Charles Wesley's exquisite taste, although printed thus in "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 1739. "To love is all my wish, I only live for this." Whether the poet wrote it so, or inadvertently allowed the printer to substitute "wish" for "bliss," it affords a good illustration of Horace's line, “Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus : " "E'en honest Homer sometimes nods." To us, however, it seems evident that "wish" is a misprint, and that "bliss " was the word intended, as both rhyme and reason required,— that the couplet should have read : : "To love is all my bliss, I only live for this." A paraphrase by C. Wesley of 1 Thess. iv. 13-18, one of the most glorious descriptions in the New Testament of the Second Advent of Christ, and the final change of His saints, could not fail to be sublime. Hymn 58: "Jesus, faithful to His word, Shall with a shout descend; All heaven's host their glorious Lord, Shall pompously attend." The poet uses the word "pompously "in its primary sense, with pomp or grandeur, splendidly, magnificently. But "pompous," like the Latin adjective pomposus, had always the secondary sense of ostentatious, gaudy, ceremonious, showy, and it is now almost exclusively employed in this sense. In Parnell's "Hermit,”—a poem quoted by John Wesley, Sermon Ixxi., " On Good Angels," the ostentatious host, whose hospitality to the two travellers was only prompted by the vanity of wealth and the love of display, is thus memorialized :— "The pair arrive, the liveried servants wait, Their lord receives them at the pompous gate." The word "pompously " therefore, which lowers the sublime effect of the hymn, would have been advantageously exchanged for some other. A better reading, if we may venture to suggest one, would have been,— "All heaven's host their glorious Lord, "Thou great mysterious God unknown,” etc., was first published as one of Charles Wesley's "Redemption Hymns," 1747. It was not included in the present Collection by John Wesley, but was added on a revision of the Hymn-Book at the close of the last century. Verse 5 stood thus: "Whate'er obstructs Thy pardoning love Thy glory to display," etc. When inserted in the Hymn-Book, this was altered to the present reading, which was certainly the reverse of an improvement : "Whate'er obstructs Thy pardoning love,— Or sin, or righteousness,-remove," etc. It is not righteousness, but self-righteousness, that hinders the reception of the blessing which God is ever waiting to bestow. The former reading, therefore, commends itself to the mind for its correctness, and to the ear for its euphony. Hymn 99, "Father of lights, from whom proceeds Whate'er Thy every creature needs," etc. This hymn, with three other stanzas, here omitted, appears in "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 1739, p. 43, and is entitled, "A Prayer under Convictions." It is a fine expansion of the idea contained in Job's confession, "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth....I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The middle couplet of verse 2 reads,— 66 "Thine eyes must all my thoughts survey, To prevent," now means to hinder, to obstruct; and that is the sense which it suggests to common readers. But it is used here in the old sense of anticipating; from the Latin pravenire, to come before, or be beforehand with. It is used in this sense, 1 Thessalonians iv. 15, and in the Liturgy of the Established Church. Hymn 137, "When shall Thy love constrain, And force me to Thy breast? etc. This beautiful short metre hymn is a selection of twelve stanzas, out of the twenty-two of which the original hymn consisted, as it appears in "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 1740, where it is entitled "The Resignation." The commencement of the present hymn is the ninth verse of the original; the first eight and the two concluding stanzas being omitted. Verse 7 reads, "And can I yet delay My little all to give? For Jesus to receive?" Whether the meaning is, "For my soul to receive Jesus," or, "For Jesus to receive my soul," is not obvious from the construction: though probably the latter is intended. The ambiguity would not have existed if the reading had been: "And can I yet delay Thine, wholly Thine, to be? Hymns 152 and 153 form one hymn in Charles Wesley's "Hymns on God's Everlasting Love," 1741, which is based on 1 Timothy ii. 4: “Who willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (John Wesley's version.) "Ah! whither should I go?" (Hymn 152.) "Lo! in Thy hand I lay." (Hymn 153.) "Lay" is either an active verb governing some substantive-in which case the question, "What do you lay ?" may with propriety be asked,— or it is the past tense of the neuter verb to lie. But as from the second line," And wait," etc., the poet obviously speaks in the present tense, he evidently intended, "I lie in Thy hand, and wait to prove Thy will." The stanza might have been turned in some such way as this: Hymn 358, 66 "Lo! in Thy hand I lie, And wait Thy will to prove; My Potter, mould Thy clay, that I 'Open, Lord, my inward ear," etc. Charles Wesley's "Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1742," entitled, "Waiting for Christ the Prophet." The first verse of our Hymn, which is the second of the