Logos Alethias

If you’re going to update an old hymn, this is the way to do it. What a beatiful presentation of an outstanding hymn.

This is beautiful.

Today is the 200th anniversary of John Newton’s death.

• John Newton wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
• He counseled William Wilberforce to stay in politics to fight the slave trade.
• He never gave up on the suicidal William Cowper who gave us “There Is A Fountain Filled with Blood” and “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” and “O For a Closer Walk with God.” He partnered with Cowper in writing a collection of Olney Hymns for their people. Cowper could not carry it through. Of the 300 hymns we have today 233 are from Newton.
• When Henry Martyn came to him for counsel before entering on his mission to Persia (and dying there at age 31) he asked Newton about the opposition he was likely to meet with. Newton answered that “he supposed Satan would not love me for what I was about to do.”
• He was a tender pastor and friend to those who knew him.

Newton was the captain of a slave trading ship before he became a pastor. To the end of his life he was still marveling that he was saved and called to preach the gospel of grace. From his last will and testament we read:

I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer, and an infidel, and delivered me from the state of misery on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me; and who has been pleased to admit me (though most unworthy) to preach his glorious gospel. (Cited in The Roots of Endurance, pg 45)

Charles Wesley

Charles Wesley wrote more than 6,500 hymns and is the author of one of our most famous Christmas carols, “Hark the Herald, Angels Sing.” Wesley wrote this carol when there was a great need for Christmas carols in England. In 1627 The English Puritan parliament had abolished Christmas and the hymns that pertained to that “worldly festival.” The church was left with a void of Christmas hymns and Wesley wrote this hymn in 1738. This hymn not only helps us to sing the praises of Jesus birth but also teaches Biblical doctrine. Can you see the truths of Scripture in the stanzas of the hymn? The virgin birth, Christ’s deity, the immortality of the soul, the new birth, and Christ-like living are all presented in this hymn, “Hark the Herald, Angels Sing.”

Hark the herald, angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild – God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations, rise, Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim, “Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

Christ, by highest heav’n adored, Christ, the everlasting Lord;
Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a Virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail t’incarnate Deity!
Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.

Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Son of Righteousness;
Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come! Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conq’ring seed, Bruise in us the serpent’s head,
Adam’s likeness now efface, Stamp Thine image in its place,
Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in Thy love.

Hark! the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!”

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing has been for many years the recessional hymn of the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing was also sung at the end of the animated Christmas special, A Charlie Brown Christmas by the entire Peanuts gang, and all three verses were included at the end of the book version.

Read an outstanding study of the theology in this cherished Christmas carol.

Rev. Samuel Stone

Reverend Samuel John Stone was concerned about people saying the Apostles Creed in a perfunctory manner, saying the words without a clear understanding of what they were saying.

He wrote a series of 12 hymns, each explaining a section of the creed and defending the fact of the inspiration of Scripture, which was at the time under attack by an Anglican bishop in Natal, South Africa.

“The Church’s One Foundation” explains the ninth article – “I believe in the Holy Catholic (Universal) church, the communion of the saints.”

I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not overcome it.
—Matthew 16:18

This hymn sings both of the importance of the church and of the church’s permanence.

Responding to the attack on the inspiration of scripture, Rev. Stone penned one stanza of the original 10 with these words:

The church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
to guide, sustain and cherish,
is with her to the end;
Though there be those that hate her
and false sons in her pale,
against a foe or traitor
she ever shall prevail.”

Not technically a hymn story, this short biography deals with Augustus Toplady, author of the beloved hymn “Rock of Ages.” Toplady also authored the hymn “A Debtor to Mercy Alone,” which has become an OFRBC favorite. Hat tip to Dave Croteau for this biography, found in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia

Augustus Mantague Toplady

Augustus Montague Toplady

Augustus Montague Toplady (November 4, 1740 – August 11, 1778), was an Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer. He was a major Calvinist opponent of John Wesley. Today, he is best remembered as the author of the hymn “Rock of Ages”. Three of his other hymns – “A Debtor to Mercy Alone”, “Deathless Principle, Arise”, and “Object of My First Desire” – are still occasionally sung today, though all three are far less popular than “Rock of Ages”.

Background and early life, 1740-55

Augustus Toplady was born at Farnham, Surrey in November 1740.

His father, Richard Toplady, was probably from Enniscorthy, County Wexford in Ireland. Richard Toplady became a commissioned officer in the Royal Marines in 1739; by the time of his death, he had reached the rank of major. In May 1741, shortly after Augustus’ birth, Richard participated in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias, the most significant battle of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, during the course of which he died, most likely of yellow fever], leaving Augustus’ mother to raise the boy alone.

