HYMNS ARISING FROM CIRCUMSTANCES
From Hours to Moments
During the World's Fair at Chicago religious meetings were frequently held, and at one of these the hymn "I need Thee every hour" was sung, when the well-known evangelists, Mr. Henry Varley and Major D. W. Whittle, were present. Mr. Varley remarked to Major Whittle that he did not care very much for the hymn, because he felt he needed Christ every moment of the day and not only every hour. It is open to question whether the criticism was warranted, as the expression "every hour" was probably intended to be equivalent to "always," but, however, the remark fastened itself in Major Whittle's mind, and led to his writing the hymn beginning "Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine," and with the chorus obviously founded upon Mr. Varley's words:
Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;
Moment by moment I've life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
At the Convention
Mr. L. H. Biglow was returning on one occasion from a prayer meeting in company with his blind friend, Miss Fanny Crosby, the well-known hymn writer. The subject brought forward at the prayer meeting by its conductor was "Grace," and on the way home Mr. Biglow asked his friend to write a hymn thereon. Retiring to an adjoining room, she returned in the course of an hour with the new hymn, which Mr. Biglow placed in a safe with other compositions of Miss Crosby's, where it was apparently forgotten.
Later on Miss Crosby was the guest of Mr. Sankey during the Northfield Summer Conference of 1894, and was asked by him one evening if she would give a short address at the Convention. At first she declined, but afterward consented to speak for a few minutes. Being led forward to the speaker's desk, Miss Crosby gave a short but earnest address, and then, having finished her remarks, she recited the hymn written at Mr. Biglow's request, beginning,
Some day the silver cord will break,
And I no more, as now, shall sing.
In this remarkable fashion the hymn was first made public.
To Comfort His Mother
There landed in Canada in the year 1845 a young Irishman named Joseph Scriven, who lived in his adopted country until 1886, when he died at the age of sixty-six. His consecration of his life to Christ was the result of a terrible grief which befell him in his earlier years, the young lady to whom he was engaged being accidentally drowned on the eve of their wedding day. No one had ever known that Scriven was possessed of any poetical gift, until, shortly before his death, a neighbor who was watching beside him during his last illness, found in his room some lines in manuscript which he read with intense delight.
Asking Mr. Scriven how he came to write it, the latter replied that in a time of very special sorrow he had written it to bring comfort to his mother, not intending that any eye but hers should see it. His account of the authorship of the hymn was "The Lord and I did it between us." The first lines of the hymn that met the eye of the delighted neighbor were,
What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
A Christmas Present
Few of those who join on Christmas Day in singing "Christians, awake, salute the happy morn," have any idea that the Christian Church owes this magnificent hymn to the pretty fancy of a young girl. Dolly Byrom and her father lived in Manchester, more than a century and a half ago, John Byrom being a teacher of shorthand, and also a Jacobite leader.
One clay, shortly before Christmas, Byrom asked his daughter what she would like for a Christmas present, and Dolly, knowing that her father sometimes wrote poetry, replied, "Please write me a poem." When she came down on Christmas morning she found a piece of paper laid upon her plate—a paper still preserved in one of the Manchester libraries—on which was written a hymn, headed "Christmas Day, For Dolly.”
Soon after, John Wainwright, the organist of Manchester Parish Church, now its cathedral, saw this hymn, and composed for it the tune "Yorkshire," which we all know so well. On the following Christmas morning Byrom and his daughter were awakened by the sound of singing below their windows; it was Wainwright with his choir, singing Dolly's hymn:
Christians awake, salute the happy morn
Whereon the Savior of mankind was born.
The Little Mission Church
In how many magnificent churches, with crowded congregations assembled for the consecration of the building, have the beautiful words been sung:
We love the place, O God,
Wherein Thine honor dwells,
The joy of Thine abode
All earthly joy excels.
How different the scene when they were sung for the first time I Just about a century ago a young naval officer, William Bullock, was ordered to survey the coast of Newfoundland.
An earnest man, the condition of the settlers there, bereft of any kind of religious worship or instruction, so horrified him that he resigned his post, sought ordination, and went out to Newfoundland again as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. At a small place named Trinity Bay he built his first little Mission Church, for the consecration of which he wrote this great hymn, and amid such poor surroundings, in that tiny building, were first sung the words which were destined to form one of the great hymns of Christendom.
Bullock, who afterward became Dean of Halifax, Nova Scotia, wrote two verses which have disappeared from our editions of the hymn, one of which was strikingly appropriate when one remembers his errand there as a pioneer missionary.
