We triumph and sing Of Jesus’s name;
Poor idiots[146] He teaches To show forth His praise,
And tell of the riches Of Jesus’s grace.
No matter how dull The scholar whom He
Takes into His school, And gives him to see;
A wonderful fashion Of teaching He hath,
And wise to salvation He makes us through faith.
To a generation brought up to regard Sankey’s Songs and Solos as the best possible hymns for mission-halls and open-air services, a study of Wesley’s hymns is a liberal education. For the most ignorant of the converts the hymns were the one and only means of culture. They could not read, much of the preaching must have been beyond their comprehension, but the hymns, read slowly, a line at a time, soon became familiar, and the favourite hymns sung over and over again in the house, the class-room, and the family circle, became a part of their very life. Methodist biography shows how the life and death of the saints has been cheered and sanctified by these spiritual songs.
The most important, and by far the largest, part of Wesley’s Collection was devoted to hymns of the Christian life.
It is divided into sections: For Believers Rejoicing, Fighting, Praying, Watching, Working, Suffering, Seeking for Full Redemption, Saved, Interceding for the World. It begins with his own translation of Johann Andreas Rothe’s great hymn