CHAPTER VI

THE SINGERS OF THE REVIVAL.

Chief of all the auxiliary circumstances which aided the Great Revival, beyond a question, was this: that it taught the people of England, for the first time, the real power of sacred song. That man in the north of England who, when taken, by a companion who had been converted, to a great Methodist preaching, and being asked at the close of the service how he had enjoyed it, replied, “Weel, I didna care sae mich aboot the preaching, but, eh, man! yon ballants were grand,” was no doubt a representative character. And the great and subduing power of large bodies of people, moved as with one heart and one voice, must have greatly aided to produce those effects which we are attempting to realise. All great national movements have acknowledged and used the power of song. For man is a born singer, and if he cannot sing himself he likes to feel the power of those who can. It has been so in political movements: there were the songs of the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. And the greatest religious movements through all the Christian ages have acknowledged the power of sacred song, even from the days of the apostles, and from the time of St. Ambrose in Milan. Luther soon found that he must teach the people to sing. That is a pleasant little story, how once, as he was sitting at his window, he heard a blind beggar sing. It was something about the grace of God, and Luther says the strain brought tears into his eyes. Then, he says, the thought suddenly flashed into his mind, “If I could only make gospel songs which people could sing, and which would spread themselves up and down the cities!” He directly set to work upon this inspiration, and let fly song after song, each like a lark mounting towards heaven’s gate, full of New Testament music. “He took care,” says one writer, in mentioning the incident, “that each song should have some rememberable word or refrain; such as ‘Jesus,’ ‘Believe and be saved,’ ‘Come unto Me,’ ‘Gospel,’ ‘Grace,’ ‘Worthy is the Lamb,’ and so on.”

Until Watts and Doddridge appeared, England had no popular sacred melodies. Amongst the works of the poets, such as Sir Philip Sidney, Milton, Sandys, George Herbert, and others, a few were scattered up and down; but they mostly lacked the subtle element which constitutes a hymn. For, just as a man may be a great poet, and utterly fail in the power to write a good song, so a man may be a great sacred poet, and yet miss the faculty which makes the hymn-writer. It is singular, it is almost indefinable. The subtle something which catches the essential elements of a great human experience, and gives it lyrical expression, takes that which other men put into creeds, sermons, theological essays, and sets it flying, as we just now said, like “the lark to heaven’s gate.” It ought never to be forgotten that Watts was, in fact, the creator of the English hymn. He wrote many lines which good taste can in no case approve; but here again the old proverb holds true, “The house that is building does not look like the house that is built.” And the great number of following writers, while they have felt the inspiration he gave to the Church, have moulded their lines by a more fastidious taste, which, if it has sometimes improved the metre or the sentiment, has possibly diminished in the strength. We will venture to say that even now there is a greater average of majesty of thought and expression in Watts’s hymns than in any other of our great hymn-writers; although, in some cases, we find here and there a piece which may equal, and some one or two which are said to surpass, the flights of the sweet singer of Stoke Newington. But the hymns of Watts, as a whole, were not so well fitted to a great and popular revival, to the expression of a tumultuous and passionate experience, as some we shall notice. They were, as a whole, especially wanting in the social element, and the finest of them sound like notes from the harp of some solitary angel. One cannot give to them the designation which the Wesleys gave to large sections of their hymns, “suitable for experience meetings.” Praise rather than experience is the characteristic of Watts, although there are noble exceptions. Our readers will perhaps remember a well-known and pleasing instance in a letter from Doddridge to his aged friend. Doddridge had been preaching on a summer evening in some plain old village chapel in Northamptonshire, when at the close of the service was “given out,” as we say, that hymn commencing:

“Give me the wings of faith to rise.”

We can suppose the melody to which it was sung to have been very rude; but it was, perhaps, new to the people, and the preacher was affected as he saw how, over the congregation, the people were singing earnestly, and melted to tears while they sang; and at the close of the service many old people gathered round Doddridge, their hearts all alive with the hymn, and they wished it were possible, only for once, to look upon the face of the dear old Dr. Watts. Doddridge was so pleased that he thought his old friend would be pleased also, and so he wrote the account of the little incident in a letter to him. In many other parts of the country, no doubt, the people were waiting and wishful for popular sacred harmonies. And when the Great Revival came, and congregations met by thousands, and multitudes who had been accustomed to song, thoughtless, foolish, very often sinful and licentious, still needed to sing (for song and human nature are inseparable, apparently, so far as we know anything about it, in the next world as well as in this), it was necessary that, as they had been “brought up out of the horrible pit and miry clay,” “a new song of praise” should be put in the mouth. John Wesley had heard much of Moravian singing. He took Count Zinzendorf’s hymns, translated them, and immensely improved them; he was the first who introduced into our psalmody the noble words of Paul Gerhardt. Some of the finest of all the hymns in the Wesleyan collection are these translations. Watts was unsparingly used. Wesley’s first effort to meet this necessity of the Revival was the publication of his collection in 1739.[9] And thus, most likely without knowing the anecdote of Luther we have quoted above, Wesley and his coadjutors did exactly what the Reformer had done. They gave effect to the Revival by the ordinance of song, and preached the Gospel in sweet words, and often recurring Gospel refrains.

