Part 13

I know not how it is. I think my sentiments and experience are as orthodox and Calvinistical as need be; and yet I am a sort of speckled bird among my Calvinist brethren. I am a mighty good Churchman, but pass amongst such as a Dissenter in prunello. On the other hand, the Dissenters (many of them, I mean) think me defective, either in understanding or in conscience, for staying where I am. Well, there is a middle party called Methodists, but neither do my dimensions exactly fit with them.... But there are a few among all parties who bear with me and love me, and with this I must be content at present.... Party walls, though stronger than the walls of Babylon, must come down in the general ruin when the earth and all its works shall be burned up, if not sooner.

In truth, he also was one of those whom any Church might gladly have adopted. He would have been thoroughly happy and at home amongst the best of the Dissenters, he would have been an ideal Methodist, and his _Narrative_ would have given an added glory to the _Lives of Early Methodist Preachers_; but, notwithstanding the difficulties which delayed his taking orders, he was in his right place as a parish clergyman, and had no reason to complain that he was not appreciated in the Establishment. His _Apologia_ shows that when he desired to enter the ministry, Dissenters were quite as much afraid of him as Churchmen, and were as unwilling to ordain him as the archbishop himself.[160]

He entered the Church without any special prejudice in its favour, but his conviction that he had taken the right step grew stronger year by year. His defence of the Prayer-book against the criticism of the Dissenter who availed himself of Watts’s _Psalms and Hymns_ is as effective as it is witty, and is enforced by a characteristic anecdote of a preacher who used to compose hymns line by line as he announced them from the pulpit.

Crito freely will rehearse Forms of praise and prayer in verse; Why should Crito then suppose Forms are sinful when in prose? Must my form be deemed a crime Merely for the want of rhyme?

Newton’s charity went a good deal beyond that of the ordinary evangelical of his own and of many a later day. In the _Apologia_ he expresses with vigour his conviction that ‘the Lord has a people’ among the members of the Roman and Greek Churches.

I should hope that they who, having themselves tasted that the Lord is gracious, know the language of a heart under the influence of His Spirit, would, in defiance of Protestant prejudices, be of my mind if they had opportunity of perusing the writings of some Papists.

Newton was not one of the great men of his age, but he is remarkable, if not pre-eminent, for the naturalness with which he speaks the common tongue of the children of God. Father Faber, in the preface to his _Hymns_, bears a somewhat reluctant witness to this.

Catholics even are said to be sometimes found poring with a devout and unsuspecting delight over the verses of the Olney hymns, which the author (Faber) himself can remember acting like a spell upon him for years, strong enough to be for long a counter influence to very grave convictions, and even now to come back from time to time unbidden into the mind.

If Faber deprecated the ‘spell’ of the Olney hymns, it is fair to remember that Newton concludes his defence of devout Catholics by saying, ‘However, I desire to be thankful that I am not a Papist.’

In 1764 the difficulties which beset his entrance to the ministry ended, and he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln to the curacy of Olney, which had been secured for him by the Earl of Dartmouth,[161] a devout and liberal Churchman, commemorated in Cowper’s lines—

We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways, And one who wears a coronet and prays.

Newton was nearly forty when he entered upon his first clerical employment. A few months after his coming to Olney, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin stayed with him at the vicarage for about six weeks, and from that time they were bound together by the ties of a deep affection. Newton recognized with his usual shrewdness how much he was inferior to his friend in intellectual capacity, but he was able to give to the sorely tried poet, in his fits of depression, much comfort and a very patient friendship. When in 1773 one of Cowper’s worst attacks came on, he went to the vicarage and remained there for more than twelve months. It was no light trial to Newton, but he said, ‘I think I can hardly do or suffer too much for such a friend,’ and ‘upon the whole’ he was not weary of his ‘cross.’ It has sometimes, most ungenerously, been charged against Newton that his influence tended to produce, or to aggravate, the religious melancholy of the poet, but Cowper’s malady had been very pronounced long before Newton met him. Richard Cecil, and more recently Canon Overton, have defended Newton against this accusation. Cowper’s morbid depression must have been much more trying to Newton than Newton’s humble, cheerful faith could have been to Cowper. Indeed, his playful poems addressed to John Newton and his wife and to their common friend, ‘the smoke-inhaling Bull’—the Independent minister of Newport Pagnell, whom Cowper calls ‘a man of letters and of genius.... but he smokes tobacco—nothing is perfect’—sufficiently show how genial and even jovial was their friendship. The fable that Nonconformist ministers and Evangelical clergymen are either rank hypocrites or intolerable dullards, though it had, and perhaps still has, the support of many great authorities, is only believed in circles profoundly ignorant of them.

