Part 14

All who love Him view His glory, Shining in His bruisèd Face: His dear Person on the rainbow, Now His people’s heads shall raise: Happy mourners! Now on clouds He comes! He comes!

Now redemption, long expected, See, in solemn pomp appear: All His people, once despisèd, Now shall meet Him in the air: Allelujah! Now the promised kingdom’s come!

View Him smiling, now determined Every evil to destroy! All the nations now shall sing Him Songs of everlasting joy! O come quickly! Allelujah! come, Lord, come!

Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78) was a devout clergyman, converted through the preaching of a Methodist in Ireland. His ‘Arminian prejudices’ received an ‘effectual shock’ in 1758. His ministry at Broad Hembury, and in the French Reformed Church, Leicester Fields, was greatly valued, and his sincere piety impressed all who knew him.

He was one of the most violent opponents of Wesley and Fletcher in the Calvinistic controversy, and expressed himself in unmeasured terms. He was a good man, with deep convictions and narrow views. Yet he touched human hearts as few other hymn-writers have ever done. To have written ‘Rock of Ages’ would have been fame enough for a much greater man than Toplady. It appeared in a curious and unpromising setting. Toplady was editing the _Gospel Magazine_, and in 1776 published a _Spiritual Improvement_ of a Catechism on the National Debt, in which he strives to estimate the number of individual sins a man may be expected to commit in the course of his earthly life.

As we never, in the present life, rise to the mark of legal sanctity, is it not fairly inferrible that our sins multiply with every second of our sublunary durations?

’Tis too true. And in this view of the matter, our dreadful account stands as follows:—At ten years old, each of us is chargeable with 315 millions and 36 thousand sins. At twenty, with 630 millions and 720 thousand. At thirty, with 946 millions and 80 thousand. At forty, with 1,261 millions and 440 thousand. At fifty, with 1,576 millions and 800 thousand. At sixty, with 1,892 millions and 160 thousand. At seventy, with 2,207 millions and 520 thousand. At eighty, with 2,522 millions and 880 thousand.

We can only admire and bless the Father for electing us in Christ, and for laying on Him the iniquities of us all; the Son for taking our nature and our debts upon Himself, and for that complete righteousness and sacrifice whereby He redeemed His mystical Israel from all their sins; and the co-æqual Spirit for causing us (in conversion) to feel our need of Christ, for inspiring us with faith to embrace Him, for visiting us with His sweet consolations by shedding abroad His love in our hearts, for sealing us to the day of Christ, and for making us to walk in the path of His commandments.

_A living and dying_ Prayer _for the_ Holiest Believer _in the world_.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the Water and the Blood From Thy riven Side which flowed, Be of Sin the double Cure, Cleanse me from its Guilt and Power.[167]

Toplady wrote a good many hymns, but no other compares with this great universal prayer, probably the best-known and best-loved hymn in the language. He was essentially a Methodist, his Calvinism being, one might almost say, accidental. His hymns have the tone and even the mannerisms of Charles Wesley.[168] Many of them are good devotional reading. The following verses will remind many readers of some well-known lines of Charles Wesley—

O when wilt Thou my Saviour be? O when shall I be clean, The true, eternal Sabbath see, A perfect rest from sin?

The consolations of Thy word My soul have long upheld; The faithful promise of the Lord Shall surely be fulfilled.

I look to my Incarnate God, ’Till He His work begin, And wait ’till His redeeming blood Shall cleanse me from all sin.

His great salvation I shall know, And perfect liberty; Onward to sin he cannot go, Whoe’er abides in Thee:

Added to the Redeemer’s fold, I shall in Him rejoice, I all His glory shall behold, And hear my Shepherd’s voice.

O that I now the voice might hear That speaks my sins forgiven! His word is past to give me _here_ The inward pledge of heaven.

His blood shall over all prevail And sanctify the unclean; The grace that saves from future hell Shall save from present sin.

In no part of the kingdom was the Evangelical Revival more influential than in Wales. Whitefield, Howell Harris, and, perhaps more than all, Lady Huntingdon, were the controlling minds, and they led the people of the Principality to the Calvinistic rather than to the Wesleyan Methodists. The quaint poetry of Vicar Rees Prichard’s _Welshman’s Candle_ and the Psalms of Archdeacon Prys seem to have been the songs of the Welsh Church until William Williams of Pantycelyn arose—a great light, well worthy to be called the Watts of Wales. His father was deacon of an Independent Church, which at one time met ‘in a cave during the hours of twilight,’ for fear of their enemies. Williams himself was studying medicine, and had no thought of the ministry. One Sunday morning, as he passed through Talgarth in Breconshire, he went into the parish church. After the service the congregation gathered in the churchyard, and Howell Harris, standing on a tomb-stone, preached with the Holy Ghost and with power. That was the hour of Williams’s conversion. He prepared for the ministry of the Established Church, and was ordained deacon in 1740. He acted as curate of two small parishes for three years, and then, drawn into the current of the Revival under the influence of Whitefield, David Rowlands, and Howell Harris, he became an earnest evangelist, travelling throughout the Principality. His hymn-writing is said to have been occasioned by a challenge of Howell Harris to the Welsh Calvinistic preachers to write better hymns than their congregations then possessed. He wrote hymns by the hundred, and they won an immediate and enduring popularity in Wales. ‘What Paul Gerhardt has been to Germany, what Isaac Watts has been to England, that and more has William Williams of Pantycelyn been to Wales.’[169] He was a great favourite with Lady Huntingdon, at whose suggestion he prepared a volume of hymns for Whitefield’s Orphan House. In this work, entitled _Gloria in Excelsis_, some of his best hymns appeared. In modern hymn-books he is known by two hymns—

Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah!

and

O’er those gloomy hills of darkness.

It is probable that the English version of his greatest hymn was written by himself, and this seems to indicate that he suffers in translation, for none of the English versions of his other poems is to be compared with this. Mr. Garrett Horder thinks that ‘Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah’ has been largely supplanted by ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ though the most recent hymn-books do not sustain this criticism. Keble re-wrote, but failed to improve it; and the same may be said of those who have made minor alterations. It is, and is likely to remain, one of the great songs of the Christian pilgrim in his progress from this world unto that which is to come.

Mr. Elvet Lewis has given several translations of hymns hitherto unknown to English people, which are good reading, though perhaps none are likely to attain extensive use. Here are two verses in Williams’s favourite metre—

Much I love the faithful pilgrims, Who the rugged steeps ascend; On their hands and knees they labour To attain the heavenly end; To the summit On my knees shall I come too.

Bruisèd hands, oh! stretch ye upward, Tired feet, walk ye with care; The reward, the crown is yonder, My Belovèd—He is there! Earth forsaking Now the journey’s end is all.

Here are two more in another metre, and with the cheery rhythm of John Newton—

Here I know myself a stranger, And my native country lies Far beyond the ocean’s danger In the lands of Paradise: Storms of trial blowing keenly Drive me on this foreign strand; Come, O South wind, blow serenely, Speed me to my Fatherland.

Now the air is full of balm With the fragrance of the land; And the breezes clear and calm Tell of Paradise at hand: Come, ye much-desired regions, With the best of joy in store; Country of the singing legions, Let me reach thy restful shore!

Williams had the spirit of devout enthusiasm which characterized the Revival; his missionary hymns, though not among the best, are among the earliest of that class, and he had the rapt devotion to his Lord which is ever the inspiration of the true hymn-writer.

To Thee, my God, my Saviour, Praise be for ever new; Let people come to praise Thee In numbers like the dew; O! that in every meadow The grass were harps of gold, To sing to Him for coming To ransom hosts untold![170]

V Nineteenth-century Hymns

I.—Anglican Hymns

The hymns of the eighteenth century are almost without exception by writers of the Dissenting, Methodist, or Evangelical schools. In the nineteenth century the tide turns, and though the Nonconformists are not without hymn-writers of distinction, the great hymns are by Anglicans. Henry Francis Lyte in the first half of the century, Bishop Bickersteth, Charlotte Elliott, and Miss Havergal in the second, represent the Evangelical school. Heber was a typical Anglican, but he was not of the Tractarian type, and died before the publication of the _Christian Year_. Keble and Newman were the poets of the Oxford Movement, and gave a distinctive tone to much of the later Church hymn-writing; but Heber, more than any other man, did for the Church of England what Watts had done for the Nonconformists.