Footnote 9:

See Appendix.

The remark is true that there was no art, no splendid form of worship or ritual; early Methodism and the entire evangelic movement were as free from all this as Clairvaux in the Valley of Wormwood, when Bernard ministered there with all his monks around him, or as Cluny when Bernard de Morlaix chanted his “Jerusalem the Golden.” Like all great religious movements which have shaken men’s souls, this was purely spiritual, or if it had a secular expression it was not artificial. Loud amens resounded as the preacher spoke or prayed, and then the hearty gushes of, perhaps, not melodious song united all hearts in some litany or Te Deum in new-born verse from some of the singers of the last revival. Amongst infuriated mobs, we read how Wesley found a retreat in song, and overpowered the multitude with what we, perhaps, should not regard melody. Thus, when at Bengeworth in 1740, where Wesley was set upon by a crowd, and it was proposed by one that they should take him away and duck him, he broke out into singing with his redoubted friend, Thomas Maxfield. He allowed them to carry him whither they would; at the bridge end of the street the mob retreated and left him; but he took his stand on the bridge, and striking up—

“Angel of God, whate’er betide, Thy summons I obey,”

preached a useful and effective sermon to hundreds who remained to listen, from the text, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

But the contributions of Watts and Wesley are so well known that it is more important to notice here that as the Revival moved on, very soon other remarkable lyrists appeared to contribute, if few, yet really effective words. Of these none is more remarkable than the mighty cobbler, Thomas Olivers, a “sturdy Welshman,” as Southey calls him. He is not to be confounded with John Oliver, also one of the notabilities of the Revival. Thomas was really an astonishing trophy of the movement; before his conversion he was a thoroughly bad fellow, a kind of wandering reprobate, an idle, dissipated man. He fell beneath the power of Whitefield, whom he heard preach from the text, “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” He had made comic songs about Whitefield, and sung them with applause in tap-rooms. As Whitefield came in his way, he went with the purpose of obtaining fresh fuel for his ridicule. The heart of the man was completely broken, and he felt so much compunction for what he had done against the man for whom he now felt so deep a reverence and awe, that he used to follow him in the streets, and though he did not speak to him, he says he could scarcely refrain from kissing the prints of his footsteps. And now, he says, at the beginning of his new life, what we can well believe of an imagination so intense and strong, “I saw God in everything: the heavens, the earth and all therein showed me something of Him; yea, even from a drop of water, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand, I received instruction.” He was about seriously to enter into a settled and respectable way of business when John Wesley heard of him; and although he was converted under Whitefield, Wesley persuaded him to yield himself to his direction for the work of preaching as one of his itinerant band, and sent him into Cornwall—just the man we should think for Cornwall, fiery and imaginative: off he went, in 1753. He was born in 1725. He testifies that he was “unable to buy a horse, so, with my boots on my legs, my great-coat on my back, and my bag with my books and linen across my shoulders, I set out for Cornwall on foot.” Henceforth there were forty-six years on earth before him, during which he witnessed a magnificent confession before many witnesses. He became one of the foremost controversialists when dissensions arose among the men of the Revival. He acquired a knowledge of the languages, especially of Hebrew, and was a great reader. Wesley appointed him as his editor and general proofreader; but he could never be taught to punctuate properly, and the punctilious Wesley could not tolerate his inaccuracies as they slipped through the proof, so he did not retain this post long. But Wesley loved him, and in 1799 he descended into Wesley’s own tomb, and his remains lie there, in the cemetery of the City Road Chapel. He wrote more prose than poetry; but, like St. Ambrose, he is made immortal by a single hymn. He is the author of one of the most majestic hymns in all hymnology. Byron and Scott wrote Hebrew melodies, but they will not bear comparison with this one. While in London upon one occasion, he went into the Jewish synagogue, and he heard sung there by a rabbi, Dr. Leoni, an old air, a melody which so enchanted him and fixed itself in his memory, that he went home, and instantly produced what he called “a hymn to the God of Abraham,” arranged to the air he had heard. And thus we possess that which we so frequently sing,

