In some hymns there is found an intensity of feeling that leads to an apparent extravagance of expression that a single soul can sometimes sincerely accept as the vehicle of its own experience, but which a gathering of miscellaneous people cannot sing without the great mass of them being insincere. For a careless person idly to sing with Faber,
“I love Thee so, I know not how
My transports to control,”
or
“Ah, dearest Jesus, I have grown
Childish with love of Thee,”
is sheer blasphemy. It is the sin of Uzziah!
The following verses from one of Charles Wesley’s hymns combine the two faults of extravagance and too-intense individualism:
“On the wings of His love I was carried above
All sin and temptation and pain;