Charles Wesley — Michael Haykin

Well, tonight we want to think about Charles Wesley, and you should have a sheet that was passed out which will provide you with three of his hymns, three of roughly 6 ,000 hymns, so it's a very, very minuscule percentage that you have available to you there, but we want to note and quote some other aspects of some of his hymns.

Notice the title of the lectures tonight, it's not actually words of Charles, but words of his brother John, sing lustfully and with good courage, and these lines come from a series of directions that John Wesley gave to those who were singing his brother's hymns, his own hymns and other hymns of the church, and this comes from the fourth direction where John Wesley said that Christians, as they sang, should sing lustfully and with good courage, beware of singing as if you were half dead or half asleep, lift up your voice with strength, and that little introduction gives you some idea of the importance that John Wesley and also Charles Wesley placed on singing.

It was John Wesley's heir apparent, the man whom he hoped would succeed him as the leader of the Methodist movement, a man named John Fletcher, who did not succeed John Wesley because he predeceased him, but it was John Fletcher who said once that next to the Bible, one of the greatest blessings that God had given to the Methodists is their hymns.

Or, J. I. Packer, talking about Charles Wesley as a hymn writer, can describe him this way, he is the supreme poet of love to Jesus in a revival context. He is the supreme poet of love to Jesus in a revival context, and when we come to the conclusion of the second lecture, I want to come back to that quote because I want to quote as an appropriate conclusion two stanzas from one of Wesley's hymns that brings this out very clearly.

Now before I look at Wesley's life, and that's what I want to look at first, and his ministry, and then I want to turn our attention to his hymns, looking at some characteristics of his hymns, three in particular, and then looking at two hymns in detail, over a thousand tongues to sing, and can it be that I should gain.

Before I do any of that, I want to preface all of my remarks with a brief, brief excursion into the history of hymn writing, and it is brief. I'm sure you're aware that the scriptures, the New Testament here is what I'm thinking of, encourage believers to sing hymns.

One has only to think of a passage like Ephesians 5, where in verse 18, the Apostle Paul says, Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And there is a clear differentiation made there, a clear distinction made between psalms, that body of literature we call the book of psalms in the Old Testament, which were sung, the sung worship of the old covenant people, and our Lord Jesus, as he worshipped in the synagogues, would have used that songbook, if you want to describe it that way.

But there's a clear distinction made in that verse between psalms and hymns. And scholars, as they've probed this, have come to the conviction that in the New Testament church, there was the creation of what we would describe today as hymns.

In fact, some scholars believe that they can actually see embedded in some New Testament letters, early hymns, for instance, Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, where it talks about, have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus, who did not think it a robbery to be equal to God or something to be seized, but humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death ultimately.

And some scholars have argued that that actually is an early Christian hymn that the Apostle Paul is quoting. But be that as it may, whether or not we can actually find in the New Testament early hymns, certainly as you move outside of the New Testament, you find hymns being written.

There was a book called the Psalms of, or the Odes rather, of Solomon, the Songs of Solomon, an early Christian hymn book, written around the year 180, 190, and it has only come to light in probably the past hundred years.

But an early hymn book, as you move into the fourth century, you find a man like Ambrose of Milan, the man for whom Augustine was converted, or at least played an instrumental role in Augustine's conversion.

Ambrose writing hymns, Augustine talking about the way in which hymns could move him deeply, and some of his trouble regarding that, he wrestled with that, whether it was the music that moved him, or the lyrics.

If the music, he had problems with it, and he goes at some great length discussing this. And then as you come into the Middle Ages, you come into a period of, in some respects, a period of great hymn writing, Bernard of Clairvaux, and we still sing some of his hymns in translation, but there are hymns written in the Middle Ages.

And then in the Reformation, we have a man like Martin Luther, whose great hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, is probably one of the few that have come down to us from that period. But in the English-speaking world, after the Reformation, and I've been moving fast, obviously, in the English-speaking world, after the Reformation, most denominational bodies sang only psalms in worship.

