I was at home when the war broke out. I went into Westminster Abbey. There was a crowde:! congregation all day. They were not singing about English roses ror Scotch bluebells. No; they were beyond such pretty songs. They were singing, "O God, our help in ages past'? Old Isaac Watts came to his own all over the land that day. No one sniffed at hymn-writers on that day of destiny. The greatest fool was serious for once that day, and he sang hymns. Surely, then, hymn-writers are among the chiefes: servants of mankind, for man's chiefest servants must be those who help mam to be at his: best, not at his worst, as the songs of some of the great ones at times do. What fame to write even 2 simple hymn. A lady recently arrived in Tientsin sent her little daughter to our Sunday School. Her mother heard the child singing Jesus loves me," that we sing in the school, and the mother said, "The last time I heard her singing that was in Cantonese." How many of our poets have been put into Cantonese? So the hymn-writers can hold up their heads.
So we come to Charles Wesley, born in 1707 a.v., the 18th child, I believe, of Susannah Wesley, in a Lincolnshire vicarage He was brother to John. At Oxford he joined his brother's Holy Club, and got called a Methodist, as if there 1s anything wrong in being as methodical in your religious life as in your gastronomic life! Then he got converted in that will put this "naughty world' in 1728. That is the only thing
right. He found that Jesus Christ can do wonderful things for mam, if he will only let Him. He was saved; he found God; was forgiven, a mercy he was sure he did not deserve, and that made bim sing s. It is a thing ty sing about, if you have the gift of song at all, to be saved. All churches agree on that. Charles Wesley felt the joy of it so intensely that he sang it in 6,500 hymns! All revivals of religion are borne along on the wings of hymns, so no wonder the Methodist Revival spread like wildfire when, to the eloquence of John, there came the.smging of Charles! Hymns make you sing, even if your voice 1s not a tuneful one, and you amoy the choir. Choirs ere for congregations, not congregations. for choirs. So Methodism was sung into being.
Ohiarles had his ear open for tunes well. The Wesleys were sane and practical fellows. Once Charles wanted some more tunes; he had used up all he knew. He was friendly with a Mrs. Rich, whos husband was manager of Covent Garden™theatre.. Her daughters were pupils of Handel's, No doubt Wesley met Hamdel at her house. In Handel's band, there was German named Lambe. He is said to have played a bassoon 16 feet high. He read Wesley's tract, "An earnest appeal to men of reason." This was the means of his conversion and Charles Wesley was so glad that he wrote the hymn, Oh, might I with the saints aspire, The meanest of that dazzling choir, Who chant thy praise above.
Mrs. Rich showed Lambe one of Wesley's hymns. He burst into tears as he read it, and he wrote a tune for it, and so the flood of melody in praise of Christ began to flow, and it has flowed on in gathered strength, through all the revivals, the Methodist, the Tractarian, and the rest, and wherever Ghristien people gather together, they all sing one another's hymns.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.