Into His hands I commend my spirit.”
Two other hymn-writers who, like Perronet, were associated with the Wesleyan movement may be mentioned in this connection. They were John Cennick and William Williams. Like Perronet, too, each was the author of one great hymn, and through that hymn their names have been preserved to posterity.
Cennick, who was of Bohemian ancestry, first met John Wesley in 1739. Of that meeting Wesley has the following notation in his diary: “On Friday, March 1739, I came to Reading, where I found a young man who had in some measure known the powers of the world to come. I spent the evening with him and a few of his serious friends, and it pleased God much to strengthen and comfort them.”
For a while Cennick assisted Wesley as a lay preacher, but in 1741 he forsook the Methodist movement on account of Wesley’s “free grace” doctrines and organized a society of his own along Calvinistic lines. Later he joined himself to John Whitefield as an evangelist, but finally he went over to the Moravians, in which communion he labored abundantly until his death in 1755 at the early age of thirty-seven years.
To Cennick we are indebted for the majestic hymn on the theme of Christ’s second coming, “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending.” James King, in his “Anglican Hymnology,” gives this hymn third place among the hymns of the Anglican Church, it being excelled in his estimation only by Bishop Ken’s “All praise to Thee, my God, this night” and Wesley’s “Hark! the herald angels sing.” Cennick has also bequeathed to the Church the lovely hymn, “Children of the heavenly King.” Though he wrote and published many more hymns, they are mostly of an inferior order.
Williams, a Welshman by birth, has also left a hymn that has gone singing down through the centuries. It is the rugged and stirring hymn that sets forth in such striking imagery the experiences of the Israelites in the wilderness, “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah.”
Williams, who earned the title of the “Watts of Wales,” wrote the hymn originally in Welsh. Of him it has been said that “He did for Wales what Wesley and Watts did for England, or what Luther did for Germany.” His first hymn-book, “Hallelujah,” was published in 1744, when he was only twenty-seven years old.
The Welsh hymnist originally intended to enter the medical profession, but, after passing through a spiritual crisis, he was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England. Because of his free methods of evangelism, he was denied full ordination, and later identified himself with the Wesleyan revival. Like Cennick and Perronet, however, he soon forsook the Wesleys, and now we find him a Calvinistic Methodist, having adopted Wales as his parish. He was a powerful preacher and an unusual singer, and for forty-five years he carried on a blessed work until, on January 11, 1791, he passed through “the swelling current” and was landed “safe on Canaan’s side.”
In Praise of the Word of God
Father of Mercies, in Thy Word