“The God of Abraham praise!”[10]

It is principally known by its first four verses; there are twelve. “There is not,” says James Montgomery, “in our language a lyric of more majestic style, more elevated thought, or more glorious imagery; * * * like a stately pile of architecture, severe and simple in design; it strikes less on the first view than after deliberate examination, * * * the mind itself grows greater in contemplating it;” and he continues, “On account of the peculiarity of the measure, none but a person of equal musical and poetical taste could have produced the harmony perceptible in the verse.” There will, perhaps, always be a doubt whether Olivers was the author of the hymn,

“Lo! He comes with clouds descending.”

If Charles Wesley were the author, he undoubtedly derived the inspiration of the piece from Olivers’ hymn, “The Last Judgment:”[11] it is in the same metre, and probably Wesley took the thought and the metre, and adapted it to popular service. What is undoubted is that Olivers, who is the author of the metre, is also the author of the fine old tune “Helmsley,” to which the hymn was usually sung until quite recent times; the tune was originally called “Olivers.”

Footnote 10:

See Appendix

Footnote 11:

See Appendix

It is but a natural step from Thomas Olivers to his great antagonist, Augustus Toplady; he also is made immortal by a hymn. He wrote many fine ones, full of melody, pathos, and affecting imagery. Toplady, as all our readers know, was a clergyman, the Vicar of Broad Hembury, in Devonshire. He took the strong Calvinistic side in the controversies which arose in the course of the Great Revival; Olivers took the strong Arminian side. They were not very civil to each other; and the scholarly clergyman no doubt felt his dignity somewhat hurt by the rugged contact with the cobbler; but the quarrels are forgotten now, and there is scarcely a hymn-book in which the hymn of Olivers is not found within a few pages of

“Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”

To this hymn has been given almost universally the palm as the finest hymn in our language. Where there are so many, at once deeply expressive in experience, and subdued and elevated in feeling, we perhaps may be forgiven if we hesitate before praise so eminently high. Mr. Gladstone’s translation into the Latin, in the estimation of eminent scholars, even carries a more thrilling and penetrative awe.[12] But Toplady wrote many other hymns quite equal in pathos and poetic merit. The characteristic of “Rock of Ages” is its depth of penitential devotion. A volume might be written on the history of this expressive hymn. Innumerable are the multitudes whom these words have sustained when dying; they were among the last which lingered on the lips of Prince Albert as he was passing away; and to how many, through every variety of social distinction, have they been at once the creed and consolation! It is by his hymns that Toplady will be chiefly remembered. For years he was hovering along on the borders of the grave, slowly dying of consumption; and he died in 1778, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. It was his especial wish that he should be buried with more than quiet, that no announcement should be made of the funeral, and that there should be no especial service at his grave: it testifies, however, to the high regard in which he was held that thousands followed him to his burial in Tottenham Court Road Chapel; and when we know that his dear friend Rowland Hill conducted the service, we can scarcely be surprised, or offended, that he broke through the injunctions of his friend, and addressed the multitude in affectionate commemoration of the sweet singer.

Footnote 12:

See Appendix.

Toplady we should regard as the chief singer of the Revival, after Charles Wesley, although entirely of another order; not so social as meditative, and reminding us, in many of his pieces, of the characteristics we have attributed to Watts. His midnight hymn is a piece of uncommon sublimity; portions of it seem almost unfit for congregational singing; but for inward plaintive meditation, for reading in the evening family prayer, when the hushed stillness of night is over the household, and the pilgrim of life is about to commit himself to the unconsciousness of sleep, the verses seem tenderly suggestive:

“Thy ministering spirits descend, And watch while Thy saints are asleep; By day and by night they attend, The heirs of salvation to keep. Bright seraphs despatched from the throne, Fly swift to their stations assigned; And angels elect are sent down To guard the elect of mankind.

“Their worship no interval knows; Their fervour is still on the wing; And, while they protect my repose, They chant to the praise of my King. I, too, at the season ordained, Their chorus forever shall join, And love and adore without end, Their gracious Creator and mine.”

