SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 3 November 1934, Page 14 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By the Rev.

J. D. McL. WILSON

and much confusion of metaphor, but because, as Prof. Saintsbury pointed out, every word and every syllable is charged with profound meaning, it has been loved, cherished and used everywhere. The hymn is truly a beautiful prayer. It has touched the heart of humanity, because it treats of man’s deepest necessities. Here are the age-long problems of man’s insufficiency at death and in the dark and most terrible crises of existence, and in his consciousness of sin and culpable falling short before God. Here also is the heart of the Gospel, a further revelation of the redeeming and saving grace of God. In the first verse of the hymn is an earnest petition that our guilt before God might be pardoned and that power might come into our lives through the Holy Spirit. The utter futility of effecting this of ourselves is indicated in verse two. Verse three sees man humbly and completely prostrate before God; naked, unclean, impotent and undone, with heart-cry breaking from his lips, “wash me Saviour, or I die.” In verse four death’s shadows close around; the portals of unknown worlds open; the judgment throne appears; and the prayer of the first lines is repeated— Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee. Time would fail to tell of the innumerable authentic stories concerning those to whom this hymn was as the voice of God and the very door of salvation. We can think of battlefields where this song was sung with dying breath; of ships ’whelmed by fire and tempest, where during the singing of the hymn the doors of eternity swung widely open and in a radiance of ’ glory His saints 7 passed thither. We can think upon young men and women to whom this hymn was the first invitation to Christ and Christian discipleship, and of martyrs who with tremulous voice breathed those holy words at their last. We can think of sick beds cheered and lightened with heavenly brightness, and funerals like that of Gladstone where the music swelling to triumphant melody made the singers to feel they ha<f been caught up to the seventh heaven. We think now of a Chinese woman striving for years to “make merit” for herself, so that she might escape painful transmigrations in the world to come. With her poor weak hands, she dug down full 20 feet into the hard earth to make a well, which would be for her a well of salvation. Then she heard for the first time — Not the labour of my hands Coukl fulfil.the law’s demands; Could my'Zeal no respite know, Could my tears for ever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save and Thou alone. A missionary wrote: “To see her now, a woman of 80, stretching out her aged and crippled fingers and singing, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling,” would move the heart of the most hardened and indifferent.” We can think of a student of one of the universities accepting service during the long vacation in a railway construction Camp, where he lived as the men themselves. On the first Sunday after the mid-day meal he asked if they would roll up to a service that night. They did. The tent was crowded. After a short talk he asked if any of them remembered their mother’s favourite hymn. He was at once answered by one who said his mother liked best “Rock of Ages.” It was sung, and sung again and again. Indeed they could scarcely be got to leave off singing and go home. From many a bunk that night, he afterwards learned, there went up a fervent prayer to heaven, asking, “Rock of Ages Cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.” The hymn was translated into Turkish, and Dr. Pomeroy told how he had heard it sung by a weeping congregation of hundreds of Armenians, many of whom were afterwards massacred. We recall that when Toplady himself was dying his death-bed was jubilant. “I enjoy heaven already in my soul,” he said. “My prayers are all converted into praises.” It is on record that the Prince Consort found much comfort in this hymn. Again and again he repeated it, saying, “If in this hour I had only my worldly honours and dignities to depend upon I should be miserable indeed.” Though Toplady wrote several score of hymns (133) none touches us'so intimately as this one, for its experiences we must all pass through. May it be in life and death our true prayer; and so shall comfort and peace come to our heart, and radiant hope be, for the life to come. ■ Long did I toil and knew no earthly rest, Far did I rove and found no certain home, At last I sought them in His sheltering breast— Who opens His arms, and bids the weary come! With Him I found a home, a rest divine, And I since then am His, and He is mine.

“ROCK OF AGES”

INFLUENCE OF GREAT HYMN. THE STORY OF ITS ORIGIN. I should like to call up before you an English lad of between 16 and 17 years of age, travelling with his widowed mother in Ireland. One evening, in the little village of Codymain, he heard singing in a banr. He looked in, and found a few humble country people gathered together for worship. The hymn ended, a roughlooking, uneducated man stood up to speak. His text was , “Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” (Eph. -2-13.) The lad listened; his heart was touched, and he gave himself to God. Writing some time afterwards he said: Strange that I who had sat so long under the ■means in England should be brought right unto God in an obscure part of Ireland, midst a handful of people met together in a barn, and by the ministry of one who could scarcely spell his owii name. Surely it was the Lord s doing; and is marvellous.”

Little is known of this young man in the immediately succeeding years. His letters and diary, however, reveal an active and eager spiritual life; and we know that after completing his education at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin, he at the age of 22 was ordained to the ministry of the, Church of England. He had two parishes—one in Devonshire, and the other in Somersetshire. It was at this latter place that, there occurred the incident said to have given rise to the hymn which is the subject of our consideration now. When walking through Burrington Coombe, a rocky glen some miles from his home in Glagdon, he was caught in a violent thunderstorm. Taking shelter in a cavity between two shafts of limestone in a great rock beside the road, his mind turned to serious things. Texts from Holy Writ rose before him—“ln the Lord Jehovah is the Rock of Ages”; “I will put thee in a cleft of the rock”; “That rock was Christ”; and there formed in his mind ' those verses which as Dr. Julian says “have laid a firmer hold on the English speaking world than any other hymn that can be named.” At once he wrote them down upon a playing card, which he found lying at his feet— Rock of Ages, cleft for me Let me hide myself in Thee, And so on through the incomparable measure. We might add that the hymn is still sung as it was first written, except for two minor alterations in a word and in a line.

The author of the hymn was Augustus Montague Toplady, and he died of consumption at the early age of 38. For the three years prior to his demise he was minister of the chapel of the French Calvinists in Leicester-Fields, London (now the Orange St. Congregational Church, Leicester Square). This was a historic church with association not only of the Hugenots, but of Sir Isaac Newton and his. brilliant scientific circle, and with Fanny Burney and her literary circle, which included Samuel Johnson. Here he was a fervent and powerful preacher and attracted immense crowds. About this time he was engaged in ths sternest of polemical controversies with the Wesleys, and, it was in connection with this that the immortal hymn was first published. In the March number ' (1776) of Ths Gospel Magazine, which Toplady was then editing, there appeared a curious article by him on the national debt. Using that as a text he went on to show how impossible it was that our debt to God could ever be discharged by us. The sins committed every day, every hour, and every minute, and all through the years, made so vast a sum that noone could forgive or cancel it, save' Almighty God Himself in and through Jesus Christ.

The article was definitely aimed at the Wesleys’ doctrine of perfection and,, to point the arrow of debate more sharply and to make the argument final and conclusive, he appended the words of the hymn, “Rock of Ages.” Over it he used what seems to us a somewhat ironic title, “A living and dying prayer for the holiest believer in all the world.” It is strange how often in life we do better than we think and plan. These Calvinist polemics upon which Toplady prided himself are long since forgotten; the hymn, however, of which at the time he thought little, has lived on to cheer a million hearts. Would that all contravenes issued in so happy and blessed a fashion.

Through various translations the hymi) has become a posession of Christendom! It is one of the most popular in the worlds. It is sung by the most diverse of creeds; men of every ecclesiastical type have praised it. Actually it is of slight literary merit, containing bad ryhmes