Yet Newton must have been greatly indebted, especially as a hymn-writer, to Cowper. His hymns were all written during his residence at Olney, and he had intended that his share in the volume should have been much less than Cowper’s. Indeed, when his friend’s ‘long and affecting indisposition’ occurred, he laid the project aside for some time. In the end the collection appeared with sixty-eight of Cowper’s and two hundred and eighty of Newton’s. Of Cowper’s hymns, some few had been written before he went to Olney, e.g. ‘The Happy Change’ and ‘Retirement.’

Cowper is the one great hymn-writer who ranks with the greater poets. Montgomery, Heber, Milman, all wrote ‘poems,’ but their enduring poetic monument is in their hymns. Had Cowper never written a hymn, he would have had fame sufficient as a poet; had he never written a ‘poem,’ he would still have lived through the ages as the writer of immortal hymns. Lord Selborne says that Cowper’s contributions to the Olney collection ‘are, almost without exception, worthy of his name’; but, as a fact, many of them are prosaic and feeble, apparently written as task work, perhaps to meet a challenge of Newton’s, or to follow a particular sermon. Cowper’s choicest hymns are too well known for quotation—

O for a closer walk with God. Hark, my soul, it is the Lord. Sometimes a light surprises. God moves in a mysterious way. Jesus, where’er Thy people meet.

Newton’s best are—

Glorious things of thee are spoken. How sweet the name of Jesus sounds. Quiet, Lord, my froward heart. Come, my soul, thy suit prepare.

And the simple Spiritual songs—

Begone, unbelief, my Saviour is near. Though troubles assail and dangers affright.

Like Watts, Doddridge, Beddome, and many others, Newton wrote his hymns for use after preaching or for some special occasion, such as the opening of a room at the Great House for prayer-meetings and children’s services. It was for this event that Cowper wrote

Jesus, where’er Thy people meet,

and Newton a less effective hymn—

Dear Shepherd of Thy people, hear, Thy presence now display; As Thou hast given a place for prayer, So give us hearts to pray.

I do not suppose that the Olney hymns were often selected as a hymn-book for congregational use. The range of subjects is too narrow, and is so largely affected by the circumstances of composition, the sadness of Cowper’s prolonged illness, and the needs of the rustic worshippers, that it is, as a whole, more suited to private devotion than public worship, though from it may be gathered some of the most beautiful of the songs of Zion.

From twelve to twenty of the Olney hymns have won a permanent place in our hymn-books, but what is left is very far from being ‘empty chaff well meant for grain.’ Indeed, there are very few hymn-books of the eighteenth century so _interesting_ as this. When you have picked out of Watts or Doddridge their best hymns, you find it a wearisome and profitless task to plod through the remainder. An outrageous rhyme is a pleasing break in the dull monotony of the sentiment, but the Olney hymns, even at their feeblest, have life and vigour, and are often provokingly easy to remember. Their influence on modern hymnody has been all in favour of the expression of personal, individual experience, in which regard they may not unfairly be compared with many of the sublimest Psalms.

In Cowper’s verses there are often references to his own depressed and anxious state of mind, and pathetic prayers for deliverance or suggestions of comfortable thoughts.

She, too, who touched Thee in the press, And healing virtue stole, Was answered, ‘Daughter, go in peace, Thy faith hath made thee whole.’

Concealed amid the gathering throng, She would have shunned Thy view; And if her faith was firm and strong, Had strong misgivings too.

Like her with hopes and fears we come, To touch Thee, if we may: Oh! send us not despairing home, Send none unhealed away.

THE CONTRITE HEART

The Lord will happiness divine On contrite hearts bestow; Then tell me, gracious God, is mine A contrite heart, or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain, Insensible as steel; If ought is felt, ’tis only pain, To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined To love Thee, if I could; But often feel another mind, Averse to all that’s good.

Thy saints are comforted, I know, And love Thy house of prayer; I therefore go where others go, But find no comfort there.

Oh, make this heart rejoice or ache, Decide this doubt for me; And if it be not broken, break— And heal it, if it be!

THE WAITING SOUL

Breathe from the gentle south, O Lord, And cheer me from the north; Blow on the treasures of Thy word, And call the spices forth!

Help me to reach the distant goal; Confirm my feeble knee; Pity the sickness of a soul That faints for love of Thee!

I seem forsaken and alone, I hear the lion roar; And every door is shut but one, And that is Mercy’s door.

There, till the dear Deliverer come, I’ll wait with humble prayer; And when He calls His exile home, The Lord shall find him there.

PRAYER FOR PATIENCE

Lord, who hast suffered all for me, My peace and pardon to procure, The lighter cross I bear for Thee, Help me with patience to endure.

The storm of loud repining hush, I would in humble silence mourn; Why should the unburnt, though burning bush, Be angry as the crackling thorn?

Ah! were I buffeted all day, Mocked, crowned with thorns, and spit upon, I yet should have no right to say, My great distress is mine alone.

Let me not angrily declare No pain was ever sharp like mine, Nor murmur at the cross I bear, But rather weep, remembering Thine.

Cowper’s hymns are not all the voice of the penitent or of the anxious believer. He shared Newton’s opinion as to the classification of Calvinists, and two of his compositions evidently refer to the second basket of figs. They illustrate Hazlitt’s criticism, ‘His satire is excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman and the honest indignation of the virtuous man.’[162] The following verses are a good example of his satire.

A LIVING AND A DEAD FAITH

With golden bells, the priestly vest, And rich pomegranates bordered round, The need of holiness expressed, And called for fruit as well as sound.

Easy indeed it were to reach A mansion in the courts above, If swelling words and fluent speech Might serve instead of faith and love.

But none shall gain the blissful place, Or God’s unclouded glory see, Who talks of free and sovereign grace, Unless that grace has made him free!

This is not a favourite strain of Cowper’s. His hymns are nearly always the expression of personal emotion or experience. We may close our quotations from his Olney hymns with one which expresses, in his own way, the common yearning of all who love our Lord Jesus Christ.

LONGING TO BE WITH CHRIST

My Saviour, whom absent I love, Whom, not having seen, I adore; Whose name is exalted above All glory, dominion, and power;

Dissolve Thou these bonds that detain My soul from her portion in Thee, Ah! strike off this adamant chain, And make me eternally free.

Oh then shall the veil be removed, And round me Thy brightness be poured, I shall meet Him whom absent I loved, I shall see Him whom unseen I adored.

Newton’s contribution to the Olney hymns is considerable both in quality and quantity. His preface disarms criticism.

Dr. Watts might, as a poet, have a right to say, ‘That it cost him some labour to restrain his fire, and to accommodate himself to the capacities of common readers.’ But it would not become me to make such a declaration. It behoved me to do my best.... If the Lord, whom I serve, has been pleased to favour me with that mediocrity of talent, which may qualify me for usefulness to the weak and the poor of His flock, without quite disgusting persons of superior discernment, I have reason to be satisfied.

It is quite refreshing to find a hymn-writer who describes himself thus. They have often been modest men and women, but have had a fairly good idea of the value of their own compositions.

Newton’s hymns are, even more than those of Watts or Doddridge, pastoral hymns. Other men wrote for the congregation, he wrote for his own particular congregation, and very often with a special reference to one member of it. We know that his sermons were suggested in this way. If ‘Sir Cowper’ had a bad fit, or the Vicarage maid, Molly, was ‘perplexed and tempted on the point of election,’ the kind-hearted pastor had a sermon and a hymn, suited to their ‘state,’ ready on Sunday.

Many of Newton’s pieces express much more of Cowper’s experience than of his own. In such lines as the following is not his eye upon the sad figure in ‘the poet’s corner’ in the Great House?

