Salvation! O the joyful sound.... ... 287 270 71 721 202 604 51 There is a land of pure delight..... Wells, Marcus Morris, is the author of one of our most popular modern hymns on the Holy Spirit and also the composer of the tune to which it is universally sung. Beyond the published date of his birth (1815) and his death (1895) and the statement that he was a lawyer living in the State of New York, we have no facts concerning him. It is hoped that some facts may be learned about him which may be incorporated in later editions of this volume. The date assigned to the hymn by Mr. Ira D. Sankey is 1858. It is to be regretted that we have not other hymns and tunes from one who can write devotional poetry and music such as that represented by the single hymn and tune which we have here from his pen. Holy Spirit, faithful Guide.. 193 Wesley, Charles, has been called "the poet of Methodism," but this designation is too narrow for him. He might more properly be called the poet of Christendom, for the entire Christian world is indebted to him for many of its most valuable hymns. For the first place among English hymn writers he has never had but one competitor. Hymnologists have sometimes instituted a comparison between the hymns of Wesley and those of Watts. Some have given the preference to one, and some to the other. We must remember that these men were not rivals. They were too good, too great, and too unlike to be antagonists. They were both princes-aye, kings-of song, but each in his own realm. Watts's great theme was divine majesty, and no one approaches him in excellence upon this subject. Wesley's grandest theme was lovethe love of God-and here he had no rival. Charles Wesley was born in Epworth, England, December 18, 1707. He was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University, where he took his degree in 1728. It was while a student at Christ Church College that Wesley and a few associates, by strict attention to duty and exemplary conduct, won for themselves the derisive epithet of "Methodists." He was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1735, and that same year he sailed with his brother John as a missionary to Georgia, but soon returned to England. He was not converted, according to his own statement, until Whitsunday, May 21, 1738. (See note under No. 1.) On that day he received a conscious knowledge of sins forgiven, and this event was the real beginning of his mission as the singer of Methodism. He tells his own experience beautifully in the hymn beginning: And can it be that I should gain An interest in the Saviour's blood? Charles Wesley's hymns may be generally classified as follows: Hymns of Christian experience ("O for a thousand tongues to sing" is an example); invitation hymns (of which "Come, sinners, to the gospel feast" is a good specimen); sanctification hymns ("O for a heart to praise my God" is one of them); funeral hymns ("Rejoice for a brother deceased"); and hymns on the love of God, a subject on which he never became weary. "Wrestling Jacob" represents the last class. But it is preeminently in portraying the various phases of experimental religion-conviction of sin, penitence, saving faith, pardon, assurance, entire sanctification-that Charles Wesley is quite without a peer among hymn writers. His songs have been one of the most potent forces in Methodism since its organization. Nor was he a singer alone, but as an itinerant preacher he was a busy and earnest colaborer with his brother John. After his marriage, in 1749, his itinerant labors were largely restricted to London and Bristol. He died March 29, 1788. "After all," says Dr. John Julian, the greatest authority in English hymnology, "it was Charles Wesley who was the great hymn writer of the Wesley family, and perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn writer of all ages." Of the six thousand and five hundred hymns by Charles Wesley (all of which were written after his conversion), this collection contains one hundred and twenty-one. (See page 451 for a complete list of the poetical publications of John and Charles Wesley.) A charge to keep I have. 388 75 Let not the wise their wisdom boast. 308- 638 601 228 294 156 256 2 116 267 297 Blest be the dear uniting love. Father, I stretch my hands to thee.. 277 Lo! on a narrow neck of land. 579 356 648 352 103 355 374 362 354 1 278 365 401 311 400 366 563 378 562 Servant of God, well done! Thy.... 593 162 372 Hark! the herald angels sing.. 111 Talk with us, Lord, thyself reveal... 499 512 555 262 619 ... Wesley, John, is so well known as the founder of Methodism that we need give here only the leading dates and events in his life. He was born at the Epworth rectory June 28, 1703; went to Oxford University in 1720; was ordained deacon in 1725; was made Fellow of Lincoln College in 1726; was his father's curate, 1727-29; returned to Oxford in 1729, and became leader of the holy club, sneeringly called "Methodists," which had been organized during his absence by his brother Charles; went to Georgia as a missionary in 1735, and while here published his first hymn book (1736-37) at Charleston, S. C. returned to England at the end of two years, saying: "I went to America to convert the Indians, but O who shall convert me? Who is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?" impressed by the piety and faith of the Moravians in a storm while crossing