Reginald Heber (1783-1826) was a scholar and a gentleman, his churchmanship was unimpeachable, and his life and death alike served to win acceptance for hymns whose intrinsic worth must have secured the widest recognition. His hymns, like those of Herbert, Keble, and many of our sweetest singers, are hymns of the country parsonage, and seem all to have been written whilst he held the family living of Hodnet, to which he was welcomed by the people as ‘Master Reginald.’ He was little better satisfied with Tate and Brady than Watts had been with Barton, and at one time contemplated using the Olney hymns in his church. Then he projected a more ambitious scheme, and hoped, with the help of Milman, Southey, and Walter Scott, to provide a book which might, perhaps under episcopal sanction, become the authorized hymnal of the Church. But he felt the proposal a bold one, and tried to prepare the way by the publication in the _Christian Observer_ of a few hymns which he described as ‘part of an intended series appropriate to the Sundays and principal holy days of the year, connected in some degree with their particular collects and gospels, and designed to be sung between the Nicene Creed and the sermon.’ Like other reformers, he indulges in criticisms of the hymns then in use, and is especially severe in censuring those which address our Lord ‘with ditties of embraces of passion.’ The hymn-book was duly compiled, and specimens were submitted to Bishop Howley in the hope that he might give it an episcopal benediction. It is curious to note the apologetic tone in which Heber writes.

The evil, indeed, if it be one, of the admission of hymns into our Churches has, by this time, spread so widely, and any attempt to suppress it entirely would be so unpopular, and attended with so much difficulty, that I cannot help thinking it would be wiser, as well as more practicable, to _regulate_ the liberty thus assumed, instead of authoritatively taking it away. Nor can I conceive any method by which this object might be better obtained than by the publication of a selection which should, at least, have the praise of excluding whatever was improper in diction or sentiment; and might be on this, if on no other ground, thought not unworthy a licence of the same kind as that which was given to the psalms of Tate and Brady. I have the vanity to think that even my own compositions are not inferior in poetical merit to those of Tate; and my collection will contain some from our older poets, which it would be mockery to speak of in the same breath with his. There are a few also which I have extracted from the popular collections usually circulated, which, though I have not been able to learn their authors, possess considerable merit and much popularity, and are entirely free from objectionable expressions.[171]

The Bishop criticized freely, generally approved and advised the completion of the project; but Heber was called to Calcutta, and the collection was not published until after his death. It contained fifty-seven hymns of his own, twelve of Milman’s, and twenty-nine others. His object had been to obtain ‘a well-selected and sanctioned book of hymns for the Church of England, to supersede the unauthorized and often very improper compositions now in use.’ He did not secure this, but he prepared the way for something better, and may justly be regarded as the first of the modern Anglican hymn-writers. His best hymns are too well known to need comment, and of the rest comparatively few are of special value in public worship. His hymns owe more to the inspiration of the Gospels than the Psalms. The collect or gospel for the day often explains and throws new light upon a hymn, as in this for the Second Sunday after Trinity, the gospel being the Parable of the Great Supper. It is usually regarded as a Communion hymn.

Forth from the dark and stormy sky, Lord, to Thine altar’s shade we fly; Forth from the world, its hope and fear, Saviour, we seek Thy shelter here: Weary and weak, Thy grace we pray; Turn not, O Lord, Thy guests away!

Long have we roamed in want and pain, Long have we sought Thy rest in vain; ’Wildered in doubt, in darkness lost, Long have our souls been tempest-tost; Low at Thy feet our sins we lay, Turn not, O Lord, Thy guests away!

