Shakespeare, whose works John Wesley annotated, has,

"Well, we're born to die!"

("Romeo and Juliet," Act iii., sc. 4.)

Anl the poet of preachers, the eloquent Dr. Jeremy Taylor, of whom Lord Jeffrey said, that, “in copiousness and brilliancy, no living man came near the old divine," says, "If the corn dies and lives again; if it lays its body down, suffers dissolution and death, but, at the spring, rises again....be a Sadducee no more." t

The same expressions occur in the hymn commencing,

"And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?"

(Hymn 43.)

And Hymn 44, although in a different metre, commences with nearly the same words:

"And am I only born to die?"

the expletive "only" adding nothing to the sense, but rather injuring it; for we are born for some other things besides "to die." The following expression may seem hyperbolical:

"Nothing is worth a thought beneath,

But how I may escape the death

That never, never dies!"
(Verse 5.)

But the assertion is felt to be not unreasonable, when understood, as such expressions always should be, not in an absolute, but a comparative sense. Dr. Johnson, feeling the importance of making sure work for eternity, says to a friend in a letter, "Death is very dreadful; let us think nothing worth our care but how to prepare for it. What we know amiss in ourselves let us make haste to amend; and put our trust in the mercy of God and the intercession of our Saviour."

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In Samuel Wesley's hymn on Isaiah xl. 6-8, “ All flesh is grass," etc., there is a striking expression for which he is indebted to Milton :

"So blooms the human face divine,

When youth its pride of beauty shows:
Fairer than spring the colours shine,

And sweeter than the virgin rose."

(Hymn 46, verse 3.)

And the Bard of "Paradise Lost" and "Regained," lamenting his blindness, exclaims,

"Thus, with the year,

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine."

("Paradise Lost," b. iii., 1. 40-44.)

In the concluding stanza of this beautiful hymn,

"Let sickness blast, and death devour,

If heaven must recompense our pains,"

See Dr. A. Stevens' " History of Methodism," b. ii., chap. ii., p. 148, note. London edition.

† Sermon on 1 Cor. xv. 23.

"Life by Boswell," A.D. 1784,

the word "must" is unemphatic, and the stress of the voice should be on the word "heaven." To emphasize the word "must" would make the line sound harshly. So, in Hymn 298, verse 2,

"My Son is in my servant's prayer,

And Jesus forces me to spare,"

there is a harshness in the expression "forces" repulsive to some minds. Yet there is doubtless a sense in which both are truc. God owns the "force" of moral obligation, and "must" implies that He is under such an obligation to fulfil His promises. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John i. 9.)

"Ah, lovely appearance of death!

What sight upon earth is so fair?
Not all the gay pageants that breathe
Can with a dead body compare:
With solemn delight I survey

The corpse, when the spirit is fled,
In love with the beautiful clay,

And longing to lie in its stead."

(Hymn 48, verse 1.)

This language of our poet has often been cavilled at. It is forgotten that, while the Hymn-Book was intended by Mr. Wesley "for the use of the people called Methodists," it does not follow that he meant every hymn to be used in public worship, any more than every verse in the Bible is fit for the text of a sermon. And, in fact, we ourselves have never known this hymn given out for singing, from pulpit, desk, or pew. Yet it is not unsuitable for the closet, and, in some peculiar moods of mind, may be read with advantage. The state of mental feeling which it indicates, though rare, is not unreal. Its actual occurrence in the experience of the poet may be seen from a passage in his "Journal," as given by his biographer. A member of the Society in Cardiff was on his death-bed. "We were all in tears," Charles Wesley says; Mine, I fear, flowed from envy and impatience of life. I felt, throughout my whole soul, that I would rather be in his condition than enjoy the whole of created good." This was on August 13th, 1744. The next day the following is added :"We sang a song of victory for our deceased friend... The spirit at its departure had left marks of its happiness upon the clay. No sight upon earth, in my eyes, is half so lovely." The hymn was probably written soon after, and while the feeling was fresh in the poet's mind. According to Mr. Sedgwick, who is considered one of the best authorities in such matters, it was first published in a little pamphlet of "Funeral Hymns," without the author's name, in 1744, and sold for one penny.

*

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:

Nor is Charles Wesley the only poet that has given one lay on his harp to sing the peculiar, though transient beauty, of the newly dead. It is. referred to by Byron in a well-known passage; in a note to which he speaks of "that singular beauty which pervades, with few exceptions, the features of the dead, a few hours, and but for a few hours, after the spirit is not there."

* Life, vol. i., p. 401.

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers,
And mark'd the mild angelic air,

The rapture of repose that's there,

The fix'd yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
And-but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not now,
And, but for that chill, changeless brow,...
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd,
The first, last look by death reveal'd,....
....Beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb;
Expression's last receding ray,

A gilded halo hovering round decay,

The farewell beam of Feeling pass'd away!

Spark of that flame, perchance, of heavenly birth,

Which gleams, but warms no more its cherish'd earth."

In the short, but beautiful hymn,

"Pass a few swiftly-fleeting years,"

("Giaour.")

a couplet occurs, which we once heard objected to, by a London classleader, as literally incorrect, and doctrinally unsound.

