Jesus, your boundless love to me

As often with the Wesleys, the first line says it, if not all then at least most of it. Jesus is the beginning and love the theme; his love is boundless but also personal—‘to me’. Much of early Methodism is encapsulated here. The English version is John’s, headed ‘Living by Christ. From the German’ in Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739. If his memory was accurate in a later (May 1765) letter from Londonderry, he wrote at least the 2nd stz (and maybe the rest) in Jan 1738—that is, some 4 months before his conversion. For most of that month he was homeward bound by sea from America in a dejected state of mind after his failures there, convicted of unbelief but still desperately seeking saving faith and divine love within. The original from which he worked is a classic from Paul(us) Gerhardt, whose O Jesu Christ, mein schönstes Licht (1653) is itself based on a prayer in Arndt’s Paradies- Gartlein of 1612. Crüger’s Praxis Pietatis Melica first published Gerhardt’s 16 stzs; Wesley published a full translation in 1753, but the bench-mark for English editors is now the 1780 Methodist Collection which has 9, of which the Praise! version uses the first 4. 1.3–4 had ‘O knit … to thee,/ and reign without a rival there!’; 2.5 had ‘strange fires’ in 1739 and ‘… flames’ in 1780; 3.2–3, read ‘all pain … care, anguish, sorrow …’(which could be misunderstood); and 4.2, ‘dauntless to the high prize …’ The 9th and last stz in the 1780 book can be found here, as in some other hymnals, as the 3rd of 878.

For PATER OMNIUM, the tune by Henry J E Holmes as arranged here, see 160, note. Also in wide use for this hymn is DAVID’S HARP (878), first set to it in 1927.

b Gräfenhainichen, SW of Wittenberg, Germany c1607, d Lübben am Spree, Saxe-Merseburg, 1676. Born to Lutheran parents in an agricultural town, he had many siblings but seems to have been orphaned while quite young. From the age of 15, being proficient in Lat, he attended school at Grimma and from 1628 to c1642 was a student at the Univ of Wittenberg. In 1637 a fire started by Swedish soldiers destroyed his home and all his family records, which has limited our knowledge of his first 30 years, overshadowed as they are with the ‘Thirty Years War’. But for nearly 10 years including some of his happiest, c1643–51, he lived in Berlin where he wrote Gelegenheitsgedichte, 18 items of which his friend J Crüger (qv) included in the Praxis pietatis melica. In 1651, aged 45, he was ordained as provost/pastor at Mittenwalde; he married in 1655 and 2 years later began his pastorate at St Nicholas’ Ch, Berlin. Here the divisions between his own Lutheran faith and the Reformed version became sharper. But in 1666 he was summoned to a consistory court and threatened with deposition; he resigned rather than sign a document supporting the liberal and syncretistic views of the Elector of Brandenburg. In 1668 he was called to Lübben as pastor and archdeacon, where from 1669 he spent his remaining years. The Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche in Lübben has a portrait and a stained glass window depicting him. While remaining firmly Lutheran, his hymns have a rare and deeply personal devotional sweetness not easy to convey in translation; in spite of all its distresses, home means joy, this earth is sweet, heaven is the natural focus and God is above all a Friend. Erik Routley says that with him ‘the truculent note fades; the personal and hopeful note is heard more strongly’, while Catherine Winkworth compares his ‘purest and sweetest expression’ with that of Geo Herbert in England.

His verses range widely in their themes, and while not among the most prolific German hymnwriters, writing some 132 texts, he ranks with the greatest, perhaps second only to Luther. But he was never truly recognised as such in his own day; he simply sang ‘as the bird that sings in the branches’ (Goethe). He adhered to traditional German metrical forms, and Crüger’s successor Johann Georg Ebeling (1637–76) further promoted Gerhardt’s hymns both by setting them to music and by publishing them. They proved surprisingly acceptable to German RC churches, but in translation they were not well-known in England until the mid-19th c, chiefly through Catherine Winkworth (qv) and the versions published by John Kelly (d1890) in 1867. Like the texts of other Germans, not to mention Britons, some of Gerhardt’s ‘flow on for too long, unto they have outgrown their strength’. But Lutherans have prized such hymns as ‘O Jesus Christ,/ thy manger is/ my paradise at which my soul reclineth…’ (1941 trans). Among studies of his life and work, Theodore B Hewitt’s detailed study Paul Gerhardt as a Hymn Writer and his Influence of English Hymnody (Yale and OUP, 1918) is still useful, and lists 31 translators of his work into English up to that time. 9 of these were women, 6 were Americans, and Jn Kelly (who studied at Glasgow and Edinburgh and Bonn) was the most prolific. 9 translations feature in the 2006 Evangelical Lutheran Worship. Since Gerhardt was probably born just 100 years before C Wesley, 2007 saw the 4th centenary of the former and the 3rd of the latter, which were duly celebrated together. Nos.349, 439, 844, 878*.

