Charles Wesley
Posts in Comfortable Words credited to ‘Charles Wesley’
A short hymn inspired by some words from the Song of Songs, asking the Good Shepherd to lead his straying lamb back to the flock.
This hymn is part of a series of poems based on the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. Charles Wesley combines two Biblical images together: the Good Shepherd, which he takes from the Song and from St John’s Gospel; and Christ as the Rock where Moses was enabled to look upon God’s glory without being destroyed by the sight.
A hymn for those times when the Christian life seems like riding in a storm-tossed ship.
Jesu, Lover of My Soul begins with an image of the Christian life as a ship tossed upon the heaving waters of a storm at sea without, and ends with the image of a refreshing fountain of eternal youth welling up within.
A superlative Christian poem based on Righteous Jacob’s encounter with an angel.
The great English hymn-writer Isaac Watts said of this poem by his contemporary, Charles Wesley, that it was worth all that he himself had ever written. In Genesis 32, Jacob, whose family and friends have gone on ahead, is forced to spend a night wrestling with an angel. He yields after receiving a leg injury, and asks his opponent’s name. ‘Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?’ replies the angel — and is gone.