“No mortal man can live,” he said, “after the glories which God has manifested to my soul.”
At another time he told how he “enjoyed a heaven already in his soul,” and that his spiritual experiences were so exalted that he could ask for nothing except a continuation of them.
Before his death Toplady had requested that he be buried beneath the gallery over against the pulpit of Totenham Court Chapel. Strangely enough, this building was intimately associated with the early history of Methodism. It was built by Whitefield, and here also Wesley preached Whitefield’s funeral sermon. Perhaps it was Toplady’s way of expressing the hope that all the bitterness and rancor attending his controversy with Wesley might be buried with him.
“Rock of Ages” has been translated into almost every known language, and to all peoples it seems to bring the same wondrous appeal. An old Chinese woman was trying to do something of “merit” in the eyes of her heathen gods by digging a well twenty-five feet deep and fifteen in diameter. She was converted to Christianity, and when she was eighty years old, she held out the crippled hands with which she had labored all her life and sang: “Nothing in my hands I bring.”
A missionary to India once sought the aid of a Hindu to translate the hymn into one of the numerous dialects of India. The result was not so happy. The opening words were:
Very old stone, split for my benefit,
Let me get under one of your fragments.
This is a fair example of the difference between poetry and prose. The translator was faithful to the idea, but how common-place and unfortunate are his expressions when compared with the language of the original!
The Coronation Hymn
All hail the power of Jesus’ Name!