b Epworth, Lincs 1703, d City Rd, Old St, Middx (C London) 1791. As a boy he was dramatically rescued from a fire at his father’s rectory at Epworth; after study at Charterhouse Sch, Surrey, and Christ Church Oxford, he was ordained and elected a Fellow of Lincoln Coll. He became the leader of Oxford’s ‘Holy Club’ which his younger brother Charles (qv) had quite informally begun and which first attracted the nickname ‘Methodist’, in which he later gloried. Its members were active in disciplined religious observances and unusual social commitments such as prison visiting. In 1735 he sailed with Charles and others to Georgia, technically as a missionary, in effect a chaplain, but in either role a self-confessed failure. After some naïve actions complicated by a near-disastrous romantic entanglement, he left in embarrassed humiliation, not before courting a rather different trouble by unauthorised tampering with the texts of familiar hymns. Back in London he built on the Moravian contacts he had made on the outward voyage, notably in friendship with Peter Böhler. After intense struggles to find a personal faith, the decisive moment of conversion came at a meeting in Aldersgate St in May 1738— recorded in detail in his published Journal, now commemorated by Methodists worldwide but strangely seldom mentioned in his later writings. ‘Conversion’ or not, the event had ‘pivotal significance’ (A Skevington Wood) for Wesley and Methodism.

It marked, however, a turning point in his life which from then on became an extraordinary career of sustained energy as a travelling evangelist (usually on horseback), church planter, teacher, author, controversialist, and in effect the founder of a denomination. Technically he remained an Anglican, but he put in place all the structures which led to the inevitable split soon after his death. He followed George Whitefield and brother Charles in ‘field-preaching’, which then became his normal method; they and their colleagues suffered cruel and sometimes near-fatal attacks. While at first keen not to duplicate or rival services provided by each local parish church (from which he was increasingly barred for his evangelical preaching), he established meeting-places, schools, teams of lay preachers, class-meetings, medical clinics, and in 1784 an annual Conference which remains the decision-making centre of Methodism. Not the least cause of division in that year was his ‘ordination’, bishop-style, of Thomas Coke and others to serve in N America, at first under his authority. Sadder, perhaps, were divisions within evangelical ranks; Wesley opposed Whitefield’s preaching of the Reformed ‘doctrines of grace’, upheld free-will and taught the possibility of ‘perfect love’ which he was constantly driven to explain or qualify. Some colleagues became disillusioned with his autocratic style; after Charles intervened to prevent an impending marriage, John married suddenly, unwisely and unhappily. While his relations with women were often problematic, he also attracted deep loyalty from followers of either sex, notably that of the remarkable Elizabeth Ritchie who attended his death-bed. In old age, continuing to travel and preach so long as it was physically possible, he mellowed so far as to become almost an establishment figure, respected by Blake, Johnson and others including royalty. But in social attitudes he remained radical, a fierce opponent of slavery who wrote his Thoughts Upon Slavery in 1774 (long before abolition), a critic of many but not all wars, with a simple lifestyle and a fascinated horror of wealth, grand houses and nobility. He never quite overcame his need to control those around him or take the credit for joint enterprises. Unlike virtually all his contemporary preachers he did not wear a wig. He compiled a popular dictionary, a practical medical handbook, and much more. His work as a hymnwriter, translator, abridger and editor has largely been overshadowed by his other achievements, but in hymnody alone his place in history is assured. Many collections of work by one or both of the brothers named them pointedly as ‘Presbyters of the Church of England’. The authorship of some texts is still disputed, as between John and Charles; Erik Routley is among those who believe that all the original texts are Charles’s, John providing only translations. A great compiler of lists and maker of rules, he naturally provided his Methodists (in 1761) with some pointed ‘Directions for Singing’, which are still commonly and deservedly quoted.

As well as Charles, John’s father and elder brother (both Samuel), his mother Susanna and sister Hetty all had outstanding gifts. There are memorials to him at City Rd, London (his house, chapel and tomb) and in Bristol’s historic ‘New Room’. Among recent biographies, those by S Ayling, R Hattersley and (notably) H Rack are all valuable. JW’s own fascinating Journals, abridged or in full, are indispensable but (like his definitive published sermons) need to be read with discernment; in all his writing, as George Lawton kindly put it, he ‘sat lightly to quotation marks’—and sometimes to facts. Biographers of the 18th-c evangelical leaders tend to take sides; Wesley left behind much more accessible printed material, including ammunition, than those who distanced themselves from his claims, policies and ‘free-will’ doctrines. Some Methodists find it especially hard to see him in proportion or take his critics seriously. See also the notes to Cennick, Perronet, Toplady and C Wesley. Nos.240, 778, 781, 844, 878*.