Oh then shall the veil be removed,
And round me Thy brightness be poured,
I shall meet Him whom absent I loved,
I shall see Him whom unseen I adored.
Newton’s contribution to the Olney hymns is considerable both in quality and quantity. His preface disarms criticism.
Dr. Watts might, as a poet, have a right to say, ‘That it cost him some labour to restrain his fire, and to accommodate himself to the capacities of common readers.’ But it would not become me to make such a declaration. It behoved me to do my best.... If the Lord, whom I serve, has been pleased to favour me with that mediocrity of talent, which may qualify me for usefulness to the weak and the poor of His flock, without quite disgusting persons of superior discernment, I have reason to be satisfied.
It is quite refreshing to find a hymn-writer who describes himself thus. They have often been modest men and women, but have had a fairly good idea of the value of their own compositions.
Newton’s hymns are, even more than those of Watts or Doddridge, pastoral hymns. Other men wrote for the congregation, he wrote for his own particular congregation, and very often with a special reference to one member of it. We know that his sermons were suggested in this way. If ‘Sir Cowper’ had a bad fit, or the Vicarage maid, Molly, was ‘perplexed and tempted on the point of election,’ the kind-hearted pastor had a sermon and a hymn, suited to their ‘state,’ ready on Sunday.
Many of Newton’s pieces express much more of Cowper’s experience than of his own. In such lines as the following is not his eye upon the sad figure in ‘the poet’s corner’ in the Great House?
Sure the Lord thus far has brought me