original, concludes thus :— "Never in the whirlwind found, Or where earthquakes rock the place, The whisper of Thy grace." “A silent sound,” if taken literally, is an impossibility. If a sound, it is not silent; and if silent, it is not a sound. We are aware that the language here is figurative; but a figure should be consistent, and its expression should not be a contradiction in terms. If the ear is figur ative,—the "inward ear,"-then the sound is inward; yet still it is a sound; and cannot in a figurative sense be silent. The literal and the figurative should never be blended and confounded together. The Hebrew, 1 Kings xix. 12, ??, means not only silent, but also quiet, still, or at rest. The phrase in our English Version is “a still small voice." The Septuagint renders it porn a pas deñτîs, “the sound of a gentle wind." Some copies add, kakɛî Kúpios, “and the Lord was there." The solecism pointed out above would have been avoided by substituting the word "gentle " for "silent." On the same striking narrative of Holy Scripture is founded Hymn 425. Let us, for this occasion, availing ourselves of the poet's license, adopt, as he has done, the above additional reading of "some Greek copies." "And after the fire a still small voice; and the Lord was there. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle." "The voice that speaks Jehovah near, O may it now my Lord proclaim, If saints and prophets hide their face, The rapt and awe-inspiring solemnity of this hymn can scarcely be exceeded. There are two passages, however, in our English Classics, which may be placed beside it, not by way of competition but of comparison. Dryden says: "Thunder and lightning, Heaven's artillery, Like harbingers before the' Almighty fly; And Gray in "The Progress of Poesy," sings thus of Milton, who 66 Rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy. The secrets of th' abyss to spy, He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw." In closing this enumeration of passages in our Hymn-Book which contain some expressions obscure or ambiguous, the last shall be the first. For few as they are and rarely to be met with, one of them happens to occur in the very first hymn. Of the great excellence of this Hymn we have already expressed our conviction.* We have been familiar with it from our infancy, partly because of its prominent and leading position, and partly on account of its striking beauty. We well remember our childish thoughts respecting some of its expressions; but only one of them is worth repeating here, as being akin to our present subject. Observing that the book is entitled, "A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People called Methodists. By the Rev. John Wesley, A.M.," and finding that the first hymn concludes with the stanza,— "With me, your chief, ye then shall know, Shall feel, your sins forgiven," etc., we very naturally concluded that the phrase," your chief," meant the author of the Collection, whose name stands alone on the title-page; nor was there any thing at hand which could suggest another meaning; and who had a claim so just and indisputable to be considered the "chief" and leader of the people for whose use the Hymn-Book was designed? To many persons of mature age, who have long been acquainted with the Hymn-Book, the passage either is a puzzle, or else, without much thought, they have mistaken the meaning. The allusion, of course, is to 1 Timothy i. 15: "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am *See No. I. of these Papers. VOL. XVIII. - FIFTH SERIES. 2 M chief." Here, from the juxtaposition of the words, the meaning is clear and the sense unmistakable. But the allusion to this passage of Scripture, which the poet had in his mind, he failed to render obvious to common readers in the present hymn. In some other places it is more than indicated. In Hymn 115, for instance, "Let the world their wisdom boast," etc., the following couplet, as a refrain, is repeated at the end of every verse :— "I the chief of sinners am, But Jesus died for me." As our first hymn is a selection from a longer poem of eighteen stanzas, in "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 1740, we supposed at first that some of the omitted stanzas would supply the deficiency, and account for the ambiguity. We found "the sinner" three stanzas distant; but the word sinners does not occur in any part of the original poem! The two following stanzas, 15 and 16 of the original, may be supposed to imply it, and are interposed between what are verses 8 and 9 of our present hymn: Supposing these two stanzas compressed into a single verse, and the indispensable word "sinners" introduced as the synonym of, or substitute for, "harlots, and publicans, and thieves, murderers, and all ye hellish crew," the ambiguity would at once disappear, without the alteration of a single word in the hymn as it now stands. The three concluding stanzas might then be read as follows: "Awake from guilty nature's sleep, And Christ shall give you light; Cast all your sins into the deep, And wash the Ethiop white. "Though great your crimes, to welcome you Sinners, believe the record true, For you the Saviour died. "With me, your chief, ye then shall know, Anticipate your heaven below, And own that love is heaven." J. W. T. |