Sweet the moments, rich in blessing

For the friends of Jesus, the original moments before the historic cross were anything but sweet. As we sing these words of William Shirley, it is vital to realise the paradox of what the cross has come to mean for those who realise what was happening there, and make it their own. But the text goes back to James Allen and the Kendal Hymn Book of 1757 which he edited in his twenties. While my Jesus I’m possessing was one of many texts he supplied there; Shirley wrote his hymn as a thoroughgoing revision, which appeared not long afterwards in one of the Countess of Huntingdon’s hymnals. This is the one hymn of his to prove enduring, though not immune from further improvement. Small changes are made here, in 2.1 which read ‘… for ever viewing’; and stz 4, from ‘… fix my thankful heart on thee/ … and thine unveiled glory see’. In the Brethren tradition among others it has been a morning favourite at the Breaking of Bread, and CH places it in the section on the Lord’s Supper. As with 731, though for different reasons, this is certainly an appropriate use without being an exclusive one; it is also sung by the Salvation Army. GH, where it comes under ‘God the Son: his death’ has a different arrangement of the text, and some varied lines including the stz ‘Truly blessèd is this station …’ The 4 stzs in Hymns of Light and Love have other variations, as do A&M (standard) and EH among others, so that an ‘authentic’ text would be hard to establish.

For the alternative tune SHARON, see 717; also in use is SICILIAN MARINERS (649). The first choice here is John Stainer’s LOVE DIVINE, the best-known of at least 3 tunes of that name. It was composed for Wesley’s words at 714, and entered the mainstream of hymnody with the A&M Supplement of 1889. It is more suited to the 4-line stzs in texts such as this, than to the 87 87 D of Love divine.

(not in Praise! index), b Gayle, nr Hawes, N Yorks 1734, d Gayle 1804. He was preparing for ordination in the CofE but became for a time a follower of Benjamin Ingham, the Wesleys’ former colleague who turned first to the Moravians and then founded his own sect of ‘Inghamites’. Allen, however, joined the Sandemanians (formed in 1725) before himself splitting from them, ministering in a chapel he had built on his own estate at Gayle. He wrote some 100 hymns, and was the editor of and main contributor to the 1757/61 Kendal Hymn Book. Most of these groups had an evangelical foundation but were marked by their own distinctive doctrine and/or practice. James Allen was the great-uncle of one Oswald Allen (qv) and the son of an earlier one. See 745 and notes.

b Staunton Har(r)old, nr Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leics 1725, d Dublin 1786. Born into the aristocratic nobility, he became ‘the Hon and Rev’ Walter Shirley on his ordination in 1749 in the (Anglican) Ch of Ireland. He was a cousin of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon (see under ‘Lady Huntingdon…’), and assisted in the compilation of hymn-books (in 1770 etc) for her connexion of chapels and preachers. Like her he was also an evangelical associate of Whitefield and the Wesleys; he ministered mainly in the parish of Loughrea, Co Galway, W Ireland. When illness prevented him from mounting the church pulpit or even attending services, he would preach seated on a chair, to a crowded congregation in the drawing room of his spacious home. His best-known hymn, built on a text by James Allen qv, was known (like others) to earlier generations of Strict or Grace Baptists but has reached well beyond evangelical hymn-books and is often marked ‘Passiontide’. No.745.