Hymn of the Homesick American
Leading representatives of every department of English public life assembled to do honor to one “who had labored, during the six years he had been ambassador, to promote good-will between the sister nations.” This was on May 6, 1905, when Joseph Hodges Choate was entertained at a farewell banquet in London. He had attained high distinction as a lawyer and achieved great prominence in public life in the United States when, in 1899, President McKinley appointed him ambassador to Great Britain. There he became a “messenger of good-will” in a very marked degree.
The scholarly orator, arising to speak, confessed that he was resigning because he was homesick. Then he explained: “My friends on this side of the water are multiplying every day in numbers and increasing in the ardor of their affection. I am sorry to say that the great host of my friends on the other side are as rapidly diminishing and dwindling away:
“‘Part of his host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now;’
and I have a great desire to be with the waning number.”
This was an effective use of words from a great hymn which Mr. Choate, a Harvard graduate, evidently well knew. The incident has been preserved for us by the Rev. John Telford. They came from the hymn of Charles Wesley, which begins:
“Come, let us join our friends above
Who have obtained the prize.”
This was the hymn that John Wesley and his congregation in Staffordshire were singing at the hour when Charles Wesley, its author, joined the company in heaven. Once, when in Dublin, John Wesley announced this hymn, and making some comments on the same affirmed that it was “the sweetest hymn” his brother ever wrote. That lover and critic of hymns, W. T. Stead, reports that the Bishop of Hereford wrote him that he thought that the fourth verse “was one of the finest in the whole realm of hymnology.” This runs: