“LOVE DIVINE, ALL LOVES EXCELLING.”
This evergreen song-wreath to the Crucified, was contributed by Charles Wesley, in 1746. It is found in his collection of 1756, Hymns for Those That Seek and Those That Have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ.
Love Divine all loves excelling,
Joy of Heaven to earth come down,
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling,
All Thy faithful mercies crown.
* * * * * *
Come Almighty to deliver,
Let us all Thy life receive,
Suddenly return, and never,
Nevermore Thy temples leave.
* * * * * *
Finish then Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see our whole salvation
Perfectly secured by Thee.
Changed from glory into glory
Till in Heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee
Lost in wonder, love and praise!
The hymn has been set to H. Isaac's ancient tune (1490), to Wyeth's “Nettleton” (1810), to Thos. H. Bailey's (1777–1839) “Isle of Beauty, fare thee well” (named from Thomas Moore's song), to Edward Hopkins' “St. Joseph,” and to a multitude of others more or less familiar.
Most familiar of all perhaps, (as in the instance of “Far from mortal cares retreating,”) is its association with “Greenville,” the production of that brilliant but erratic genius and freethinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau. It was originally a love serenade, (“Days of absence, sad and dreary”) from the opera of Le Devin du Village, written about 1752. The song was commonly known years afterwards as “Rousseau's Dream.” But the unbelieving philosopher, musician, and misguided moralist builded better than he knew, and probably better than he meant when he wrote his immortal choral. Whatever he heard in his “dream” (and one legend says it was a “song of 143 / 113 angels”) he created a harmony dear to the church he despised, and softened the hearts of the Christian world towards an evil teacher who was inspired, like Balaam, to utter one sacred strain.
Rousseau was born in Geneva, 1712, but he never knew his mother, and neither the affection or interest of his father or of his other relatives was of the quality to insure the best bringing up of a child.
He died July, 1778. But his song survives, while the world gladly forgets everything else he wrote. It is almost a pardonable exaggeration to say that every child in Christendom knows “Greenville.”