They did not sing hymns. And there were various arguments made in this regard. One of the most common was that the psalms were the inspired songbook for God's people. It would be wrong to sing any other hymns, any other songs, because they were of human composition.

If you think that through rigorously, it would mean that you wouldn't, that preaching also will be ruled out of court. All you would do is read the scriptures, which are inspired, and because preaching is of human composition, it too would be ruled out of court.

But nonetheless, most denominational bodies in the 1500s, after the Reformation, and all through the 1600s, sang nothing but the psalms. This was especially the case in the Anglican Church, and it was also the case among Presbyterians and Corrungationalists in England.

And the Quakers went even one bit further, and they rejected hymn singing altogether. They didn't sing anything, not even the psalms, not the hymns at all. Now it was among the Baptists that hymn singing is recovered.

Of course, as we come into the 18th century, the two greatest hymn writers are not, neither of them are Baptists, Isaac Watts, a Corrungationalist, and Charles Wesley, an Anglican. But it's the Baptists in the 1670s who begin to write hymns for worship.

And there are a number of names that one could mention, but let me mention the name Benjamin Keach, K-E-A-C-H, who died in 1704. He had been experimenting with writing hymns as early as the 1670s, and occasionally introduced them at the end of a service, allowing the people who didn't want to listen or sing to him to leave before the hymn was sung.

He was wise. He knew that there were those in the congregation who felt that what he was doing was wrong, not biblical, and had no biblical foundation. Finally, in the 1690s, he had gotten to the point that he felt that the hymn singing should be a regular part of every worship service, and so he asked the congregation to vote on the issue.

The majority of the congregation approved that at the end of each service there would be sung a hymn. Some did not. And there was somewhat of an acerbic or acidic split, and a number of those who went out over this issue were led by—among those who went out was a man named Isaac Marlow.

And Marlow wrote a number of books against this former pastor, attacking the custom of singing hymns in worship. Keech himself wrote a book, probably a very important book, because it will pave the way for Isaac Watts, and Benjamin Keech's book is called The Bleach Repaired in God's Worship.

The Bleach Repaired in God's Worship, in which he defended the singing of hymns and did so on the basis of the very passage we read earlier, Ephesians 5, 18 through 21, as well as others like James 5, 13, which talks about singing a hymn.

Now but it's—Isaac Watts, who is remembered as the father of English hymnody, and not Benjamin Keech—Benjamin Keech provides the argument for the support of hymn singing. He also tried to write some hymns.

C. H. Spurgeon, many years later, had a very negative view of them. He described them as mere doggerel, or mere rubbish. And intimated that Keech might have won his entire congregation over to the practice of hymn singing if some of the hymns they'd had to sing hadn't been so bad, because he had composed them himself.

But a recent scholar who's examined some of Keech's hymns says that's going probably a bit too far. It's being a bit extreme and a bit hard on poor Keech. And has argued that some of Keech's hymns are okay.

They're not great. They're not worthy of remembrance by congregations. But they're not as bad as Spurgeon emphasized. What is important about Keech is he paves the way for the recognition that hymn singing among English-speaking congregations should be a part of worship once again.

But it's Isaac Watts who is the father, and rightly so called, the father of English hymnody or the English hymn. Watts, born in 1674, he would die in 1748. There are two great hymn writers in the 18th century, Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley.

The story goes that Watts, as a young man in his late teens, early 20s, was on one occasion returning with his father for worship in the local congregational church to which his father belonged as a deacon.

And Watts complained about the poverty of their worship. The fact that as they sang the psalms, here they were a New Covenant people, but they could not name the head of the New Covenant, the institute of the New Covenant, by name, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, in their sung worship.

There were psalms, as you well know, that are messianic in intent. They speak about the Lord Jesus Christ, but they do so in veiled terms. One thinks of Psalm 2 or Psalm 110, both psalms that figure prominently in the New Testament as being interpreted as having reference to the Messiah, who we know as the Lord Jesus, but his name is not mentioned in either of those psalms.