The words are these:
We love Thy saints, who come
Thy mercy to proclaim,
To call the wanderers home,
And magnify Thy Name.
Sir H. W. Baketr, whose changes in the hymn are now universally adopted, omitted the above verse, which refers to the preacher, and substituted one which pointed instead to the Word read and preached, viz.:
We love the Word of life,
The Word that tells of peace
Of comfort in the strife,
And joys that never cease
The Publishers' Refusal
Mr. Ira D. Sankey relates that during the meetings held by Mr. Moody and himself in Great Britain in the years 1873-1874, he had frequently sung as a solo the striking poem of Tennyson's, founded on the parable of the Ten Virgins, and commencing,
Late, late, so late, and dark the night and chill,
Late, late, so late, but we can enter still.
Too late! Too late! Ye cannot enter now!
Mr. Sankey was then compiling an edition of his Sacred Songs and Solos, and asked permission to include this poem, but the owners of the copyright refused. Upon this Mr. Sankey asked Dr. H. Bonar if he would write for him a hymn on the same lines, with the result that Dr. Bonar produced the solemn verses in exactly the same meter, and therefore capable of being sung to the same music, beginning,
Yet there is room! The Lamb's bright hall of song,
With its fair glory, beckons thee along
Room, room! Still room Oh, enter, enter now!
Thus the world owes one of its most beautiful
mission hymns to the publishers' refusal!
At the Dean's Request
On Whit-Sunday, 1819, a sermon was preached in Wrexham Parish Church, in aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, by Dr. Shipley, who was Vicar of Wrexham
and also Dean of St. Asaph's. On the same evening was given the first of a series of Sunday Evening Lectures, delivered by the Dean's son-in-law, the Rev. Reginald Heber, then Rector of Hodnet, and afterward Bishop of Calcutta.
On the previous Saturday evening, when Heber was at the Vicarage, the Dean asked him to write "something for them to sing in the morning." Upon which Heber left the table where the Dean and other friends were sitting, and going to another part of the room sat down and began to write. After a while the Dean asked him, "What have you written?" whereupon Heber read aloud the first three verses of the greatest of all missionary hymns, which he had then composed, beginning,
From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strand.
“There, there, that will do very well," said the Dean, who evidently had a strong objection to long hymns. "No, no," replied Heber, "the sense is incomplete," and sitting down again, wrote the magnificent fourth verse, commencing,
Waft, waft, ye winds, His story,
And you, ye waters, roll.
Even then he was not satisfied; "Let me add another! oh, let me add another!" he repeatedly exclaimed, but in vain; the Dean was inexorable in refusing to allow any further extension of the hymn, which as thus written was sung for the first time in Wrexham Parish Church the next morning.
Heber's original manuscript was filed in the office of the Wrexham printer, and a facsimile of this most interesting document is given on page 62, by the kind permission of Messrs Hughes and Son, Wrexham, from whom copies can be obtained price three pence, post free. It will be observed, on studying the manuscript, that Heber originally wrote, in the second verse,
The savage in his blindness,
which he himself changed to "heathen," making the line much smoother thereby. Also in the third verse the original words of the fifth line are
Salvation! yea, salvation!
instead of the "oh, salvation!" to which we are all accustomed. Later on Heber also altered "Ceylon's isle" to "Java's isle," obviously to correct the accent which falls on the first syllable of the word, and which was therefore faulty in “Ceylon's.”
The blurring marks in the second and fourth verses are caused by the printer's file, which pierced the paper at these points.
The Sunday School Procession
Nearly sixty years ago a new curate arrived at Horbury, a village in Yorkshire, just outside Wakefield. As in so many North country places, the march of the Sunday scholars in procession round the parish on Whit-Monday was a very great annual event, and on the previous Sunday evening the new curate was asked to select the hymns to be sung during the next day's march. Among others he thought of a good marching tune, well known to the children (No. 359 in Hymnal Companion, where it is called "St. Alban," and No. 622 in Church Hymns," where its title is" Haydn.") But he did not care about the words set to it, and believed that he could substitute better, sitting up very late at night in order to compose them. The next day the children marched round the parish singing, for the first time, the words now familiar in every part of the world:
Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war.
This widespread use of the hymn, however, called for one significant alteration. The Rev. Sabine Baring Gould had only his Sunday School children in mind when he wrote
We are not divided,
All one body we.
