Rock of Ages
“The Lord is my Rock” (Psalm 18:2).
“For Thou hast been…a refuge from the storm”
(Isaiah 25:4).
I have been to Burrington Combe in England, and I have a photograph of myself standing in the cleft of the rock to prove it.
According to a famous but largely unsubstantiated story, Augustus Toplady sheltered in this cleft in the rock during a heavy storm there in Burrington Combe, at the southern end of the Mendip Hills. Toplady, a preacher in the nearby village of Blagdon, thought of “Rock of Ages” as the title of a hymn and scribbled down the initial lyrics on a playing card.
Whether the story is altogether authentic or not, the truth of the hymn he wrote still stands, and will stand forever:
Rock of Ages! cleft for sin,
Grace hath hid us safe within!
Where the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Are of sin the double cure;
Cleansing from its guilt and power.