And so, Watts complaining then to his father. Here they were, a Christian congregation, singing worship to God, but they could not name the Lord Jesus explicitly in their worship. And he complained of the poverty of their worship, therefore, to his father.

His father's response, apparently, was, well, young Isaac, if you can do better, why don't you go ahead and try? Well, the rest is history, because Isaac did do a lot better. And he basically composed two hymnals.

The first hymnal appears in 1707, called Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Charles Wesley could not have done any of what he did if this book and Watts' pioneering work had not gone before. And a number of very powerful hymns in that hymnal are still sung today.

And the second hymnal that Watts produced appeared in 1719. And that was a hymnal that was primarily a paraphrase of the psalms. Watts wanted Christian congregations not to completely forget the psalms, he wanted them to sing hymns, but also remember that God had provided the psalms in the Old Testament to be sung.

And so in 1719, he produced a paraphrase of the psalms. And probably the most famous of those would be the one based on Psalm 72, Jesus Shall Reign, or O God, Our Help in Ages Past, based on Psalm 90.

But the other great hymn writer of the 18th century is the one that we want to think about in more detail tonight, and that is Charles Wesley. That's the background to the whole issue of hymn singing.

It makes you realize that in the 18th century, hymn singing was a controversial thing. It could even be regarded as revolutionary. It certainly wouldn't be regarded that way today. And Christian congregations split up the issue.

I don't know how many minute books I've read of Baptist congregations where at the beginning of the minute book it will affirm a statement of faith, and among the articles of the statement of faith will be, we believe in hymn singing, or we do not believe in hymn singing.

And this was a very explosive issue in the period. Well, Charles Wesley. I want to look first at something of his temperament, and then we'll move into looking at his life, and we'll see how far we go before we stop and we may be able to look at some of the characteristics of his hymns in this first hour.

Charles was the 18th child of Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna. Both of them had Puritan roots. On Samuel's side, Samuel was a Church of England minister, Anglican minister, but his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather had been Puritan ministers.

And both Samuel Wesley's father and grandfather had actually been expelled for their Puritan convictions from the Church of England in 1662. Samuel Wesley as a teenager, though, rejoined the Church of England, and almost to kind of indicate his break with his past, he changed his name subtly.

He dropped a T that was found in the name between the S and the L. His father's name and his grandfather's name was Wesley, W-E-S-T-L-Y, or L-E-Y, rather, and he, or L-Y, sorry, and he dropped the T and made it simply Wesley.

It could well have been the fact that the T was dropped in pronunciation. Anyway, that may very well be possible. Now it's important to remember the Puritan roots of the Wesley brothers. Both of them will be raised Anglican, committed Anglicans.

Charles much more than John, but their roots are Puritan. On the mother's side, Susanna, there are also Puritan roots. Her father, Samuel Ainslie, was a great Presbyterian leader. He also had been expelled from the Church of England in 1662 when there was a great exodus of Puritan leaders from the Church of England.

About 2 ,000 ministers left on August the 24th, 1662, when a law known as the Act of Uniformity became law and binding, which required every minister who conducted a service of worship to use nothing but the Book of Common Prayer and to adhere to it rigorously, to use all of its prayers and the orders of service found in it.

So a number of Puritan ministers, a third, roughly, of the Church of England ministers left and among them were both Charles Wesley's paternal grandfather, his paternal great-grandfather and his maternal grandfather.

But both of his parents, Susanna and Samuel, rejoined the Church of England and Susanna was the youngest child of Samuel Ainslie. He had 25 children. Now he was married twice. His first wife had one child, his second had 24, and Susanna was the baby.

And what a shock for the father when around the age of 12 or 13 she informed him that she was leaving his denominational body, Presbyterianism, and rejoining the Church of England. It spent his life suffering for convictions that led him outside of the Church of England and here his youngest daughter rejoined the Church of England.

And so it was that Susanna in later life married Samuel Ainslie. The marriage was not the happiest of marriages. It was not a good marriage in many respects. And much of the blame falls on Samuel. He was not the best of fathers and we won't go into that in any detail.