But he felt that these words, unhappily, were inaccurate when the hymn came to be sung far and wide, and so by his request a fresh line was substituted for the first of these two, and appears in Hymns Ancient and Modern (new edition) thus:
Though divisions harass,
All one body we,
thus sacrificing smoothness of rhythm to truth. The popularity of the hymn has been immensely increased since it became wedded to Sir Arthur Sullivan's famous tune "St. Gertrude," a composition for which it is said the author only received a guinea or two, although the firm possessing the copyright must have obtained hundreds of pounds in fees for its use!
After the Storm
Joseph Addison, who was born in 1672, is well known on account of the important posts he held in the political world, and also from the literary excellence of his essays in the Spectator. It was in this paper that there appeared, at various dates, the only five hymns from his pen, of which the best known is probably, "When all Thy mercies, O my God." Each of these hymns was introduced at the close of an essay, the subject of which it summed up in verse; thus the hymn just mentioned closed an essay on "Gratitude." The hymn of which the first line runs, "How are Thy servants blest, O Lord," owed its inception, however, not so much to the preceding essay as to a personal experience of the writer.
In December, 1700, Addison was on board ship in the Mediterranean, when the vessel ran into one of the "black storms" sometimes encountered in those waters. So perilous was the condition of the ship, that the captain gave up all as lost, and in preparation for death hastened to confess his sins to a monk who was on board. Addison, however, fortified himself against the terrors of death by a very different and far better preparation, and when eventually the ship escaped the danger that threatened it, his devout thankfulness was expressed some years later in this hymn. It was printed at the close of another essay on "Greatness," and was introduced thus: “Great painters do not only give us Landskips (note the spelling two hundred years ago) of Gardens, Groves, and Meadows, but very often employ their pencils upon Sea-Pieces. I could wish you could follow their example. If this small sketch may deserve a Place among your Works, I shall accompany it with a Divine Ode, made by a Gentleman upon the conclusion of his Travels"; then follows the hymn,
How are Thy servants blest, O Lord!
How sure is their defense!
Eternal Wisdom is their guide,
Their help Omnipotence.
The hymn originally consisted of ten verses, one of which has undoubted reference to the deliverance from the storm in the Mediterranean:
When by the dreadful tempest borne
High on the broken wave,
They know Thou art not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.
The Evangelist's Wish
In the summer of 1876, when Mr. Sankey was living at Cohasset, in the State of Massachusetts, he invited Mr. G. C. Needham to stay with him and hold a series of evangelistic meetings. One morning before breakfast, while Mr. Sankey was playing on his organ, Mr. Needham remarked that he wished there were some hymn bearing on the subject of "The Smitten Rock," as he intended to speak upon it that night. Mr. Sankey replied, as he played, "Here is a new tune which came to me in the night while I slept, and I believe came from the Lord. I want words for it. Why don't you write a hymn for it on your subject" Mr. Needham objected that he could not write a hymn, and did not understand music sufficiently to fit a hymn to Mr. Sankey's tune, but the great singer, still playing on, only said, "There are pen and paper on that table; try your hand at it; it's a good tune, and I want the words for it.”
Mr. Needham says that he at once sat down, and after praying for God's help in his task, wrote the hymn exactly as it was afterward published. Mr. Sankey took the paper, with the ink barely dry, and sang the hymn through, neither words nor music requiring any alteration, upon which the singer remarked, "I think the Lord gave you the words as truly as He gave me the tune." They then knelt in prayer, asking that the blessing of the Lord might rest upon the hymn and its tune, both being used for the first time that evening. The first verse runs thus:
From the riven Rock there floweth
Living water, ever clear;
Weary pilgrim, journeying onward,
Know you not that Fount is near?
Jesus is the Rock of Ages;
Smitten, stricken, lo! He dies
From His Side a living Fountain,
Know you not it satisfies?
The Search for Manx Music
Mr. W. H. Gill was an official in the General Post Office, a painter and a student of Manx music. It was this latter hobby which led to the writing of his beautiful hymn for the "Harvest of the Sea," which supplies a real need in many fishing villages and towns. Mr. Gill's account of its origin, given in 1905, is as follows:—
“This hymn was directly inspired by my quest, some ten years ago, for Manx music. Among many interesting finds of our once lost national music was a remnant of melody which had once been associated with Manx words. That melody I converted into a hymn tune.
