When Two Hymn-Writers Met
On a fine summer’s day in the first half of the eighteenth century a traveler on horseback, crossing one of the lovely hills of Derbyshire in England, was aroused from his meditations by the voice of singing. Pausing to listen, these words came on the still air from the valley below:
“Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o’er,
Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,
Should fright us from the shore.”
Instantly, in a clear voice, the traveler sent ringing down the hills the glad response in his brother’s words:
“The promised land, from Pisgah’s top,
I now exult to see:
My hope is full, O glorious hope!
Of immortality.”
And then the two greatest little men in all England, John Wesley and Isaac Watts, met and talked together of the deep things of God.
How indebted we are to these two men for the enrichment of English hymnody! Watts sang of the majesty of God while Charles Wesley, the brother of the founder of Methodism, magnified the love of God, but all three were one in purpose. We join with Watts in singing, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” and with the same enthusiasm we sing with Charles Wesley, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”
How profoundly Watts had influenced his contemporaries is seen in