"But all, before they hence remove,

May mansions for themselves prepare

In that eternal house above;

And, O my God, shall I be there?"

(Hymn 47, verse 2.)

The objection was made at a meeting over which Richard Watson presided. There are several passages of Scripture which, with common sense (and the Bible pre-supposes common sense!) for an interpreter, will justify this figurative expression. Mr. Watson did so by quoting one of them, Luke xvi. 9: "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail," on earth, "they may receive you into everlasting habitations." The objector proposed an amended reading of the verse, which, if adopted, would effectually get rid of the daring metaphor, but would at the same time be fatal to the spirit of the passage, and tame it down to a condition very prosaic indeed.*

In Hymn 49,

"Rejoice for a brother deceased," etc.,

The reader may judge for himself; and the amended reading may serve to set off, by contrast, the beauty of the original :

"May all, before they hence remove,

The mansions gain Thou hast prepared

In that eternal house above,

Where saints receive their full reward.”.

which we have not unfrequently heard sung at the grave of some saint, the words occur,

"Our brother the haven hath gain'd," etc.

This may be paralleled with the following:

"Father of Heaven! among the elected blest,
Vouchsafe to give Thy faithful martyr rest,
Who now, the storm of life's short voyage o'er,
Has furl'd his sails upon a peaceful shore."

(Hoole's Ariosto, "Orlando Furioso," b. xli., 11. 763-6.)

The hymn,

"Hark! a voice divides the sky," etc.

contains the following quartet:—

"When from flesh the spirit freed,

Hastens homeward to return,
Mortals cry, A man is dead!'

་

Angels sing, 'A child is born ! ' "'

(Hymn 51, verse 3.)

When Epaminondas, the Theban hero, who twice defeated the Spartans, and saved his country from slavery, was about to expire, after his victory at Mantinea, he said to his friends who stood about him, "This is not the end of my life, my fellow-soldiers; it is now that your Epaminondas is born, who dies with so much glory." And Cowley says:

"But angels in their full enlighten'd state,

Angels who live, and know what 'tis to be!
Who all the nonsense of our language see,
And words, our ill-drawn pictures scorn;
When we, by a foolish figure, say,

Behold an old man dead, then they

Speak properly, and say, Behold a man-child born!"
("Life," 11. 10-16.)

There is a song of holy triumph over the last enemy which one can never cease admiring, especially considering the occasion of it,-the death of a young Cornishman, who fell a victim to his heroic zeal and disregard of self. He was surely no ordinary Christian who, dying before he had reached the age of twenty-two, and but little more than two years after his conversion, could inspire the poet of Methodism to pen such hymn as that which commences,

"Again we lift our voice,

And shout our solemn joys;
Cause of highest raptures this,

Raptures that shall never fail;
See a soul escaped to bliss,

Keep the Christian Festival."

(Hymn 52.)

a

Samuel Hitchens, a blacksmith of Bisveal, near Redruth, a short account of whom and his brother was written by their father, and published by Mr. Wesley, came to his death by visiting John Trembath, one of the early preachers, when ill of a malignant fever. Trembath's recovery, after a relapse, was deemed little less than miraculous. He

lived to give Mr. Wesley exquisite pain by his temporary apostasy. And Mr. Wesley, with all his charity, and his belief in Trembath's repentance and ultimate recovery, has held him up to the world and to posterity, as a warning to others, and a beacon to show the sad effects of unsanctified pulpit popularity! But the youth who caught infection from his lips, and died a martyr to friendship, has had his memory enshrined in this immortal hymn. In view of his release, the poet exclaims :

And he answers,—

"And shall we mourn to see
Our fellow-prisoner free?" etc.,

"No, dear companion, no;

We gladly let thee go,

From a suffering Church beneath,

To a reigning Church above:

Thou hast more than conquer'd death;
Thou art crown'd with joy and love.

"Thou, in thy youthful prime,

Hast leap'd the bounds of time:
Suddenly from earth released,

Lo! we now rejoice for thee;

Taken to an early rest,

Charles Wesley's hymn "On the Death of a Widow" was published in "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 1749; and, with the omission of the third stanza, forms hymn 53 in our Hymn-Book:

1. "Give glory to Jesus our Head,

With all that encompass His throne!" etc.

It is a poetic rapture, scarcely inferior to the preceding, and appears to have been suggested by the death of his brother Samuel's widow, at Tiverton. In a letter to his wife he thus describes her sublimity of grief: "My sister passed her three years of widowhood in a house by herself, pining continually after her old companion, till she overtook him in Paradise. She died in perfect peace: so did her mother, past fourscore, a little after her. Her departure was quite triumphant.”*

We give the second and third stanzas, as the hymn appeared in our Hymn-Book at first, and in several subsequent editions. The italics are the author's:

2. "The soul hath o'ertaken her mate,

And caught him again in the sky:
Advanced to her happy estate,

And pleasure that never shall die :
Where glorified spirits, by sight,

Converse in their holy abode,
As stars in the firmament bright,
And pure as the angels of God.
3. "Inflamed with seraphical love,
Combined in a manner unknown,
Not given in marriage above,
Or given to Jesus alone,

* Life, by Jackson, vol. ii., p. 149.