“Then I sought inspiration for a suitable subject. This was found in the occupation of the fisher-folk and the petition in the Manx Book of Common Prayer: That it may please Thee to preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, and to continue and restore unto us the blessings of the sea, so as in due time we may enjoy them.' Hence the hymn and its tune, which I devoutly hope may never be divorced." The first line of the hymn is" Hear us, O Lord, from Heaven, Thy dwelling-place," and the two verses which refer to the" Harvest of the Sea are as follows:
Our wives, our children we commend to Thee;
For them we plow the land and plow the deep;
For them by day the golden corn we reap,
By night the silver harvest of the sea.
We thank Thee, Lord, for sunshine, dew, and rain, Broadcast from Heaven by Thine Almighty Hand—Source of all life, unnumbered as the sand—Bird, beast, and fish, herb, fruit, and golden grain.
The tune arranged by Mr. Gill bears the appropriate name of " Peel Castle.'!
The Sleepless Night
In the Church Parochial Mission Book is a striking hymn by the Rev. Canon W. Hay Aitken, which has been much used in mission work, and which begins:
O leave we all for Jesus—
The world that fades away,
The flesh with its wild passions,
And Satan's tyrant sway;
We leave it all for Jesus,
Nor will we count it loss;
For who the fine gold gaining,
Will grudge to lose the dross?
At the time of its being written Canon Aitken was the young Vicar of Christ Church, Everton, Liverpool, when he received an urgent call from his father, the Rev. Robert Aitken, to come to his help in a notable mission which he was conducting at St. Paul's, Newport. Having a large number of candidates for Confirmation under preparation, young Aitken was naturally unwilling to leave his own parish at the moment, but his father's summons was so imperative that he had no option but to respond.
On reaching Newport, his father made him occupy the pulpit in his place that evening, much against his son's will, as he felt that his father was likely to be of more help to the people. On retiring to rest that night, the double burden of the responsibility of the mission and that of his own confirmees away in Liverpool so pressed upon Mr. Aitken that he found it impossible to sleep. He finally gave up the attempt, rose from bed, struck a light, and, sitting down, composed this hymn to be sung at the forthcoming Confirmation in his own parish.
The Niggardly Congregation
The poet Wordsworth had a nephew, the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth—afterward Bishop of Lincoln—whose first and only parochial charge was a little country living in Berkshire, with the curious name of Stanford-in-the-Vale-cum-Goosey. The new vicar was much troubled on finding that the villagers had never been taught the duty and privilege of giving; their idea of religion was to receive all the Church doles, in the shape of coal, soup, blankets, etc., and to give nothing.
Mr. Wordsworth was himself a poet of no mean order, a talent which he had probably inherited, and he decided that the best way to teach his parishioners the duty of giving to God was to write a hymn inculcating this lesson and to have it sung in church at intervals of about a month. This method proved much more effective than sermons on "giving" would probably have been, and in time many of his people became really generous givers.
It is, therefore, to this "niggardly congregation" that the Church owes the beautiful hymn which, when published, Wordsworth entitled "Charitable Collections," and which begins,
O Lord of heaven, and earth, and sea,
To Thee all praise and glory be;
How shall we show our love to
Thee, Giver of all?
It is curious, however, that the author did not apparently see that one of his verses could be so understood as to countenance that very spirit of "getting" which he was striving to abolish—the verse that runs thus:
Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee
Repaid a thousandfold will be;
Then gladly will we give to Thee,
Giver of all.
Both Hymns Ancient and Modern and Church Hymns, for this reason, quite justifiably omit this verse.
Becalmed at Sea
In June, 1888, a little sailing vessel, bound to Marseilles with a cargo of oranges, lay becalmed for a whole week in the Strait of Bonifacio between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. On board was a young Oxford clergyman, who had been on a visit to Italy, where he had been taken ill, and now on his recovery was most anxious to get home to England. During that week of waiting John Henry Newman occupied the time, he tells us, by writing verses, three of which—written on the 16th day of June—have become one of the most famous of hymns, and have been described as "one of the finest lyrics of the nineteenth century." They begin,
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on.
When some years ago in America it was decided to hold a Parliament of Religions at Chicago, hymn books were ransacked to find a hymn which could be sung by everybody, whether Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, Mohammedans, or Heathen, and it was decided to sing Newman's hymn at the opening of each day's proceedings.
The common belief is that these lines refer to the question supposed to be then agitating Newman's mind as to whether he should leave the English for the Roman Church. But this idea is quite erroneous, since it was twelve years later when he took this step.