There are a number of lives of the Wesleys written today which will spell some of that out. Susanna though was an ideal mother in many respects, homeschooled all of the children. Eventually out of the 19 children she bore, 9 reached adulthood.

Those figures are not untypical. Charles and his wife Sally will have 8 children. They will bury 5 before the age of 2. Of the 9 children she bore, 3 sons, 6 daughters, she homeschooled them all in their early years and that meant setting apart time all through the week for each of them where she would instruct them in various things including the Christian faith.

Charles was a shy and retiring man. In later years after his conversion he will be a preacher and find himself placed by God before thousands often. One thing for instance of the time in which he was preaching in London before a crowd in a place called Moorfields where they used to hold fairs and a great impact made on that crowd but Charles was very in great inner turmoil afterwards that he couldn't continue preaching to such large crowds and wrote a letter to George Whitfield and said I'm continually tempted to leave off preaching and hide myself.

Do not reckon on me my brother in the work God is doing. I cannot expect God to long employ one who is ever longing and murmuring to be discharged. But God did not discharge him, at least not at that point.

I suspect that when he wrote this hymn I'm going to read now, A Charge to Keep I Have, Charles Wesley was thinking of his struggle with his own temperament. He wrestled with the fact that God required him to be often in public ministry in this way.

And here is a hymn that he wrote which I think brings home very clearly Charles Wesley's victory over his own temperament. We're all born with temperaments. Some of us have areas of, well all of us have areas of struggle with our temperaments and we can't do anything about them often but God does give grace to wrestle with them and have victory.

Here is Wesley's hymn, A Charge to Keep I Have, A Charge to Keep I Have, A God to Glorify, A Never Dying Soul to Save and to Fittest for the Sky, To Serve the Present Age My Calling to Fulfill, O May it All My Powers Engage to Do My Master's Will, Arm Me with Jealous Care as in Thy Sight to Live and O Thy Servant Lord, Prepare a Strict Account to Give, Help Me to Watch and Pray and on Thyself Rely, Assured if I My Trust Betray, I Shall Forever Die.

And I suspect that Charles Wesley is thinking about his own temperament when he wrote that hymn and the struggle he had being a public figure but also the victory God gave him. Some other aspects of Charles' temperament need to be noticed.

John Wesley characterized himself as a man full of business. He was a very busy man, a man who regarded his earnestness as a major virtue. Methodist tradition has remembered the older Wesley, John Wesley was four years older than his brother.

He was born in 1703. Charles was born in 1707. Methodist tradition has remembered John as a man of Herculean strength, a man who accomplished incredible things for God, an ardent evangelist. Charles, maybe fitting his more shyer temperament, maybe also fitting his more poetic temperament, was a very different sort of man in many, many respects.

One can never think, in fact I'm sure it never happened, of John stopping to look at a sunset and writing a poem about it. But Charles did. He wrote a poem called Written at Land's End, describing a journey he was once on, preaching in Cornwall and having to go to the end of the Cornish Peninsula, which juts out into the Atlantic, and watching the sun come down, and writing a poem after it.

That's not John. Samuel Johnson, the great man of letters, on one occasion had John Wesley for dinner. It frustrated him to no end, because after dinner, as soon as Wesley had done his business and said what he wanted to say to Samuel, he was up and gone.

Samuel noted in his diary that along the following lines, it was a frustrating experience. I'm a man who after dinner likes to stretch and fold his legs and have a good chat. But Wesley was up and about his business.

But nonetheless, despite the difference in temperament, and there was a strong difference in temperament, John was a much stronger figure outwardly, more dominant outwardly. Despite that, they had a partnership.

In fact, they called it their partnership. And that ministry yielded rich dividends, which still is bearing fruit down to this day. One thinks of the twists and turns of history, and I want to mention this one final story before we move into looking at his life in some detail.

One thinks of the twists of history. When he was a young boy, he was offered the opportunity to leave his father's home, his rectory, and to go and be the adopted heir and son of a cousin in Ireland, a man named Gareth Wesley.