Augustus’ mother, Catherine, was the daughter of Richard Bate, who was the incumbent of Chilham from 1711 until his death in 1736. Catherine and her son moved from Farnham to Westminster, and, from 1750 to 1755, Augustus attended the Westminster School.

Years at Trinity College, Dublin, 1755-60

In 1755, Catherine and Augustus moved to Ireland, and Augustus was enrolled in Trinity College, Dublin.

Shortly thereafter, in August 1756, the 15-year-old Toplady attended a sermon preached by James Morris, a follower of John Wesley, in a barn in Codymain, co. Wexford. He would remember this sermon as the time at which he received his effectual calling from God.

Having undergone his religious conversion under the preaching of a Methodist, Toplady initially followed Wesley in supporting Arminianism. In 1758, however, the 18-year-old Toplady read Thomas Manton’s seventeenth-century sermon on John 17 and Jerome Zanchius’s Confession of the Christian Religion (1562). These works convinced Toplady that Calvinism, not Arminianism, was correct.

In 1759, Toplady published his first book, Poems on Sacred Subjects.

Following his graduation from Trinity College in 1760, Toplady and his mother returned to Westminster. There, Toplady met and was influenced by several prominent Calvinist ministers, including George Whitefield, John Gill, and William Romaine.

Ecclesiastical career, 1762-78

In 1762, Edward Willes, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, ordained Toplady as an Anglican deacon, appointing him curate of Blagdon, located in the Mendip Hills of Somerset.

Toplady wrote his famous hymn “Rock of Ages” in 1763. A local tradition—discounted by most historians—holds that he wrote the hymn after seeking shelter under a large rock at Burrington Combe, a magnificent ravine close to Blagdon, during a thunderstorm.

Upon being promoted to priest in 1764, Toplady returned to London briefly, and then served as curate of Farleigh Hungerford for a little over a year (1764-65). He then returned to stay with friends in London for 1765-66.

In May 1766, he became incumbent of Harpford and Venn Ottery, two villages in Devon. In 1768, however, he learned that he had been named to this incumbency because it had been purchased for him; seeing this as simony, he chose to exchange the incumbency for the post of vicar of Broadhembury, another Devon village. He would serve as vicar of Broadhembury until his death, although he received leave to be absent from Broadhembury from 1775 on.

Toplady never married, though he did have relationships with two women. The first was Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, the founder of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, a Calvinist Methodist series of congregations. Toplady first met Huntingdon in 1763, and preached in her chapels several times in 1775 during his absence from Broadhembury. The second was Catharine Macaulay, whom he first met in 1773, and with whom he spent a large amount of time in the years 1773-77

Toplady as Calvinist controversialist, 1769-78

Toplady’s first salvo into the world of religious controversy came in 1769 when he wrote a book in response to a situation at the University of Oxford. Six evangelical students had been expelled from St Edmund Hall because of their evangelical views. Thomas Nowell, Oxford’s professor of modern history, criticized these students for holding views inconsistent with the views of the Church of England. Toplady attacked Nowell’s position with his book The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism, which argued that Calvinism, not Arminianism, was the position historically held by the Church of England.

1769 also saw Toplady publish his translation of Zanchius’ Confession of the Christian Religion (1562), one of the works which had convinced Toplady to become a Calvinist in 1758. Toplady entitled his translation The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Stated and Asserted. This work drew a vehement response from John Wesley, thus initiating a protracted pamphlet debate between Toplady and Wesley about whether the Church of England was historically Calvinist or Arminian. This debate peaked in 1774, when Toplady published his 700-page The Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England, a massive study which traced the doctrine of predestination from the period of the early church through to the career of William Laud. The section about the Synod of Dort contained a footnote identifying five basic propositions of the Calvinist faith, arguably the first appearance in print of the summary of Calvinism known as the “five points of Calvinism”.

Toplady mainly spent his last three years in London, preaching regularly in a French Calvinist chapel, most spectacularly in 1778, when he appeared to rebut charges being made by Wesley’s followers that he had renounced Calvinism on his deathbed.

Toplady died of tuberculosis on 11 August 1778. He was buried at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General Curtis Guild, Jr., has told in The Sunday School Times how this hymn, “How Firm a Foundation,” was sung on a famous Christmas morning.