He himself has told us what were the feelings which gave birth to this prayer for guidance: grief and anger at the condition of the Church which he loved; passionate longing for home and friends; his own weakness and suffering from his late illness, and, above all, his confidence that he had a mission, a work to do, yet not knowing what that work was or where it was to be done—from such mingled emotions sprang this impassioned and pathetic prayer for guidance, based probably on the remembrance of the Pillar of Fire and Cloud which guided the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land.
The Silenced Blasphemer
The Rev. Charles Wesley records in his Journal that in 1744 he was preaching in Cornwall, in the small church of Laneast. During the sermon, in which he was denouncing the drunken habits of the people and urging them to repentance, a man who was in the congregation began to blaspheme and to contradict the preacher. Upon this Wesley exclaimed, "Who is he that pleads for the devil?" and, upon the blasphemer standing up, he exposed his sin with such tremendous power that the man was driven out of the church. These circumstances suggested to Wesley the writing of the hymn beginning,
Jesus! the Name high over all,
In hell, or earth, or sky,
Angels and men before it fall,
And devils fear and fly.
The Tune That Wanted Words
Mrs. Van Alstyne, better known by her maiden name of Fanny J. Crosby, was the authoress of Many beautiful hymns, but the occasion of her writing the most popular of all was not a little curious. She was sitting one day in a room in New York, in conversation with a friend, when Mr. W. H. Doane came in and said to her that he had written a tune and he wanted her to write some words for it.
Mrs. Van Alstyne, who had been blind from the age of six weeks, replied, "Let me hear how the tune goes.”
There was a small organ at hand on which Mr. Doane played the melody to her, when she at once exclaimed, "Why, that tune says Safe in the arms of Jesus'; I will see what I can do." She then retired to another room, where she remained alone for some half-hour, and on her return repeated to Mr. Doane the words of the hymn, the best known of all her compositions, and sung the world over:
Safe in the Arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle Breast;
There, by His love o'ershaded,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
The Enquiring Children
A fine Ascension hymn owes its origin to the conversation between a gentleman and his children. The latter complained to their father that there was no suitable hymn known to them for Ascension Day, and also questioned him as to what the feelings of the disciples had been when they saw the cloud receive their Lord out of their sight. The gentleman, who was a friend of Dean Stanley, mentioned this conversation to him, and thus inspired the Dean to write one of our most beautiful Ascension hymns, beginning,
He is gone—A cloud of light
Has received Him from our sight.
The original hymn consisted of seven verses of eight lines each, which was obviously too long for use in public worship, so that the Dean's first verse, commencing "He is gone—beyond the skies," as well as others, are usually omitted. The greater part of the hymn is devoted to answering the children's question, and beautifully describes the disciples' feelings after the Ascension of their Lord, as in the following verse:
He is gone—We heard Him say,
"Good that I should go away."
Gone is that dear Form and Face,
But not gone His present grace;
Though Himself no more we see,
Comfortless we cannot be;
No, His Spirit still is ours,
Quickening, freshening all our powers.
From the Pilgrim's Progress
One morning in the year 1865 Mrs. Ellen H. Gates—the authoress of "If you cannot on the ocean," the hymn which appealed so strongly to President Abraham Lincoln—received a letter from Mr. Philip Phillips, asking her to write an appropriate hymn based upon this enclosed extract from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:
“Now I saw in my dream that these two men went in at the gate; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured; and they had raiment put on them that shone like gold. There were also those that met them with harps and crowns, and gave to them; the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honor. Then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them: ' Enter ye into the joy of your Lord! ' Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold; and in them walked many men, with crowns on their heads and palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. After that, they shut up the gates, which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them.”
Obediently to Mr. Phillips' request, Mrs. Gates wrote the hymn which begins,
I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,
The far-away home of the soul;
Where no storms ever beat on the glittering strand,
While the years of eternity roll.
When Mr. Phillips received the verses he sat down, with his little boy upon his knee, and read once more those closing scenes in Bunyan's immortal story; then he turned to his organ and wrote for the hymn the tune which appears under his name in Sacred Songs and Solos, No. 114. Mr. Phillips says that the hymn seems to have been specially blessed by God to the comfort of many souls. One man told him that he had joined in the singing of it at no less than one hundred and twenty funerals. "And," says Mr. Phillips, “it was sung at the funeral of my own dear boy, who had sat on my knee when I wrote the tune!
