Hymns of Charles Wesley (selection)

Summary

This selection gathers five hymns by Charles Wesley (1707–1788) as they were first printed in Hymns and Sacred Poems, the volumes he and his brother John published in London in 1739 and 1740, at the start of the Methodist revival. Charles recorded an evangelical conversion in May 1738, a few days before John's experience at Aldersgate Street, and he began writing hymns almost at once; over his life he wrote some six thousand. The text here follows the reprint in volume one of The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, edited by George Osborn in 1868, as transcribed by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The Hymn for Christmas Day opens 'Hark how all the welkin rings', an old word for the sky. Later editors, beginning with George Whitefield in 1753, reworked the opening into the familiar 'Hark! the herald angels sing', and the hymn is now sung in a shortened and altered form; the original ten stanzas end with prayers that Christ will restore fallen human nature. The Hymn for Easter Day begins 'Christ the Lord is risen to-day' and moves from the empty tomb to the believer's own rising with Christ; the Alleluias sung today are not in this first printing. Free Grace, beginning 'And can it be, that I should gain', is a personal hymn of amazement that the Son of God should die for the speaker, and its fourth stanza pictures conversion as a prisoner's chains falling off in a dungeon flooded with light. In Temptation, beginning 'Jesu, Lover of my soul', is a prayer for shelter in the storms of life. For the Anniversary of One's Conversion celebrates the first anniversary of Wesley's own conversion; its seventh stanza, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing', later became the first hymn of the 1780 Methodist Collection, and the hymn is usually sung in a few selected stanzas. Read together, the five hymns show how Wesley set Christian doctrine — the incarnation, the resurrection, grace, and assurance of forgiveness — in short, memorable verse that ordinary congregations could sing.

Top Lessons

• Doctrine in song

  Wesley puts the incarnation, the resurrection and the doctrine of grace into verse a congregation can memorize.

• Original and adapted texts

  Modern hymnals shorten and alter these hymns; the first printings show what Wesley actually wrote.

• Personal experience

  Free Grace and the Anniversary hymn turn Wesley's own conversion into words others can sing as their own.

• For the Christian reader

  These hymns are still sung in many churches. Students can read every stanza, trace the Scripture behind phrases such as 'healing in His wings' (Malachi 4:2) and 'Where, O Death, is now thy sting?' (1 Corinthians 15:55), and ask what the familiar shortened versions leave out.

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