Augustus Montague Toplady, the writer of this hymn, was born on November 4, 1740, at Farnham, England. His father, a major in the English army, was killed the following year at the siege of Carthagena. The widowed mother later removed to Ireland, where her son was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. It was during this period of his life that Augustus, then sixteen years of age, chanced to attend an evangelistic service held in a barn. The preacher was an unlettered layman, but his message so gripped the heart of the lad that he determined then and there to give his heart to God. Of this experience Toplady afterward wrote:
“Strange that I who had so long sat under the means of grace in England should be brought right unto God in an obscure part of Ireland, amidst a handful of people met together in a barn, and by the ministry of one who could hardly spell his own name. Surely it was the Lord’s doing and is marvelous.”
Toplady was ordained at the age of twenty-two as a minister of the Church of England. He was frail of body, and after some years he was stricken with consumption. It was while fighting the ravages of this disease that he wrote his famous hymn, two years before his death.
The hymn first appeared in the March issue of the Gospel Magazine, of which Toplady was editor, in the year 1776. It was appended to a curious article in which the author attempted to show by mathematical computation how dreadful is the sum total of sins committed by a man during a lifetime, and how impossible it is for a sinner to redeem himself from this debt of guilt. But Christ, who is the sinner’s refuge, has paid the entire debt. It was this glorious thought that inspired him to sing:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
For some years John Wesley, the great founder of Methodism, and Toplady had been engaged in a theological dispute. Toplady was a confirmed Calvinist and was intolerant of Wesley’s Arminian views. Both men were intemperate in their language and hurled unseemly and sometimes bitter invectives at each other. Wesley characterized Toplady as a “chimney-sweep” and “a lively coxcomb.” Toplady retorted by calling Wesley “Pope John” and declaring that his forehead was “petrified” and “impervious to a blush.” There are reasons for believing that the article in the Gospel Magazine by Toplady to which we have alluded was for the purpose of refuting Wesley’s teachings, and that “Rock of Ages” was written at the conclusion of the article as an effective way of clinching the argument.
In our day, when we find “Rock of Ages” on one page of our hymnals and Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” on the next, it is hard to understand the uncharitable spirit that existed between these servants of Christ. Perhaps, had they really understood each other, they were more in accord than they suspected.
Nevertheless, God is able to use the most imperfect of human instruments for His praise, and surely “Rock of Ages” has been the means of bringing multitudes to God through Christ. Its strength lies undoubtedly in the clear and simple manner in which it sets forth the glorious truth that we are saved by grace alone, through the merits of Christ. Even a child can understand the meaning of the words,
Nothing in my hand I bring,