Hymn Suggested by a “Blaze of Leafage”
For eight months an English Episcopalian bishop confined to a Japanese prison saw no sunlight. But this prisoner of war did witness what he described as “a blaze of leafage on some trees.” This sight recalled to the mind of the bishop a hymn from the heart and pen of Charles Wesley:
“Christ, whose glory fills the skies,
Christ, the true, the only Light,
Sun of righteousness, arise,
Triumph o’er the shades of night;
Day-Spring from on high, be near;
Day-Star, in my heart appear.”
This experience which came to Dr. J. L. Wilson, Bishop of Singapore, who was representing the Church of England, stood out above all others, and represented the value of a mind stored with memories of hymns. Three thousand people listened most attentively for forty-five minutes in the City Hall, Sheffield, England, in September, 1946, as the speaker narrated experiences which can come only in war time.
A reporter was among those who heard with amazement the words of the bishop as he explained how, charged with being a “spy,” he was “imprisoned, tortured, and flogged with ropes almost beyond endurance” by the Japanese. Four thousand persons were crowded into a prison designed to accommodate seven hundred. They were a courageous company, however. “When men and women came downstairs bleeding from torture, they might not speak; but they smiled, and the others smiled back.” Bishop Wilson was the only “European among Malayans, Indians and Chinese.” But his fellow-prisoners, observing his firmness and forgiving spirit, asked him to teach them to pray.
Bread and wine were lacking, but Bishop Wilson used tea or water in the celebration of the Holy Communion on Sundays. “It might be irregular,” the speaker remarked with a smile; but he could not be convinced that it was not valid. A Christian girl, he learned, was there for helping the British, and the elements were passed through the prison bars to her.
The hymn which lifted the soul of the imprisoned bishop above his immediate surroundings came from the singing spirit of Charles Wesley, and appeared in 1740 in his “Hymns and Sacred Poems.” The hymnology of both British and American Methodism is enriched by the inclusion of this song of worship; and it is also found in the Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church, The Hymnal (Presbyterian), The Hymnary (of the United Church of Canada), The Inter-Church Hymnal, etc. The three verses will be found “full of the sunshine of which they sing,” observed Dr. Charles S. Robinson. Lovers of literature will be especially interested in a comment made by Dr. James Moffatt, where he says, “George Eliot uses this hymn in Adam Bede describing how Seth Bede, the young Methodist, on leaving his brother one Sunday morning in February, ‘walked leisurely homeward, mentally repeating one of his favorite hymns.’ It was this one.”
Easy is it, therefore, for us to imagine Bishop Wilson, the liberty-loving Englishman, confined to a sunless prison in a foreign country, catching a glimpse of “a blaze of leafage on some trees,” then refreshing his singing spirit by mentally repeating the lines which he had often joined with others in publicly singing when a youth in his homeland:
“Dark and cheerless is the morn
Unaccompanied by Thee;
Joyless is the day’s return
Till Thy mercy’s beams I see;
Till they inward light impart,
Cheer my eyes and warm my heart.”
“Stone walls do not a prison make” when one has a song in his soul. And he who knows his hymnal well has one for every occasion.
CHAPTER III
SUNSET SONGS
“In the night I sang of him.”
(Psa. 42:10, Moffatt).
“One of the most successful numbers sung in the series of Sunday evening concerts, which for several years it was my privilege and pleasure to sponsor, was that old English hymn, ‘Now the Day is Over.’ That hymn marked the close of each Sunday night concert, and the thousands of letters I received from listeners throughout the country gave sure evidence that this old religious song struck a responsive chord in the heart of listeners everywhere.” —A. Atwater Kent in a broadcast on “Radio’s Influence on Music.”
A group of young men from an English theological college, the “Cliff College Trekkers,” went, during the summer of 1936, to Morecambe, and there this band of energetic youth held Sunday services on the slipway.
Evening prayer was also held by them at the slipway, and one who was present expressed gratitude through the press for the privilege of sharing these moments of quiet devotion. Following prayers, the entire company united in singing:
“All hail the power of Jesus’ name.”
People who had listened to the inspirational hymn were doubtless singing in their hearts, as they walked to their seaside residences, the glowing words:
“And crown Him Lord of all.”