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Charles Wesley looks forward to the day when Jesus Christ will return to earth.
St Luke tells that when Christ was taken from the Apostles’ sight by a cloud on the Mount of Olives, forty days after his resurrection, he promised he would return in the same fashion. In this famous hymn, Charles Wesley waits in keen anticipation for that day.
Charles Wesley is bursting with the good news of salvation, but for a moment finds himself at a loss for words.
On May 21st, 1738, Church of England clergyman Charles Wesley felt for the first time that the message of the gospel was really ‘for me’ — a message addressed not only to all mankind, but to Charles Wesley. His overpowering ‘conversion’ (as he called it) momentarily bewildered him, but fortunately for us he was not at a loss for words for long.
A hymn to God asking him to send his Holy Spirit on us, and make us fit to sing with the choir of saints in heaven.
St John tells us that Jesus Christ promised to pray to the Father, and ask him to send his Holy Spirit on the Church after Christ had gone up to his heavenly kingdom. Remembering this promise, Charles Wesley appeals to God to renew his gift daily.
Charles Wesley finds comfort in the knowledge that nothing can separate him from the love of Jesus Christ.
“I am persuaded,” St Paul told the Christians of Rome, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It was a just such a secure serenity that filled Charles Wesley, as he records in this hymn.
A hymn for Christmas, wondering at the mystery of the infinity of God contained within the tiny frame of a new-born child.
In the eighth century, monk John of the Mar Saba monastery near Bethlehem wrote a hymn to Mary, in which he remembered in wonder how the infinite God became a tiny child, making her narrow womb ‘wider than the heavens’. The same paradox struck Charles Wesley, and it prompted him to write a hymn of his own.
A short poem about the transformation of the communion bread and wine by the action of God’s Spirit.
In Charles Wesley’s day, the change effected to the bread and wine in the eucharist was a matter of bitter and often ill-informed dispute. Here, he echoes the wise words of eighth-century monk St John Damascene, and simply asks the Holy Spirit to be present and to do those things which surpass reason and thought.