The Singer's Request
When William O. Cushing was living at Moravia, New York, in the year 1876, he received one day a letter from Mr. Sankey, the Gospel singer and evangelist, containing the request, "Send me something to help me in my Gospel work." Mr. Cushing looked upon such a demand as a direct call from God, and prayed earnestly that He would give him something to write which should be to His glory. While thus waiting upon God, a new hymn began to form itself in his mind, the outcome, says Mr. Cushing, "of many tears, many heart-conflicts and soul-yearnings, of which the world can know nothing." Thus it ran: Oh, safe to the Rock that is higher than I,
My soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly;
So sinful, so weary, Thine own would I be;
Thou Blest "Rock of Ages," I'm hiding in Thee.
The Absent Sister
In November, 1865, Miss Frances Ridley Havergal was a visitor at Shareshill Parsonage, when she received a letter from one of her nieces who was at boarding-school. The girl was very much depressed in spirit; she was feeling very tired and weary with her work, she was oppressed with loneliness and, to crown all this, the rejoicings over her brother's coming of age had just taken place and she was unable to leave school in order to be present. So she wrote to her aunt, pouring out her feelings to her, and from her letter came the suggestion for one of Miss Havergal's hymns, not very well known, but very beautiful. The first verse is as follows:
Yes He knows the way is dreary,
Knows the weakness of our frame,
Knows that hand and heart are weary;
He, "in all points," felt the same.
He is near to help and bless;
Be not weary, onward press.
The Dying Lady's Request
The poet, James Montgomery, returned home to Sheffield, on May 24, 1832, from Bristol, in which city he had been attending some religious meetings. No sooner had he entered his house than an album was put into his hand, which had been sent to him by a London lady. She had been for a long time a great admirer of Montgomery's poems and hymns, and was now on her death-bed, but could not repress her intense desire to see his handwriting in her book. Montgomery was touched by this wish of the dying woman, and inscribed in her album the hymn beginning, "I cannot call affliction sweet," which, although not widely known, has found a place in several modern hymnals. The first and last stanzas are as follows: I cannot call affliction sweet,
And yet 'twas good to bear:
Affliction brought me to Thy feet,
And I found comfort there.
Lord, grant me grace for every day,
Whate'er my state may be,
Through life, in death, with truth to say.
“My God is all to me!”
The Larger Room
The Rev. John Newton, in 1764, became curate-in-charge of Olney in Buckinghamshire. Formerly an atheist and at one time captain of a slave-ship, he became converted to God, and was eventually ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln.
At Olney he did a wonderful work for God, and during each week he held regularly no less than four meetings for prayer, two on Sunday (at 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.) and two on Tuesday (at 5 a.m. and at night). This latter, on Tuesday evening, was the largest of all his weekly gatherings, and eventually it outgrew the place of meeting.
In April, 1769, Mr. Newton, writing to a friend, says: "We are going to remove our prayer meeting to the great room in the Great House. It is a noble place, with a parlor behind it, and holds one hundred and thirty people conveniently. Pray for us, that the Lord may be in the midst of us there, and that as He has now given us a Rehoboth (with reference to Gen. 26:2222And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. (Genesis 26:22)), and has made room for us, so He may be pleased to add to our numbers, and make us fruitful in the land.”
One of Newton's little devices for keeping up his people's interest in their prayer meeting was the provision of a new hymn every Tuesday evening, which he often used as a text for his address; these were sometimes written by himself, and sometimes by his friend, the poet Cowper, then a resident at Olney. For this momentous occasion of the removal to the larger room, two special hymns were written; one was by Newton himself, beginning, "O Lord, our languid souls inspire," but which we know best in its modern form, which begins "Great Shepherd of Thy people, hear"; the other hymn, by Cowper, was the well-known "Jesus, where'er Thy people meet." When these circumstances are known, the words of several lines in both hymns are seen to have special reference to the occasion. In Newton's hymn we have the lines,
As Thou hast given a place for prayer,
So give us hearts to pray;
and again,
Within these walls let holy peace,
And love, and concord dwell.
Cowper's hymn has a clear reference to the change from the old place of gathering to the new in the lines,
Dear Shepherd of Thy chosen few,
Thy former mercies here renew;
while one of his stanzas has two of its lines so limited in its reference to the special circumstances as to cause its omission from the hymn as we know it, viz.:
Come Thou and fill this wider space,
And bless us with a large increase.