And Charles Shire, needing the love and friendship of his father, was taken, and the friendship of his family and those around him declined. Another cousin went, a man named Richard Colley. And Richard Colley became, therefore, Richard Colley Wesley.

He was the grandfather of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. And one wonders if Charles Wesley had gone, and become that heir, how history would have been changed. Very interesting when you probe these sorts of things.

As it was, Charles stayed at home, was raised in a rectory of his father, Epworth Rectory in Lincolnshire, and he left also a much greater record of victory, more permanent than any empire than the Duke of Wellington might have left after the conquest of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Well, that's his temperament, and you need to see that as his background. And now we want to look, then, at his life. He was born in 1707. He was born a couple of months premature. His early days were spent wrapped in wool, laid by the fire to keep him warm.

Apparently, neither opened his eyes for a couple of months, nor raised his voice. And he would raise his voice, though, and it would not stop after 1738, his conversion. His early years were spent certainly being, as we've noted, being homeschooled by Susanna.

His father was a presence in the house, but a somewhat troublesome presence. Caused problems for the brothers, not so much Charles, but for his two brothers, John and Samuel. Caused immense problems for at least two of the sisters.

In the 1720s, 1726 to be exact, when Charles was 19, he went up to Oxford. You go up to Oxford in Cambridge, that's the language you use, and then you come down. I don't know why that is. Oxford and Cambridge are on the flat, they're not hilly.

But he went up to Oxford to study in 1726. His first year was like many undergraduates. He was intent on simply having a good time. And then a change appears in him in 1727, and he starts a group called the Holy Club.

We mentioned this two weeks ago when we looked at George Whitefield. And now George Whitefield would become a member of that Holy Club. A group of about a dozen men intent on winning heaven through their own holiness, their own strength, their own righteousness.

Men would gather together on a weekly basis to study the scriptures, to receive the Lord's table together, to pray together, to read Christian classics together, and then to go out to share their faith in prisons especially and in hospitals.

Sharing it with those who were sick and those who were condemned criminals. But what is important to note is none of them were converted individuals. None of them had anything that we would describe as a biblical faith.

It was rather a faith in their own righteousness, the idea that if they were good enough ultimately, then they would have heaven as their reward. But even here we see the great emphasis on discipline and being ardent in discipleship.

Nearly ten years though were to elapse before Wesley was converted on May 21, 1738, Pentecost Sunday. In the meantime he had become a Church of England minister, he had become a deacon, and then become a priest.

He had gone to America with his brother. John in 1736 had come up with a brilliant idea of going to America to be a missionary to the Indians. Charles did not want to go. John told him, you're going, and Charles went.

Charles lasted a few months. John lasted two years. John would come back and echoing I think the same sentiments that Charles would have had, I went to America to convert the Indians, but oh who will convert me?

But critical, and Charles doesn't mention this, but critical in that 1736 experience was the voyage over to America where they went on board a ship. They sailed from England in January. You don't sail the Atlantic in January.

Then as now it was a time of storm and tempest. Not surprisingly the ship nearly foundered and sank. But on board the ship were a group of Moravians, German speaking evangelicals who had known revival in their community back in the late 1720s and for whom that revival had been a means of uniting them around a common vision, a common goal of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth.

The Moravians began to send out missionaries and in fact out of a community of 6 ,000 in a space of about 20 years they sent out about 600 missionaries. About a tenth of their people went out as missionaries.

And not to easy places either. To places like Morocco and Algeria, both of them Muslim, or Sri Lanka, or South Africa, or Greenland, or what was then the American frontier, the Ohio Valley, laboring among first peoples in America.

Well among the missionaries who went out were those who were on board that ship in 1736. It was quite an experience as the ship was breaking up, it appeared at least, in the mid-January, a heavy storm battering the ship.

One event stood out at least in John's mind, John and Charles both on the ship, was on a Sunday when they were worshipping down below. A number of English passengers, John was leading them in worship, and suddenly a huge wave broke over the ship and began to pour in between the floorboards above them, the planking of the ship.

