect who fearlessly amended, revised others’ hymns, and then warned the general hymnbook maker regarding the Wesleyan hymns as follows: “Hymn-cobblers should not try to mend them. I really do not think they are able.”

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XI. OTHER METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

Among these transient supporters was Edward Perronet (1726-1792) of Huguenot stock. He wrote “All hail the power of Jesus’ name,” which makes so noble a climax for many of our services. For a time he was a preacher in the Wesleyan connection. He then adopted Calvinistic views, and joined the forces of the Countess of Huntingdon, preaching under her direction. His caustic Gallic wit, exercised against the Established Church, offended his patroness and he became the pastor of a small congregation of dissenters.

Another associate of the Wesleys was Thomas Olivers (1725-1799), who had small educational advantages, but was an indefatigable worker. One of his hymns has kept its place in our hymnals, “The God of Abraham praise.” Montgomery says of it: “This noble ode, though the essay of an unlettered man, claims special honor. There is not in our language a lyric of more majestic style, more elevated thought, or more glorious imagery.”

John Bakewell, the head of a prominent academy at Greenwich, was a local preacher of whom his tombstone, near to that of John Wesley in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel, records that “he adorned the doctrine of God, our Saviour, 80 years and preached his Gospel 70 years.” He is remembered by the hymn, “Hail, Thou once despised Jesus,” which is found in most of the current hymnals.

XII. CALVINISTIC-METHODIST HYMN WRITERS

There were no poetic restraints felt by the adherents of the Calvinistic wing of the Methodist movement as met the associates of the Wesleys, and the number of hymn writers in its ranks is larger.

William Williams (1717-1791), “the Watts of Wales,” spent his life in working in the Welsh Calvinistic-Methodist connection. Early in his career the need of appropriate Welsh hymns was so pressing that recourse was had to a sort of 190 Eisteddfod of hymn-writing in which he easily won first honors. He was an indefatigable preacher, taking all Wales for his parish. His chief claim to immortality is his hymn, “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” originally written in Welsh, but soon used in the Whitefield Methodist Connection in England. His missionary hymn, “O’er the gloomy hills of darkness,” while not so popular, has had a wide use.

John Cennick (1718—1755) was originally associated with the Wesleys as a preacher, but the burning question of Calvinism separated them and he became associated with Whitefield and later with the Moravians. Two hymns of his were extremely popular both in Great Britain and in the early years of Methodism in America: “Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone,” and “Children of the heavenly King.” The former was used as the verse basis of a great many “spiritual” choruses in pioneer times. His “Lo! He comes with clouds descending” was reshaped and rewritten by Charles Wesley and Martin Madan. The literary quality of his hymns is not high, but their sincerity and adaptation to universal Christian experience give them practical value.

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778) was associated with the Wesleys and with the Calvinistic-Methodist leaders, but was a Church of England clergyman. He wrote four hundred and nineteen hymns; only a few continue in use. Notable among these is “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” which has been almost universally used and most mercilessly amended and revised. It has been translated into many languages: Gladstone having translated it into Latin, Greek, and Italian.

Montgomery says of Toplady’s hymns: “There is a peculiarly etherial spirit in some of these, in which, whether mourning or rejoicing, praying or praising, the writer seems absorbed in the full triumph of faith.” Another hymn of Toplady’s, “Deathless principle, arise,” has been characterized as “almost peerless,” but it is rather a reading hymn.

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XIII. BAPTIST HYMN WRITERS

While the Methodists were enriching the hymnody of the Christian Church, the Baptists were not idle. The second reformation of England did not leave them unaffected, even though they were not officially associated with it.

Their chief hymn writer was Anne Steele (1716-1778), an invalid of great spirituality and piety and of much literary felicity as well as facility. She wrote one hundred and forty-four hymns and thirty-four versions of psalms. Her hymns are meditative in style, graceful and gentle in spirit. She is best remembered by her hymn of resignation, “Father, whate’er of earthly bliss.” Other hymns still widely used are “Now I resolve with all my heart,” the hymn regarding the Scriptures, “Father of mercies, in Thy word What endless glory shines,” and the (for her) enthusiastic hymn of praise to Christ, “To our Redeemer’s glorious name.” Her vogue in America at one time was very great.

John Fawcett was another Baptist hymnist of note. He issued one hundred and sixty-six hymns, three of which are standards in our day: “How precious is the book divine,” “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,” and “Blest be the tie that binds.” Besides the duties of a heavy pastorate at Wainsgate (with a salary of less than two hundred dollars) he did a great amount of literary work. The third hymn mentioned above has done more for Christian unity than all arguments and commissions.

Another hymn writer of note, who may be classed as a Baptist, was Robert Robinson (1735-1790). Converted under Whitefield’s preaching, he later took a Baptist pastorate at Cambridge. He was very active in a literary way. He began a History of Baptists in 1781 which appeared in 1790, but in spite of laborious research it did not reach the completeness he desired. Besides eleven hymns of but moderate value written for Whitefield, he wrote a Christmas hymn, “Mighty 192 God, while angels bless Thee” and the ever-useful and prayerful “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing.” This was another favorite basis for “Spiritual” revival choruses in America. There was a lack of steadiness in his temperament. After writing A Plea for the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, he later came under suspicion as a Unitarian and Socinian.

Samuel Medley was a midshipman in the navy, but being sorely wounded in a terrible naval battle off Cape Lagos, he refused to continue as a naval officer. During his recovery he was soundly converted under the influence of his grandfather Tonge. After being at the head of a school for a time, he accepted a Baptist pastorate. Medley wrote a number of hymns, of which “O could I speak the matchless worth,” “Awake, my soul, to joyful lays,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and “Mortals, awake, with angels join,” are still found in most of our hymnals. He claimed no literary merit for himself, but his hymns have found a hearty response in England, and even more in America.

Joseph Grigg (1720-1768) was not a Methodist or a Baptist, but a Presbyterian. He is further noteworthy as an “infant phenomenon,” having written a very familiar hymn, “Jesus, and shall it ever be?” at the age of ten years. He was in humble circumstances at first, “a laboring mechanic.” He was assistant minister in a prominent London Presbyterian church for four years, then “married well” and retired, still writing and preaching. His “Behold, a Stranger at the door,” with a stirring tune by T. C. O’Kane, has been widely used in America as an evangelistic hymn with a refrain.

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