the ocean, and they now became his spiritual guides. While attending one of their prayer meetings on May 24, 1738, he obtained the conscious knowledge of sins forgiven and of his acceptance with God. From this time He He had been As a revivalist until his death, March 2, 1791, he was unremitting in his labors as a preacher of that religion which he had experienced and as an organizer of converted men for the work of evangelization. and Christian reformer his work is known and read of all men. Nearly all of the Wesleyan hymns, even those found in volumes issued jointly by the two brothers, are commonly accredited to Charles Wesley. As, however, John Wesley states that he and his brother agreed among themselves not to distinguish their hymns, it cannot be definitely known that John Wesley is not himself the author of some of the hymns accredited to Charles Wesley. He is known to be the author of numerous translations from the German, and these the most successful translaamong tions and finest hymns in the entire range of English hymnology, being marked by deep spirituality and lofty devotional thought. His translations were the result in part of a visit to the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut, in Germany. (See page 451 for a complete list of the poetical publications of John and Charles Wesley.) Of the following seventeen hymns, all but three are translations: are Come, Saviour, Jesus. Bourignon... 379 High on his everlast... Spangenberg. 221 My soul before thee... Richter.. .... 624 367 335 305 148 273 302 359 722 In O thou, to whose......Zinzendorf. Shall I, for fear of.... Winkler..... 225 Thou hidden love of... Tersteegen... 345 To God, the Father.... .Original.. We lift our hearts to..Original... 45 Wesley, Samuel, the son of Rev. John Wesley and the father of John and Charles Wesley, was born in 1662. While an academy student Wesley expected to enter the ministry of the Dissenters. The change in his opinions was a little remarkable. Some one had written severely against the Dissenters, and Mr. Samuel Wesley was appointed to reply. This led him to a course of reading which in the end resulted differently from what was expected. He left the Dissenters and attached himself to the Established Church. Entering Exeter College, Oxford, as a servitor, he was graduated in 1688. Ordained soon after, he served as curate in several places. 1696 he dedicated his Life of Christ, an Heroic Poem, to Queen Mary, who presented him with the living at Epworth, where he remained until his death, April 22, 1735. In 1689 he married Susanna Annesley, whose fame has gone wherever Christian motherhood is honored. They had nineteen children, nine of whom died in infancy. He published The Old and New Testaments Attempted in Verse in 1716, and had just finished at the time of his death a volume of learned Dissertations on the Book of Job. His oldest son, Samuel Wesley, Jr., was also a hymn writer of some note. On December 1, 1730, he wrote the following: "I hear my son John has the honor of being styled 'the father of the holy club.' If it be so, I must be the grandfather of it; and I need not say that I had rather any of my sons should be so dignified and distinguished than to have the title of 'His Holiness.'" Behold the Saviour of mankind..... 142 West, Robert Athow, an English-American Methodist layman, editor, and author, was born at Thetford, England, in 1809; came to this country in 1843; was the official reporter of the important and historic ses sion of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. Mr. West was a member of a committee of seven appointed by the General Conference of 1848 to prepare a standard edition of the hymn book which appeared later as Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1849. To this volume he contributed two hymns, one of which is that found in this collection. From 1846 to 1849 he edited the Columbia Magazine (New York). In 1858 he became editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser. He also published Sketches of Wesleyan Preachers, 1848, and A Father's Letters to His Daughter, 1865. He died at Georgetown, D. C., February 1, 1865. 21 But The story He Come, let us tune our loftiest song.. White, Henry Kirke, a gifted English poet who died early in life, was born in Nottingham, England, March 21, 1785. Very early he manifested a remarkable love for books and a decided talent for composition. his parents were poor, and he was apprenticed in early boyhood to a stocking weaver, from which uncongenial servitude he escaped as soon as he could and began the study of law; but later he was converted and felt called to the ministry. of his conversion from deism to Christianity is briefly but beautifully told in the poem titled "The Star of Bethlehem." entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1805 as a servitor; but died October 19, 1806, in the second year of his college course, when only twenty-one years of age. In 1803 he published a small volume of poems. Some of them are very fine, but no doubt he would have produced others far better if he had lived to the ordinary age of man. His rare poetic genius, his victory over skepticism and subsequent faith and piety, his hard struggle with poverty and early death invest the story of his life with more His than ordinary pathos. hymns, ten in number, appeared in Collyer's Collection, 1812. 