Father, Thy only will be done.
“Welcome alike the crown or cross;
Trouble I cannot ask, nor peace,
Nor toil, nor rest, nor gain, nor loss,
Nor joy, nor grief, nor pain, nor ease,
Nor life, nor death; but ever groan,
Father, Thy only will be done.”
This was what Wesley’s Itinerant Preacher called “dangerous mysticism,” and Fletcher, “still mysticism.” Whether Fletcher himself experienced this “destruction of self-will,” and “absolute resignation, which characterises a perfect believer,” it is difficult to determine; but it may safely be affirmed that he was struggling to attain to such a state of holiness. “This hymn,” said he, “suits all the believers who are at the bottom of Mount Sion, and begin to join the spirits of just men made perfect.” And then, as a specimen of what he calls “driving Methodism,” he adds:—
“But when the triumphal chariot of perfect love gloriously carries you to the top of perfection’s hill;—when you are raised far above the common heights of the perfect,—when you are almost translated into glory like Elijah, then you may sing another hymn of the same Christian poet” (Charles Wesley) “with the Rev. Mr. Madan, and the numerous body of imperfectionists who use his collection of Psalms, etc.”
This, of course, was a quiet satire on Martin Madan and his Calvinistic congregation; but, passing that, the “driving hymn was as follows:—