Robert E. Lee

The Seventh Army Corps was encamped on the hills above Havana, Cuba, on Christmas Eve of 1898—a beautiful tropical night. Suddenly a sentinel from the camp of the Forty-ninth Iowa called, “Number ten; twelve o’clock, and all’s well!”

A strong voice raised the chorus, and manly voices joined in until the whole regiment was singing. Then the Sixth Missouri added its voices, and the Fourth Virginia, and all the rest, ’til there, as General Guild said, on the long ridges above the great city whence Spanish tyranny once went forth to enslave the New World, a whole American army corps was singing:

‘Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed;
I, I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

The Northern soldier knew the hymn as one he had learned beside his mother’s knee. To the Southern soldier it was that and something more—it was the favorite hymn of General Robert E. Lee, and was sung at that great commander’s funeral.

Protestant and Catholic, South and North, singing together on Christmas day in the morning—that’s an American army!

—Amos Wells

How Firm a Foundation

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can He say than to you he hath said,
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand.
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotennt hand.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply:
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose
I will not, I will not desrt to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake!

Turning to the young Robert Robinson, a bleary-eyed gypsy fortune-teller pointed a quivering finger and said, “And you, young man, you will live to see your children and your grandchildren.”

Robert Robinson suddenly paled and said, “You’re right. She’s too drunk to know what she’s saying. Leave her alone. Let’s go.”

Robert Robinson

But her words haunted him the rest of the day. “If I’m going to live to see my children and grandchildren,” he thought, “I’ll have to change my way of living.”

That very night, half in fun and half seriously, he took his gang to an open air revival service nearby where the famous evangelist, George Whitfield, was preaching. “We’ll go down and laugh at the poor deluded Methodist,” he explained

Two years and seven months after hearing that sermon, 20-year-old Robert Robinson made his peace with God, and “found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.”

Joining the Methodists, and feeling the call to preach, the self-taught Robinson was appointed by John Wesley to the Calvinist Methodist Chapel, Norfolk, England. And there, for the celebration of Pentecost (Whitsunday), in 1858, three years after his marvelous conversion, he penned his spiritual autobiography in the words of this hymn.

—Ernest K. Emurian

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount—I’m fixed upon it—
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wand’ring from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.

One Sunday morning Elvina Hall was sitting in the choir section at her church, Monument Street Methodist Church, in Baltimore, Maryland. She wasn’t exactly bored with the sermon that Pastor George Schrick was preaching, but while he spoke about Jesus, Elvina’s mind drifted to what Jesus had done for us and realized that Jesus had truly paid the entire price for our sins. The words to our hymn “Jesus Paid It All,” were born that morning and the only thing Elvina had to write the words on was the inside cover of her hymnbook. Later, when she gave the words to her pastor she found out that the organist had just written a tune and both words and tune fit perfectly together. The hymn was published in 1879.

I hear the Savior say, “Thy strength indeed is small!
Child of weakness, watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all.”

Lord, now indeed I find Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots and melt the heart of stone.

For nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim-
I’ll wash my garments white in the blood of Calv’rys Lamb.

And when before the throne I stand in Him complete,
“Jesus died my soul to save,” my lips shall still repeat.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain-
He washed it white as snow.

Rev. Billy Graham

In January of 1936, the Southern Baptist songwriter B. B. McKinney was leading the music at the Alabama Sunday School Convention which was held that year in the town of Clanton.

The featured speaker was the Reverend R. S. Jones, McKinney’s friend of many years, who because of ill health had recently returned from missionary service in Brazil.

The two men were visiting over dinner one evening when Mr. Jones revealed to Dr. McKinney that his physicians would not allow him to return to South America.

When asked about his future plans the missionary said, “I don’t know, but wherever He leads I’ll go.”

The words stuck in Dr. McKinney’s mind, and before the convention’s evening session began, he had written both the words and music of this song.

At the close of Mr. Jones’ message, Dr. McKinney related this story and sang “Wherever He Leads I’ll Go” to the congregation.

—Billy Graham

“Take up thy cross and follow me,”
I heard my Master say;
“I gave My life to ransom thee,
Surrender your all today.”

He drew me closer to His side,
I sought His will to know
And in that will I now abide
Wherever He leads I’ll go.

It may be through the shadows dim
Or o’er the stormy sea
I take the cross and follow Him
Wherever He leadeth me.

My heart, my life, my all I bring
To Christ who loves me so;
He is my Master, Lord, and King
Wherever He leads I’ll go

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Wherever He leads I’ll go,
Wherever He leads I’ll go,
I’ll follow my Christ who loves me so,
Wherever He leads I’ll go.