412 Oft in danger, oft in woe.... The Lord our God is clothed with... 99 When marshaled on the mighty... 124 Whittier, John Greenleaf, commonly known as the "Quaker Poet," was born at Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807; and died at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 1892. Beginning life as a farmer boy and village shoemaker, and with only a limited education, he entered the profession of journalism in 1828, becoming that year editor of the American Manufacturer, pub lished in Boston, and in 1830 editor of the Dear Lord and Father of mankind.. 543 Williams, Helen Maria, was born in the North of England in 1762. She published a volume of poems when only twenty-one years old, and in 1786 her Poems appeared in two small volumes. She visited Paris in 1788, and lived there for some years with a sister who had married a French Protestant. This was during the period of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. She was an outspoken republican in her sym pathies, and was imprisoned by Robespierre because of some of her utterances in advocacy of the Girondist cause, being released from prison only after his death, in 1794. Her Letters from France (1790 and 1795) were published in England, America, and France. They dealt with political, religious, and literary questions, and showed her to be a woman of more than ordinary intellectual strength. She published many volumes between 1786 and 1823, when her last volume appeared, titled Poems on Various Occasions, being a collection of all her previously published She lived partly in England, but poems. mostly in France, though the closing years of her life were spent in Holland in the home of a nephew who lived at Amsterdam and was pastor of the reformed Church there. Her death occurred at Paris December 14, 1827. While thee I seek, protecting Power. 517 Williams, William, has been called "the Watts of Wales." He was born in 1717. His "awakening" was due to an open-air sermon by the famous Welsh preacher, Howell Harris. Williams received deacon's orders in the Established Church, but subsequently became a preacher in the Calvinistic Methodist connection. As an evangelistic preacher he was popular and successful, abounding in labors and exercising a wide influence among the Welsh, died January 11, 1791. He 91 Guide me, O thou great Jehovah.... Willis, Nathaniel Parker, the well-known American poet and man of letters, was born at Portland, Me., January 20, 1807; graduated at Yale in 1827; followed a literary life with great success, publishing many volumes, one of poems; died at his beautiful home, "Idlewild," near Newburgon-the-Hudson, January 29, 1867. He published a volume of Sacred Poems in 1843. His sister, Mrs. Parton, was a writer widely known under the nom de plume of "Fanny Fern." The perfect world, by Adam trod.... 660 Winchester, Caleb Thomas, an educator and author, the son of Rev. George F. Winchester, was born at Montville, Conn., January 18, 1847; graduated at Wesleyan University with the A.B. degree in 1869, in which institution he has been Professor of English Literature since 1873. He has delivered courses of lectures at Amherst, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and other universities. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Dickinson College in 1892. He is the author of several scholarly volumes, among them Some Principles of Literary Criticism, 1899; Life of John Wesley, 1906; A Group of English Essayists, 1910. He was a member of the Joint Commission that prepared this Hymnal. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He resides at Middletown, Conn., the seat of Wesleyan University. The Lord our God alone is strong.... 656 Winckler, John Joseph, a German Pietist, was born at Luckau, in Saxony, December 23, 1670. He was at first a pastor at Magdeburg, then a chaplain in the Protestant army, accompanying the troops to Holland and Italy, and at length returned to Magdeburg and became chief minister of the cathedral. He was no less eminent for his mental culture than for his piety. He was a preacher and writer who had the courage of his convictions, and this quality is notably manifest in the hymn by him found in this collection. He died August 11, 1722. Shall I, for fear of feeble man...... 225 Winkworth, Catherine, an English poetess unusually gifted as a translator of hymns, was a member of the Church of England. She was born in London September 13, 1829. Much of her early life was spent near Manchester, the family moving later to Clifton, near Bristol. She made a specialty of translations from the German. She was the author of the following books: Lyra Germanica (first series, 1855; second series, 1858); The Chorale Book for England, 1863; Christian Singers of Germany, 1869. She died suddenly of heart disease at Monnetier, Savoy, July, 1878. Dr. James Martineau said: "Her translations contained in these volumes are invariably faithful and, for the most part, both terse and delicate; and an admirable art is applied to the management of complex and difficult versification." "Miss Winkworth," says Dr. Julian, "although not the earliest of modern translators of German into English, is certainly the foremost in rank and popularity." She possessed great intellectual and social gifts, and was deeply interested in the higher education of women. Six of her translations have a place in this volume. |