We have noticed in a previous chapter that when Whitefield separated himself from Wesley, the Revival took two distinctly different routes. We only refer to this again for the purpose of remarking that as Toplady was intensely Calvinistic in his method of Divine grace, so his hymns, also, reflect in all its fulness that creed; yet they are full of tenderness, and well calculated frequently to arouse dormant devotion. “Your harps, ye trembling saints;” “Emptied of earth I fain would be;” “When languor and disease invade;” “Jesus, immutably the same;” “A debtor to mercy alone,” and many another, leave nothing to be desired either on the score of devotion, poetry, or melody.

In a far humbler sphere, but representing the same faith and fervour as Toplady, and also carried away young, was Cennick. In an article in the _Christian Remembrancer_, on English hymnology, written very much for the purpose of throwing contempt on all the hymn-writers of the Revival, Cennick is spoken of as “a low and violent person; his hymns peculiarly offensive, both as to matter and manner.” Some exceptions are made by the reviewer for “Children of the Heavenly King.” We may presume, therefore, that to this writer, “Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb,” is one of the “peculiarly offensive.” This is not wonderful, when in the next page we read that “the hymns of Newton are the very essence of doggerel.” This sounds rather strange, as a verdict, to those who have felt the particular charm of that much-loved hymn, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds!” It is not without a purpose that we refer to this paper in the _Christian Remembrancer_—evidently by a very scholarly hand—because its whole tone shows how the sacred song of the Revival would be likely to be regarded by those who had no sympathy with its evangelical teaching. The writer, for instance, speaking of Wesley’s hymns, doubts whether any of them could possibly be included by any chance in English hymnology! “Jesus, lover of my soul,” is said, “in some _small_ degree to approximate to the model of a Church hymn!” Of the Countess of Huntingdon’s hymn-book, the writer says, “We shall certainly not notice the raving profanity!” It is not necessary further either to sadden or to irritate the reader by similar expressions; but the entire paper, and the criticisms we have cited, will show what was likely to be the effect of the hymns of the Revival on many similar minds of that time. In fact, the joy of the Revival work arose from this, that no person, no priest, nor Church usage, was needed to interpose between the soul and the Saviour. Faith in Christ, and His immediate, personal presence with the soul seeking Him by faith, as it was the burden of the best of the sermons, so it was, also, of all the great hymns.

The origin and the authors of several eminent hymns are certainly obscure. To Edward Perronet must be assigned the authorship of the fine coronation anthem of the Lamb that was slain: “All hail the power of Jesus’ name!”

Another, which has become a universal favourite, is “Beyond the glittering starry globe.” This is a noble and inspiring hymn; only a few verses are usually quoted in our hymn-books. Lord Selborne divides its authorship between Fanch and Turner. We have seen it attributed to Olivers; this is certainly a mistake. The _Quarterly Review_, in a very able paper on hymnology, reproducing an old legend concerning it, traces it to two brothers in a humble situation in life, one an itinerant preacher, the other a porter. The preacher desired the porter to carry a letter for him. “I can’t go,” said the porter, “I am writing a hymn.” “You write a hymn, indeed! Nonsense! you go with the letter, and I will finish the hymn.” He went, and returned, but the hymn was unfinished. The preacher had taken it up at the third verse, and his muse had forsaken him at the eighth. “Give me the pen,” said the porter, and he wrote off,

“They brought His chariot from above, To bear Him to His throne; Clapped their triumphant wings, and cried, ‘The glorious work is done!’”

Unfortunately the author of the paper in the _Quarterly Review_ appears never to have seen the hymn in its entirety. The verse he cites is not the eighth, but the twenty-second, and it has been mutilated almost wherever quoted; the verse itself is part of an apostrophe to the angels, recalling their ministrations round our Lord:

“Tended His chariot up the sky, And bore Him to His throne; Then swept your golden harps and cried, ‘The glorious work is done!’”

Whoever wrote the hymn had the imagination of a poet, the fine pathos of a believer, and a strong lyrical power of expression.

Anecdotes of the origin of many of our great hymns of this period are as interesting as they are almost innumerable; those of which we are speaking are hymns of the Revival—to speak concisely—perhaps commenced with the Wesleys, and closed with Cowper and Newton. It must not be supposed that there were no singers save those whose verses found their way into the Wesleyan or other great collections of hymns; there were James Grant, Joseph Griggs, especially notable, Miss Steele, the author of a great number of hymns of universal acceptance in all our churches, and which are more like those of Doddridge than any other since his day. Then there was John Stocker,—but we would particularly notice Job Hupton, the author of a hymn which has never been included in any hymn-book except _Our Hymn Book_, edited by the author of this volume, but which is scarcely inferior to “Beyond the glittering starry sky.”