The English began to scream thinking the ship was going down to the bottom. The Germans, or the Moravians, looked up apparently, John records all of this in his diary, looked up and simply kept on singing.

John went later to talk to their leader, a man named August Spangenberg, and asked him, were you not afraid to die? He said, thank God we were not. Were not your women and children afraid to die? Reflecting the common view that men were tougher than women, 18th century patriarchalism if you want to describe it that way.

Were not your women and children afraid to die? Thank God we were not. When they got to America, August Spangenberg remended this conversation and he looked up John, and Charles would also have been a party to these questions, and he asked John, do you believe in Jesus Christ?

And John's response, he records all of this in his diary, he said, yes I believe Jesus is the saviour of the world. And then Spangenberg pressed him, but is he your saviour? I hope so, John said. And Spangenberg simply shook his head.

And John later realised, as he writes in his diary, he did not have faith, that faith that overcomes the world, he did not have saving faith. He had an intellectual conviction that he had been raised with, he had embraced the Christian worldview, but he did not have saving faith.

And the same would be true of Charles. Charles only stayed a few months, he went back to England, by 1738 he was actually quite ill, and came close to death in the early months of 1738, and was living in the home of a Moravian, a man named William Holland.

Another missionary, another Moravian missionary on his way to the New World, booked him up. In 1738 a man named Peter Berla, spelled B-O-E-H-L-E-R, or if you want to insist on the German spelling, B-O and a little umlaut, the two little dots over the O, H-L-E-R, who had been told about the Wesley brothers by Spangenberg, looked up Charles, and came to talk to him about his faith.

And Berla asked Charles, do you hope to be saved at some point in the conversation? And Charles assured him he did. And then Berla asked him, for what reasons do you hope it? And then this very telling remark, Charles said, because I've used my best endeavors to serve God.

Apparently Berla again, like Spangenberg, simply shook his head. Charles didn't say anything outwardly, but was angry, boiling inside. He later noted in his diary, what are not my endeavors a sufficient ground of hope?

Would he rob me of my endeavors? I have nothing else to trust in. But again, he was being brought to the realization that when it comes to salvation, it is not the ardency of our strength, it's not our endeavors, it's not our righteousness, it's nothing to do with our doing, but salvation is God's work.

During this period of time, the man in whose house he was staying, William Holland, gave him Martin Luther's commentary in the book of Galatians to read. And on May the 17th, four days before his conversion, Charles notes in his diary, both Charles and John were avid diary keepers, John a lot more avid than Charles.

I should mention, by the way, that John's diary, he kept two diaries. One was a record of major events and discussions and conversations and so on. The other was a record of what he did every 15 minutes of the day.

He kept that from the early 1720s until his death in the 1791. I often think of how if any biographer of John Wesley has a real job cut out for him, we know pretty well exactly what everything John was doing every 15 minutes of the day.

Charles was not that avid a diary keeper, but he also kept a diary. And he mentions reading this commentary by Luther on Galatians and he says, I spent some time in private with Luther who was greatly blessed to me.

I labored and waited and prayed to feel, and now he quotes Galatians 2 .20, who loved me and gave himself for me. Four days later, Pentecost Sunday would be the realization of that for Charles. Charles was still quite sick.

The house he was staying was this man William Holland. The sister of William Holland was a woman named Mrs. Turner. The previous evening, Mrs. Turner had a dream, quite a vivid dream, and in it God directed her, she would later recount, to go to Charles Wesley and to tell him, Arise in the name of Jesus Christ and be healed and believe.

And she did. That morning, John had visited Charles. They had had a time of prayer together. Then John had gone out for public worship. He was, remember, a priest, a minister in the Church of England.

Charles was dozing off. He was in that pathway zone between waking and sleeping and he hears this voice saying to him, In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe and thou shalt be healed of thy infirmities.

He was physically healed and he was saved. And that's the turning point in John's life. And John has more, or rather Charles' life, sorry, Charles' life. That's the turning point in Charles' life. Three days later, John was converted on May 24th.

