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Methodists attempt to hold service in Newgate prison
History of Christianity is a six part survey designed to stimulate your curiosity by providing glimpses of pivotal events and persons in the spread of the church.
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Truth Prevails: The Undying Faith Of Jan Hus In an age when Europe was divided between three popes, when pestilence claimed one in three lives and church offices were sold to the highest bidder, Hus defied earthly authorities to seek truth directly from the Word of God. [0707]
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he last of the thirteen English colonies to be established in what is now the United States was Georgia. The colony was in part a philanthropic enterprise organized by James Oglethorpe, to give those who had fallen on hard times a new start in a new land. Among those who helped in establishing the early colony were John and Charles Wesley, sent out in 1735 as missionaries by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Charles was also to serve as secretary to Governor Oglethorpe.
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On Board the Wesley brothers' ship to America were also twenty-six German
Moravians. Both John and Charles were impressed by the hymn singing of
these evangelistic Christians and realized for the first time that hymn
singing could be a spiritual experience. Charles became ill and only stayed
in Georgia four months; John stayed another year. In 1737 in Savannah,
John printed a Collection of Psalms and Hymns for use in his congregations.
Half of the songs were by Isaac Watts. The community was not pleased and
a grand jury charged Wesley (among other things) with "introducing
into the church . . . hymns not authorized." John hastily fled the
colony before his case came to trial.
The way of self-discipline
John and Charles Wesley came from a Christian family; both their father
Samuel, who was an Anglican minister, and their mother Susannah had a
strong, godly influence on the boys. Charles was educated at Westminster
School and entered Christ Church at Oxford at the time when his older
brother John was leaving to help in his father's church. At Oxford Charles
organized a Holy Club, where members met each evening to read the Bible
and pray. Charles and his friends sought a disciplined method of spiritual
improvement; some ridiculed the group and called them methodists for their
methodical ways. John later returned to Oxford and became the leader of
the Holy Club Charles had organized.
The way of faith
Back at Oxford, after his brief stay in Georgia, Charles came face to
face with the claims of Christ; he recognized his previous religious commitments
lacked the simple faith in Christ which marked true Christianity. May
21, 1738 marks the date of Charles' conversion, and on that date, he opened
his Bible to Psalm 40:3, "He hath put a new song in my mouth; many
will see and fear and will trust in the Lord." Charles had indeed
received a new song, and the next day he started his first hymn, probably
"And Can It Be?" It is a powerful, wondrous rejoicing in the
freedom to be found in Christ:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused the quickening ray -
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Learning through song
This was the first of over 6,500 hymns Charles wrote. For decades there
poured forth from him an unstoppable stream of spiritual song. Charles
Wesley, like Martin Luther, believed hymns were a means of teaching theology.
He composed an average of three hymns a week. They covered every area
of theology as well as every season of the liturgical year.
New songs for the hopeless
John Wesley's conversion soon followed upon Charles', and the two brothers
became zealous preachers. They were determined that the unreached masses
would hear the Gospel, so they preached everywhere--in the open fields,
prisons, to coal miners at the pit heads. This kind of thing just wasn't
done in respectable church circles then in England. But the message and
the music of the Wesleys reached the desperate, downtrodden, and often
gin-besotted underclass in England and some historians speculate that
the ministry of the Wesleys brought such far-reaching changes that it
may have enabled England to avoid a bloody revolution such as occurred
in France in that same century.
In 1780, John published A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the
People Called Methodists arranged in theological categories. Many
of the hymns had been written by Charles. In his preface to the hymnal,
John extolled the uniqueness of the work: In what other publication of
this time have you so full and distinct an account of Scriptural Christianity?
Such a declaration of the heights and depths of religion . ..So clear
directions for making our calling and election sure . . . ?
Hymn singing was very important to the evangelical revival in the eighteenth
century; hymns were both a means of expressing joy and teaching scriptural
truth. Charles Wesley's hymns often paraphrased Scripture as well as the
Anglican Prayer Book. They were always full of praise, and they continue
to enrich us today. It is difficult to imagine a hymnbook without hymns
such as Charles Wesley's "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,"
"Rejoice, the Lord Is King," "Jesus, Lover of My Soul,"
and "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."
Variety pack
Charles worked with composers to match the tunes appropriately with
his words. Many musical sources were used including German chorales,
classical and popular melodies, and new psalm tunes. Because Charles'
poems included over 30 different metrical patterns, a great variety
of tunes was needed. |
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