Charles Wesley
Posts in Comfortable Words credited to ‘Charles Wesley’
A short poem about the irresistible power of the Name of Jesus Christ, and its source in that mildest of images, the helpless lamb.
‘Behold the lamb of God’ was the cry of John the Baptist when he saw Jesus walking towards him as John baptised repentant sinners in the River Jordan. Few can have understood what he meant; that became a little clearer when Jesus was put to death just as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple.
A hymn urging Christians to think of those who have died as ever-present with us, in our worship, our prayers and our hearts.
The Church of England in the eighteenth century did not encourage its members to think of the dead; they had passed on to an unknown fate, were now sleeping and could be no more to us than an example to follow. In this hymn, Charles Wesley rather daringly invites us to think of the departed Christians as very much alive, and as joined with us in our prayers and songs.
A song of praise celebrating God’s redemption of man through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This was the very first hymn in the Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists (1779), edited by John Wesley. It had been written by his brother Charles, and expressed everything that was to follow: a book (as John put it) “for every truly pious reader, as a means of raising or quickening the spirit of devotion; of confirming his faith; of enlivening his hope; and of kindling and increasing his love to God and man.”
Charles Wesley pictures the communion service as the unfolding of the courts of heaven and the living presence of Jesus Christ.
In this poem, Charles Wesley turns to the Epistle to the Hebrews, where St Paul describes Christ as a sacrifice presented everlastingly before God in a heavenly Temple. In the communion service, says Wesley, we are admitted to that heavenly sanctuary for a blessed moment.
A hymn about the temple of the Christian heart, where the Wisdom of God makes his humble dwelling.
Charles Wesley’s Love Divine is a staple of weddings but it is, of course, much more than a paean to married love. It picks up on St Paul’s teaching that God dwells in each Christian as he dwelt in the Temple at Jerusalem, and (if he is allowed to) gradually transforms the believer into his own glory — what the Church Fathers used to call theosis, making man divine.
A hymn about free grace, based on St Peter’s release from prison by the hand of an angel.
This hymn is one of Charles Wesley’s finest. It draws on St Luke’s account, in the Acts of the Apostles, of St Peter’s release from prison by an angel sent from God, and relates it to the Christian who realises that Jesus Christ has torn up the indictment for sin that stood between them.