Sure the Lord thus far has brought me By His watchful tender care, Sure ’tis He Himself has taught me How to seek His face by prayer: After so much mercy past, Will He give me up at last?

In my Saviour’s intercession Therefore I will still confide! Lord, accept my free confession, I have sinned, but Thou hast died: This is all I have to plead, This is all the plea I need.

That is what he has to say of ‘Confidence’ from Cowper’s point of view. When he speaks for himself he adopts a different tone.

Oh! I tremble still to think How secure I lived in sin; Sporting on destruction’s brink, Yet preserved from falling in.

Come, my fellow-sinners, try, Jesu’s heart is full of love! Oh that you, as well as I, May His wondrous mercy prove.

He has sent me to declare, All is ready, all is free: Why should any soul despair When He saved a wretch like me?

Perhaps it was with Cowper in his mind he wrote that beautiful and touching hymn for private devotion, which has been often most unjustly censured—‘’Tis a point I long to know.’ Newton, like Bunyan, knew how sincere a pilgrim Mr. Little Faith was, and each in his own way sought to comfort him. There is good robust common sense in the prayer of the last two verses. In strength and beauty it does not compare with Cowper’s hymn on the same text, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ which Mr. Gladstone reckoned one of the three greatest English hymns; but it belongs to the Christian treasury, and has brought help to many.

Lord, decide the doubtful case, Thou who art Thy people’s sun, Shine upon the work of grace, If it be indeed begun.

Let me love Thee more and more, If I love at all, I pray; If I have not loved before, Help me to begin to-day.

The tenderness of ‘the old African blasphemer’s’ heart is nowhere more touchingly illustrated than in his version of Isa. liv. 5-11, which must surely have been written for Cowper, since it quotes and emphasizes the words of his own great hymn. It has five eight-line verses, and is headed ‘To the Afflicted, Tossed with Tempest, and not Comforted.’

Pensive, doubting, fearful heart, Hear what Christ the Saviour says; Every word should joy impart, Change thy mourning into praise. Yes, He speaks, and speaks to thee. May He help thee to believe! Then thou presently wilt see Thou hast little cause to grieve.

Though afflicted, tempest-tossed, Comfortless awhile thou art, Do not think thou canst be lost, Thou art graven on My heart. All thy wastes I will repair, Thou shalt be rebuilt anew; And in thee it shall appear What a God of love can do.

It is the pastor’s heart which takes up the very words of his friend—

Yes, He _speaks and speaks to thee_, May He help thee to believe!

Richard Cecil says that Herbert was a ‘favourite’ of Newton’s, and there are not wanting reminiscences of Herbert in the Olney hymns, though Newton had little of Herbert’s ingenuity or power, and he says in a few plain words what Herbert weaves into a quaint poem, bright and ever-memorable with some ‘conceit’ such as he only conceived. If we set Newton and Herbert side by side, the comparison is, of course, all in favour of Herbert. Herbert speaks to himself and to God in what is an unknown tongue to many a good plain Christian. Newton wrote for his simple labouring folk at Olney; he is the poet of the rustic prayer-meeting. Bemerton and Olney were both villages in the land of Beulah, but there is a difference in the dialect, which is easily accounted for when we remember the contrast between the life of Herbert and of Newton. When they passed through a similar spiritual experience they described it in very different fashion, but, though there are diversities of gifts, there is the same Spirit; there is the same self-distrust, self-abhorrence; and there is the same calm acceptance of the great salvation and its joys. George Herbert tells his deepest, sweetest experience in the final poem of _The Temple_.[163] Newton tells his story in simple, homely verse that is not poetry, but is prayer and praise expressed in natural rhythm.

Dost Thou ask me who I am? Ah, my Lord, Thou know’st my name: Yet the question gives a plea To support my suit with Thee.

Thou didst once a wretch behold, In rebellion blindly bold, Scorn Thy grace, Thy power defy: That poor rebel, Lord, was I.

Once a sinner near despair, Sought Thy mercy-seat by prayer; Mercy heard and set him free: Lord, that mercy came to me.