He went to a Bible study where someone was reading, he tells us, Martin Luther's preface to the book of Galatians. It was probably William Holland. We don't know that for a fact, but it was probably William Holland.

And John says he went very unwillingly, but about a quarter before nine, notice the exact, he knew exactly the time, he says that exactly, but a quarter before nine, I felt my heart strangely warmed and I did believe that Christ had died for my sins, even mine, and had taken away the sentence of death.

Both of his brothers become itinerant preachers. John took to it readily. John was a man who was almost without fear, face down, all kinds of mobs wanting to beat him up, or who would actually have pitched battles to determine who was going to heckle him while he was preaching.

John was a fairly fearless individual. He was only about five feet tall, not a small even for that day. John, Charles was not as fearless of an individual. He was more shy, more retiring, but in the grace of God, God thrust him out into public preaching and field preaching, preaching out in the open air in front of crowds of hundreds and thousands, often getting attacked physically, because there were many in England who did not want to hear a message of the necessity of regeneration and the new birth and justification by faith.

They were convinced that they got accepted on the basis of the fact that they were good children of the Church of England. They didn't want to hear that they were not the children of God, that they needed to have an experience of the new birth and faith in Christ.

And so it was that Charles was an itinerant preacher like his brother up until 1749. In 1749 he married a woman he had met two years earlier, a woman named Sarah Gwynn, G-W-Y-N-N-E. She was the daughter of a Welsh Methodist.

Charles at the time was 42. She was 23. Charles would die in 1788. She died in 1822. So she outlived him nearly 40 years. She died at the age of 96. She was a gifted singer, an accomplished harpsichordist, which would fit very well with Charles's musical abilities and his gift of hymn writing.

In many respects an ideal marriage. I don't want to compare overly the marriage of Charles with that of John. Charles John's marriage was a disaster and maybe that's putting it lightly. I'm not sure how else you could describe his marriage.

He nearly married twice before he did marry the woman he did marry. On one of those occasions Charles intervened and felt that John was marrying below his station and therefore arranged for the woman to marry one of their mutual friends.

It's bizarre, some of the marriages, the way they end up in the 18th century. John was quite angry at that. So when John did marry a woman named Molly Bizet he didn't tell Charles. He should have told Charles.

Charles would have told her that it was not going to be a good marriage. Much of it hangs on John. When he married he laid down the rules that he wouldn't give up one inch of his itinerary. He traveled about 3 ,000 to 5 ,000 miles a year and he wasn't going to give up an inch of it.

He was going to keep preaching as much as he had always done. His wife went around with him for at least a year or two, but sleeping in barns and under hedges and getting half rotten food. You have to have an eye on constitutional like John and he loved it.

He just thrived on it. She eventually gave up on it and went back to live in London. Eventually began to attack him publicly. She'd turn up sometimes where he was preaching and stand up and heckle him.

Finally John left her and she was dead and buried three days before he discovered. There is a real sadness to that aspect of John's life. Charles' marriage was ideal in many respects. An ideal marriage, a deep devotion to each other.

She was quite an attractive woman in the early years of their marriage and then she contracted smallpox, the great killer in the 18th century and it disfigured her quite profoundly. But it made no difference to Charles.

Very important to note that. It made no difference to Charles' love for her. They would go on to have eight children of whom they would bury five before the age of two. A number of Charles' hymns were written out of the crucible of suffering that brought him to his life.

Initially settled at Bristol and then later settled in London. Let me begin then to look at Charles' hymns. We'll have more to say about them in a few minutes. Charles began writing hymns almost immediately after his conversion.

He had written poetry before. He would go on to write six thousand hymns. He's got nine thousand poems of hymns altogether. That's about three thousand poems and six thousand hymns. That is a huge number of hymns.

He wrote six thousand hymns in fifty years. And most of those hymns, as we will see, over a thousand tongues to sing, we usually sing it for maybe five or so verses, originally had at least sixteen stanzas.