“Come, ye saints, and raise an anthem, Cleave the skies with shouts of praise, Sing to Him who found a ransom, Ancient of eternal days. Bring your harps, and bring your odours, Sweep the string and pour the lay; View His works! behold His wonders! Let hosannas crown the day!”

The hymn is far too long for quotation. Job Hupton was a Baptist minister in the neighbourhood of Beccles, where he died in 1849, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, and the sixty-fifth of his ministry.

Thus there was set free throughout the country a spirit of sacred song which was new to the experience of the nation: it was boldly evangelical; it was devoted, not to the eulogy of Church forms and days; there was not a syllable of Mariolatry; but praise to Christ, earnest meditation upon the state of man without His work, and the blessedness of the soul which had risen to the saving apprehension of it. This forms the whole substance of the Divine melody. It has seemed to some that the most perfect hymn in the English language is, “Jesus! lover of my soul.” Sentiments may differ, arising from modifications of experience, but that hymn undoubtedly is the very essence of all the hymns which were sung in the days of the Great Revival. For the first time there was given to Christian experience that which met it at every turn. Watts found such a choir, and such an audience for his devotions, as he had never known in his life; and “Charles Wesley,” says Isaac Taylor, “has been drawing thousands in his wake and onward, from earth to heaven.” The hymns met and united all companies and all societies. The bridal party returned from church, singing,

“We kindly help each other, Till all shall wear the starry crown.”

If they gathered round the grave, they sang;—and what a variety of glorious funereal hymns they had! But that was a great favourite:

“There all the ship’s company meet, Who sailed with their Saviour beneath; With shoutings each other they greet, And triumph o’er sorrow and death.”

Few separations took place without that song,

“Blest be the dear uniting love, That will not let us part.”

While others became such favourites that even almost every service had to be hallowed by them; such as,

“Jesus! the name high over all, In hell, or earth, or sky;”

while an equal favourite almost, was,

“Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer’s praise!”

They must soon have become very well known, for so early as 1748, when a sad cluster of convicts, horse-stealers, highway robbers, burglars, smugglers, and thieves, were led forth to execution, the turnkey of the prison said he had never seen such people before. The Methodists had been among them; they had all yielded themselves to the power of “the truth as it is in Jesus,” and on their way to Tyburn they all sang together,

“Lamb of God! whose bleeding love We now recall to mind, Send the answer from above, And let us mercy find; Think on us, who think of Thee, And every struggling soul release; Oh! remember Calvary, And let us go in peace!”

The hymns found their way to sick beds. The old Earl of Derby, the grandfather of the present peer, was dying at Knowsley. He had for his housekeeper there a Mrs. Brass, a good and faithful Methodist; the old Earl was fond of talking with her upon religious matters, and one day she read to him the well-known hymn, “All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh.” When she came to the lines,

“The Lord in the day of His anger did lay Our sins on the Lamb, and he bore them away,”

the Earl looked up and said, “Stop! don’t you think, Mrs. Brass, that ought to be, ‘The Lord in the day of his _mercy_ did lay’?”

The old lady did not admit the validity of his lordship’s theology; but it very abundantly showed that his experience had passed through the verse, and reached to the true meaning of the hymn. An old blind woman was hearing Peter McOwan preach. He quoted these lines:

“The Lord pours eyesight on the blind; The Lord supports the fainting mind.”

The poor old woman was not happy until she met the preacher, and she said, “But are there really such sweet verses? Are you sure the book contains such a hymn?” and he read the whole to her. It is one by Watts:

“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath.”

Innumerable are the anecdotes of these hymns; they inaugurated really the rise of English hymnology; and it is not too much to say that, as compared with them, many more recent hymns are as tinsel compared with gold. A writer truly says: “They sob, they swell, they meet the spirit in its most hushed and plaintive mood. They roll and bear it aloft, in its most inspired and prophetic moods, as on the surge of more than a mighty organ swell; among the mines and quarries, and wild moors of Cornwall, among the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in chambers of death, in the most joyous assemblages of the household, they have relieved the hard lot, and sweetened the pleasant one; and even in other lands soldiers and sailors, slaves and prisoners, have recited with what joy these words have entered into their life.”

Thus the great hymns of this period grew and became a religious power in the land, strangely contradicting a verdict which Cardinal Wiseman pronounced some years since, that “all Protestant devotion is dead.” While we give all honour to the fine hymns of Denmark and Germany, many of the best of which were translated with the movement, it may, with no exaggeration, be said that the hymnology of England in the eighteenth century is the finest and most complete which the history of the Church has known.