Many years have passed since then, Many changes I have seen, Yet have been upheld till now; Who could hold me up but Thou?

IV Eighteenth-century Hymns

IV.—Addison, Toplady, and Others

A few other hymn-writers of the eighteenth century remain to be mentioned. The first writer is of a very different class from those of the later years. In 1712 Joseph Addison published six hymns in successive numbers of the _Spectator_. One was by Dr. Watts; the others were undoubtedly his own, though the authorship has been claimed for others. The hymns themselves are the work of a devout man of letters, and, without being exactly ‘popular,’ have been and still are extensively used. They have the easy grace of Addison’s prose-writings, and his name made them at once acceptable to all classes. They belong to no school, and are used by all the Churches.

The six hymns are—‘The Lord my pasture shall prepare’; ‘When all Thy mercies, O my God’; ‘When Israel, freed from Pharaoh’s hand’ (Watts); ‘The spacious firmament on high’; ‘How are Thy servants blest, O Lord’; ‘When rising from the bed of death.’

John Cennick (1718-55) had much of Newton’s simplicity and sincerity, though he had not his touches of genius or any trace of the old sea-farer’s raciness. Cennick was ‘found’ by John Wesley at Reading, in 1739, and was one of his earliest lay-preachers. But he adopted Calvinistic views, and soon left the Methodists and attached himself to Whitefield, whom he served as a brother beloved for several years. He bore reproach, violence, hardship, with the courage which characterized the itinerants of that day of either school of theology. He separated from Wesley in 1741, from Whitefield in 1745, and found a more congenial home among the Moravians. He was ordained a deacon, and ministered in London and Dublin. He it was who earned for Protestants of the Methodist type the nickname of ‘swaddlers,’ so long common in Ireland. ‘A name given to Mr. Cennick, first by a Popish priest, who heard him speak of a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and probably did not know the expression was in the Bible, a book he was not much acquainted with.’[164]

Cennick was vacillating, and apparently easily influenced by stronger minds than his own, but he was not able to keep up a quarrel, and, ten years after his defection from Wesley, wrote him an affectionate letter, in which he wishes ‘heartily that Christians conferring together had hindered the making that wide space between us and you.’ Whitefield, though he had suffered a larger defection from his Society than Wesley, bore Cennick no ill will, but kept up an affectionate correspondence with him to the end. ‘My dear John,’ he wrote in 1747, ‘I wish thee much success, and shall always pray that the work of the Lord may prosper in thy hands.’[165] Cennick continued his abundant labours till 1755, when he died in London in his thirty-seventh year.

His best-known hymn is in every collection—

Children of the heavenly King, As ye journey, sweetly sing;

and notwithstanding the dreadful rhyme of its second verse—

Thou dear Redeemer, dying Lamb

still finds a place in many hymn-books.

Cennick is often spoken of as the author of

Lo! He comes with clouds descending;

but there is very little trace of Cennick’s hymn in Charles Wesley’s. Canon Ellerton calls the hymn ‘a recast by Charles Wesley,’ and adds, ‘Cennick’s hymn is poor stuff compared to that into which Wesley recast it, putting into it at once fire and tunefulness.’ This, however, is an inaccurate statement of the facts. Probably Cennick’s hymn suggested Wesley’s, but this is the only share Cennick had in it.

Cennick’s hymn was published in 1752, Wesley’s in 1758. In 1760 Martin Madan pieced together six verses, five (with some alterations) from these two hymns, and one from another of Wesley’s. Neither Cennick’s original nor Madan’s can be compared with Wesley’s fine verses, which are best left as he wrote them.[166] The following is Cennick’s original—

Lo! He cometh, countless trumpets Blow before His bloody sign! ’Midst ten thousand saints and angels, See the Crucifièd shine. Allelujah! Welcome, welcome, bleeding Lamb!

Now His merits by the harpers, Through the eternal deeps resounds! Now resplendent shine His nail-prints, Every eye shall see His wounds! They who pierced Him Shall at His appearing wail.

Every island, sea, and mountain, Heaven and earth shall flee away! All who hate Him must, ashamèd, Hear the trump proclaim His day: Come to judgement! Stand before the Son of Man!