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), who died Dean of St. Paul’s, is famous as an historian rather than a hymn-writer, but his few hymns have a wide popularity. In

Ride on, ride on in majesty!

he has shown how fine and true a hymn may be, though it departs from recognized devotional form. It is a meditation of a highly rhetorical kind, and apostrophizes but does not address our Lord. By some editors this is regarded as fatal to its inclusion in a collection of hymns, but the common judgement of Christian congregations is right. It has proved itself a hymn in spite of all rules, and is an excellent spiritual song for Palm Sunday.

In the year (1827) of the publication of Heber’s _Hymns, written and adapted to the Weekly Church Services of the Year_, Keble issued anonymously the most influential devotional work of the nineteenth century, _The Christian Year: Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holy Days throughout the Year_. Like Ken’s festival hymns, it was not a hymn-book, and was not meant for use in Church services, though from a few of the poems verses may be taken which make hymns of the very best type. Pusey regarded it as ‘the real source of the Oxford Movement,’ of which Newman also thought Keble ‘the true and primary author,’ though he ‘ever considered and kept’ July 14, 1832, the day when Keble preached his sermon on ‘National Apostasy,’ ‘as the start of the religious movement.’ Of the _Christian Year_ Newman says, ‘Keble struck an original note, and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new music, the music of a school long unknown in England.’ But the teaching of the Oxford Movement was rather latent than patent in the _Christian Year_, and it would be a great mistake to regard it as influencing that religious revival or even the English Church alone. On the other hand, Hurrell Froude feared that the authorship of the _Christian Year_ would be attributed to a Methodist.[172] It was as important an element in the Movement as Charles Wesley’s hymns were in the Evangelical Revival. In each case the influence extended far beyond those who claim the poems as their special heritage.

Keble regarded the Church as in a state of desolation, decay, and apostasy. He knew nothing of the glorious optimism of the Wesleys, who saw everywhere signs of the speedy triumph of the gospel and the coming of Christ’s kingdom. They sang

Plague, earthquake, and famine, and tumult and war, The wonderful coming of Jesus declare.

Keble’s vision was

So Famine waits, and War with greedy eyes, Till some repenting heart be ready for the skies.

They saw in the ingatherings to their scattered Societies the assurance of abounding blessing

Lo, the promise of a shower Drops already from above; But the Lord will shortly pour All the spirit of His love.

Keble saw no such visions, dreamed no such dreams. All he dares to ask is

Lord, ere our trembling lamps sink down and die, Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel Thee nigh.[173]

Yet, when he forgets the depression of the time, and turns to the consolations of eternity, he shows how firmly he believed his own motto, ‘In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.’ He has the sure trust and confidence of all God’s chosen, and at times kindles into holy rapture. The prevailing tone, however, is of sadness—the depression of the saint, not the perplexity of the doubter.

In 1839 Keble published, also anonymously, his metrical version of the Psalms. He had intended it to be a substitute for Tate and Brady, and had hoped to secure episcopal sanction for its use in the dioceses of Oxford and Winchester. It is, however, more interesting from the standpoint of the expositor than the hymnologist, very few of its versions being adapted to congregational use. The _Lyra Innocentium_, published anonymously in 1846, is vastly inferior to his great work, and has little to recommend it to those who are not in sympathy with the High Church Movement.

After Heber and Keble all that there was of justice in Montgomery’s sarcastic complaint, that hymns had been written by ‘all sorts of persons except poets’[174] is gone. They were poets first, hymn-writers afterwards. Keble’s greatest hymn is taken from his ‘Verses for Evening,’ which begins as a poem, and rises from meditation to praise and prayer. The earlier verses are not suitable for a hymn-book, but the beauty of the later lines is only fully realized when they are remembered.

’Tis gone, that bright and orbèd blaze, Fast fading from our wistful gaze; Yon mantling cloud has hid from sight The last faint pulse of quivering light.

In darkness and in weariness The traveller on his way must press, No gleam to watch on tree or tower, Whiling away the lonesome hour.

Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear, It is not night if Thou be near: O may no earth-born cloud arise To hide Thee from Thy servant’s eyes.

There is surely no more beautiful illustration of the way in which the Christian rises from Nature up to Nature’s God.

