Hymns of the English Church
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One of the best-loved of all hymns in the English language.
One Sunday evening in 1847, the Revd Henry Lyte was overwhelmed with sadness. He had just celebrated his last communion service at Brixham after twenty-four years of ministry, and was preparing to go abroad in a last effort to save his failing health. As he looked out to sea these words came to him, as they came to nurse Edith Cavell shortly before she was shot in 1915.
A meditation on the Psalms, and on the evidence for the existence of God that is plain for every eye to see.
In The Spectator for Saturday August 16th, 1712, Joseph Addison argued for the great moral benefits of Christian belief while utterly rejecting any attempt to enforce it on the unwilling. A week later, he published a follow-up on the various ways to strengthen faith. Among them he recommended regular divine worship, an upright life, and retreats to the countryside to contemplate the works of God’s hands. He ended with these verses.
Joseph Addison gives thanks to God for caring for him body and soul, from the cradle to the grave.
In The Spectator for Saturday August 9th, 1712, Joseph Addison reflected on the virtue of gratitude towards God, who “does not only confer upon us those bounties, which proceed more immediately from his hand, but even those benefits which are conveyed to us by others.” Gratitude was one area, he said, where the poets of the Old Testament far surpassed the poets of classical Greece and Rome, because they had a deity more worthy of it; and he closed with his own attempt.
However dark the night of doubt, day is sure to come.
In October 1773, William Cowper was broken by a nightmarish attack of the depression that had clouded his life for almost twenty years. His neighbour the Revd John Newton had encouraged Cowper to write hymns to keep the depression at bay, but after his breakdown he never wrote another. Samuel Greatheed, who preached at Cowper’s funeral, said that this, his last, was composed during a solitary walk in the fields, and expressed a faith that always reasserted itself once the fits had passed.
As Mr Great-heart guides his companions into the Valley of Humiliation, he bids them listen to the song of a shepherd boy.
In the second part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a little band of believers enters into the Valley of Humiliation. As they make their way down into the valley, Mr Great-heart calls a halt and bids the others listen to the song of a shepherd boy, tending his father’s sheep on the hillside.
Mr Valiant-for-Truth reflects on what is needed for a Christian on the way to his reward.
In the second part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr Valiant-for-Truth has been explaining why he has not turned aside on his pilgrimage as Mr Fearing and Mr Despondency had. He sums up with some lines of verse which have become one of the best-loved of all hymns in English.