This only can my fears control, What harm can ever reach my soul Whate'er Thy Providence denies, For Thou art good and just and wise: Whate'er Thy sacred will ordains, Thy sovereign ways are all unknown My God, my Father, be Thy name O wilt Thou seal my humble claim, 58-O THOU, FROM WHOM ALL THIS hymn was written by Thomas Haweis, who lived from 1732 to 1820. THOU, from whom all goodness flows, In all my sorrows, conflicts, woes, Good Lord, remember me. When on my aching, burdened heart My pardon speak, new peace impart; When trials sore obstruct my way, And ills I cannot flee, Lord, let my strength be as my day; When worn with pain, disease, and grief, Grant patience, rest, and kind relief, If on my face, for Thy dear name, When, in the solemn hour of death, Saviour, with my last parting breath I'll cry, Remember me. When Henry Martyn, one of the earliest and most saintly of the Protestant missionaries, was labouring in Persia, he found much consolation by repeating in his tent, amid the revilings of his persecutors: If on my face, for Thy dear name All hail reproach, and welcome shame, The Rev. C. H. E. White mentions, as an incident in his own experience, that "O Thou, from whom all goodness flows was the means of the conversion of a young guardsman, who was executed for murder. His last word on the scaffold was the burden of the hymn, "Oh Lord, remember me." The rector says: "The hymn, always a favourite with me, is now very specially written on my heart, and it is a hymn which has helped me not a little." 59 THE EMPEROR FREDERICK'S HYMN. WHEN the Emperor Frederick lay dying of the cancer which made his brief reign but one long agony, he was Isaid to have derived much help and comfort in the gloom by the following simple hymn, written by a lad of twelve, named Ernst von Willich. The boy was an invalid, and, like many others greater than he, had learnt in suffering what he taught in song. The hymn has been Englished as follows: F the Lord me sorrow send, IF Let me bear it patiently; Lifting up my heart in prayer, Though the heart is often weak, So I pray, Oh Lord, my God, TUNE" DIx." WHEN the Sunday at Home took the plebiscite of 3,500 of its readers as to which were the best hymns in the language, the "Rock of Ages" stood at the top of the tree, having no fewer than 3,215 votes. Only three other hymns had more than 3,000 votes. They were, "Abide with me," 'Jesu, Lover of my soul," and "Just as I am." 66 OCK of Ages, cleft for me, R° Let me hide myself in Thee! Let the water and the blood, From Thy riven side which flowed, Nothing in my hand I bring; While I draw this fleeting breath When my eye-strings break in death— See Thee on Thy judgment throne - Let me hide myself in Thee! Tune—“Redhead, No. 76." Toplady, a Calvinist vicar of a Devonshire parish, little dreamed that he was composing the most popular hymn in the language when he wrote what he called "A living and dying prayer for the holiest believer in the world." For Toplady was a sad polemist, whose orthodox soul was outraged by the Arminianism of the Wesleys. He and they indulged in much disputation of the brickbat and Billingsgate order, as was the fashion in those days. Toplady put much of his time and energy into the composition of controversial pamphlets, on which the good man prided himself not a little. The dust lies thick upon these his works, nor is it likely to be disturbed now or in the future. But in a pause in the fray, just by way of filling up an interval in the firing of polemical broadsides, Augustus Montague Toplady thought he saw a way of launching an airy dart at a joint in Wesley's armour, on the subject of Sanctification. So without much ado, and without any knowledge that it was by this alone he was to render permanent service to mankind, he sent off to the Gospel Magazine of 1776 the hymn "Rock of Ages."1 When it appeared, he had, no doubt, considerable complacency in reflecting how he had winged his opponent for his insolent doctrine of entire sanctification, and it is probable that before he died, for he only survived its publication by two years, dying when but thirty-eight, he had still no conception of the relative importance of his own work. But to-day the world knows Toplady only as the writer of these four verses. All else that he laboured over it has forgotten, and indeed does well to forget. It was this hymn which the Prince Consort asked for as he came near to death. Mr. Gladstone has trans 1 On the appearance of the first edition of this work a ministerial correspondent who has given considerable attention to the subject of hymnology wrote to say that this story of the hymn "Rock of Ages" was rather misleading. "Toplady," he said, "was editor of the Gospel Magazine at the time, and the hymn was the pendant to a curious theological article." |