With other eyes I now could see Jesus, the Just, had satisfied; Jesus for me had lived and died. These verses appear in Hymns and Sacred Poems, by John Wesley and Charles Wesley (2nd series), published in 1740. In a hymn-book with the same title, published in 1739, the authors say in a preface: Some verses, it may be observed, in the following collection were wrote upon the scheme of the mystic divines. And these, it is owned, we once had in great veneration, as the best explained of the Gospel of Christ. But we are now convinced that we therein greatly erred, not knowing the Scriptures neither the power of God. It appears therefore that the point on which the Wesleys parted from William Law was the interpretation of the doctrine of Justification by Faith, and the inward assurance of Conversion. On the other hand, the nature of the doctrine which the brothers held while at Oxford may be gathered from a pamphlet by William Law, published in 1760, entitled Of Justification by Faith and Works: A Dialogue between a Methodist and a Churchman, in which the following passage occurs :— What is the Redemption through Jesus Christ but a Redemption by and through all that which Christ as God-Man was, did, suffered, obtained, taught, and commanded, that is, through and by the whole of the Gospel Religion? How is Christ our Propitiation or Peace but by that which He is and does in the inward change and renewal of our nature in bringing forth a new creature, not born of man, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God? What is Faith in His Blood but the same thing as Faith in His Cross, and what is faith in either case but a hearty willingness and full desire wholly to cease and turn away from all Heathenish or Jewish works, and to embrace and give ourselves to all that is meant, taught, and required, by the Gospel Faith or Kingdom of God? The Wesleys, in fact, became in 1738 Calvinists in respect of the doctrine of the Atonement and the necessity of an inwardly experienced conversion; but they remained Arminian with regard to the operation of Grace. Their Hymn Book of 1740 contained the celebrated hymn by Charles Wesley on "Free Grace," which caused the breach in their alliance with Whitefield. In this the poet said: O! if Thy spirit send forth me, Grace will I sing through Jesus' name, On all mankind bestowed; The everlasting truth proclaim, And seal that truth with blood. This was of course to repudiate the Calvinist doctrine of Election, and Whitefield at once wrote to John Wesley : Instead of pawning your salvation as you have done in a late Hymn Book, if the doctrine of Universal Redemption be not true; instead of talking of sinless Perfection, as you have done in the preface to that Hymn Book, and making man's salvation depend upon his own free-will, as you have done in this sermon; you will compose a hymn in praise of sovereign distinguishing love. You will caution believers against striving to work a perfection out of their own hearts, and print another sermon the reverse of this, and entitle it Free Grace, indeed free not because free to all, but free because God may withhold or give it to whom and when He pleases. Whatever subtleties of distinction may have divided the creed of the Calvinist from that of the Arminian missioners, it seems certain that only by the strength of a personal conviction of what was called in the eighteenth century "experimental religion" being necessary to salvation could either section have produced the extraordinary effects that attended their field-preaching. The doctrine of "Christian Perfection" was suitable to the development of such Quietism as prevailed in the little religious establishment at King's Cliff, presided over by William Law, but it would have been without meaning to the unlettered multitudes who listened breathlessly to the sermons of Whitefield and John Wesley. Inward feeling is also the secret of Charles Wesley's wonderful fertility as a hymn-writer. Of the 770 hymns contained in the Wesleyan Methodist Hymn Book, 627 are of his composition; and he is said to have written in all more than 6000 hymns. These are adapted to almost every situation in social life; they express nearly every shade of religious feeling; and it is astonishing what a high level of excellence most of them attain. John Wesley (who was himself mainly a translator) was fully justified in writing before the Collection of Hymns for the use of the People called Methodists, published in 1780 In these hymns there is no doggerel, no blotches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives-nothing turgid or bombastic on the one hand, or low and creeping on the other-no cant expressions, no words without meaning. Here are, allow me to say, both the purity, the strength, and the elegance, of the English language, and at the same time the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity. The fact is that the simple fervour of Charles Wesley's religious feelings was always chastened and controlled in the expression by the masculine taste of the scholar and the gentleman, a combination of impulse and judgment which makes him the most admirable devotional lyric poet in the English language. It is impossible to read his best verses without recognising their artistic inspiration, one of the finest examples of which is his poem called "Wrestling Jacob ": Come, O thou Traveller unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see; And I am left alone with Thee. With Thee all night I mean to stay I need not tell Thee whom I am, Thyself hast called me by my name ; Look on Thy hands and read it there. In vain Thou strugglest to get free ; I never will unloose my hold. The secret of Thy Love unfold. Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal Thy new unutterable Name? To know it now resolved I am. 'Tis all in vain to hold Thy tongue, Or touch the hollow of my thigh: Out of my arms Thou shouldst not fly. What though my shrinking flesh complain, I rise superior to my pain; When I am weak then I am strong; My strength is gone, my Nature dies, I fall, and yet by Faith I stand. I stand, and will not let Thee go, To Charles Wesley's keen feeling for artistic proportion was also added a genial sense of humour, which manifests itself in the volume containing his Hymns written in the Time of the Tumult-viz., the Lord George Gordon Riots of 1780. This includes a satire on the cowardly conduct of the Magistrates on that occasion, in the course of which the poet hits off, with much dramatic spirit, the disposition of the mob towards the various victims of their violence. Among others, they are made to declaim against the Methodists and their leaders :— Old Wesley too, to Papists kind, He and his followers shall smart. We here beneath our standard see. The Wesleys were indeed thoroughly loyal to Church and King, and their strong practical sense always kept them, in the midst of their religious enthusiasm, in touch with the onward political course of the nation as a whole. Their Arminianism also helped to temper the democratic movement they headed with the disciplinary observances inherited from their Oxford days. But the spiritual excitement which they had set in motion was by no means confined to rude wayside congregations; it penetrated the recesses of polite society, and transformed the lives of men of genius and learning. Whether poor Christopher Smart (1722-1770), an excellent classical scholar, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, whose writings generally aim at catching the witty satiric tone of the period, was ever touched by the Methodist preaching, we know not. There can, however, be no doubt that his Song to David owes much of its fine lyrical quality to the religious atmosphere of the movement. Written when the author was in confinement, this poem is constructed on lines at once sane and magnificent, and its diction exhibits the same masculine directness as Charles Wesley's Wrestling Jacob : There is but One who ne'er rebelled, By pleasures unenticed; He from Himself hath semblance sent, And saw the God in Christ. Tell them I AM, Jehovah said At once above, beneath, around, |