As in the case of so many hymns, the part is greater than the whole. The six verses universally selected are not improved by the addition of others—though they have much to commend them.

John Henry Newman (1801-90) belongs to Anglican hymn-writers in virtue of his ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ though it may almost be described as his farewell to the Church of England. It marks at least the beginning of his long-drawn-out parting from the Establishment. Few hymns have won a wider popularity, and no doubt it has done much to accustom Nonconformist Churches to sympathize with the poetic and emotional side of the Oxford Movement. This hymn and the _Christian Year_ made absolute want of sympathy with the new devotion impossible. Moreover, the tone of perplexity, the confession of bewilderment, the sense of ‘encircling gloom,’ fell in with the prevailing spirit of religious emotion. To many men of his own school the hymn meant something very different from what it means to the average worshipper, who finds in it a comfortable sedative for vague religious depression. I confess that personally the hymn does not seem to me as great as its reputation, but it has brought help and comfort to myriads. Dr. Wm. Barry says—

This most tender of pilgrim songs may be termed the March of the Tractarian Movement. It is pure melody, austere yet hopeful, strangely not unlike the stanzas which Carlyle has made familiar to the whole English race, the Mason-Song of Goethe, in its sublime sadness and invincible trust. Both are psalms of life, Hebrew or Northern, chanted in a clear-obscure where faith moves onward heroically to the day beyond.[175]

Newman’s other great hymn, ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,’ which owes its popularity largely to Mr. Gladstone’s affection for it—though it is in itself a fine hymn—belongs to his Romanist days.

There was room for the new teaching. Perhaps Methodism was a little too buoyant, Evangelicalism too contented, and the Church was ready for a fresh upheaval.

Coincidently with the rise of the Oxford Movement came, as we have seen, the rolling away of the reproach of hymn-singing. Even the strongholds of the Establishment capitulated, and hymns formed an important part in the new propaganda. Stanch Churchmen had disliked hymn-singing. To quote Canon Ellerton—

It came to us from an unwelcome source—from the Dissenters, eminently from the Methodists. It was first adopted by those of the clergy who sympathized most with them; for many long years it was that dreaded thing, a party badge.[176]

The Evangelicals adopted the custom easily, and with delight. Cowper, Newton, Toplady, Hervey, Watts, Doddridge, and even Wesley, were no strangers to them. But for the Calvinistic trouble, they all minded the same things. They had no difficulty in regard to fellowship with Nonconformists in worship or in work. It has been the fashion to disparage the Evangelicals, and to regard the ‘Clapham Sect’ as a coterie of ill-informed, self-satisfied Pharisees; but for solid, practical Christianity it would be difficult to find any ‘school’ that outrivals them. The ‘Clapham Sect’ knew little and cared less for priestly rights or the niceties of ritual. They may have been slack in the observance of fast and vigil, but they kept the fast of God, breaking the bonds of wickedness and letting the oppressed go free. The men who were the backbone of the anti-slavery movement, who were nursing fathers to the Bible Society, and established the Church Missionary Society, were not narrow-minded bigots, but held the true Catholic Faith concerning the kingdom of God.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), whose highest preferment was the Perpetual Curacy of Lower Brixham, ranks, as a hymn-writer, with Ken and Keble. While ministering to his ‘dear fishermen,’ he wrote many a lovely hymn, and one of unsurpassed beauty. ‘Abide with me’ was his swan-song. He died, like Toplady, of consumption, and felt the pain and pathos of death in the prime of life. In a most tender poem he has recorded that common but infinitely pathetic grief. It is interesting to contrast the subdued sadness, the patient submission of Lyte with the triumphant ecstasy of Toplady’s ‘Deathless principle, arise.’

Shudder not to pass the stream, Venture all thy care on Him. Not one object of His care Ever suffered shipwreck there.

Saints in glory perfect made Wait thy passage through the shade; Ardent for thy coming o’er, See they throng the blissful shore.

Such the prospects that arise To the dying Christian’s eyes. Such the glorious vista, Faith Opens through the shades of death.[177]