[4]“The Wesley hymnbooks constitute an extraordinary interesting human document, palpitating with real life. Every event of those wonderful years, every experience, public or private, through which the singers passed, is mirrored in some sweet song. But there is more in them than that. They are Pilgrim’s Progress in verse. They trace the religious life of every man as he travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. They unfold the spiritual drama of man, his hopes and fears, his aspirations and affections, his failures and victories; each chequered experience trembles into songs, and scarcely a note is missing. Springing from the heart of the eighteenth century, their music seems to drown its licentiousness and frivolity in paeans of praise.” (Frederick J. Gillman, in The Evolution of the English Hymn.)
[5]Charles Wesley’s best hymns—and who would dare estimate his genius on any other basis?—meet John Drinkwater’s two tests of vital poetry:
(1) It must spring from vital and intense personal experience.
(2) It must transfer to the reader by “pregnant and living words” the ecstasy that swelled the heart of the poet.
[6]“The style of Watts is austere, objective, formal; the style of Wesley is warm, subjective, intimate.” (J. Balcom Reeves, in The Hymn in History and Literature.)
[7]Dr. Benson in his exhaustive treatise on The English Hymn remarks: “The Wesleys inaugurated a great spiritual revival; and their hymns did as much as any human agency to kindle and replenish its fervor.... John Wesley led an ecclesiastical revolt and, failing to conquer his own church, established a new one of phenomenal proportions: the hymns prefigured the constitution of the new church and formed the manual of its spiritual discipline.”
[8]He frankly expressed his inhospitable attitude: “Were we to encourage little poets, we should soon be overrun.”
CHAPTER XVII
[1]The Oxford or Tractarian Movement on the one hand sought a deeper spiritual life than was then prevalent, and on the other emphasized the solidarity of the Church of Christ before and after the Reformation. It recognized the authority of the pre-Reformation theology and of the associated ceremonial liturgy. Many of its leaders entered the Roman Catholic Church, accepting even its worship of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of the saints.