“Come, Almighty to deliver”

In one of Charles Wesley’s most widely published hymns, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” we find the third stanza beginning thus:

“Come, Almighty to deliver,
Let us all thy life receive,
Suddenly return, and never,
Nevermore thy temples leave”

However, a number of hymnals punctuate the first line with an additional comma, thus:

“Come, Almighty, to deliver,”

Which is correct? Does the infinitive “to deliver” complement “Come” (so, “come … to deliver”) or “Almighty” (so, “Almighty to deliver”)?

The earliest printing of this hymn available to me, found in the second edition of Wesley’s collection Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ (1747) omits the comma:

Further, precisely the same phrase occurs in another hymn in the collection, also without the comma:

There is no instance in the KJV where the phrase “Almighty to deliver” is found, and the two words “Almighty” and “deliver” never appear in the same verse. Perhaps, however, Wesley has the well-loved Psalm 91 in mind¹ (although in his and his brother John’s A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, Psalm 91 is not included)²:

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

¹ Psalm 91 is not provided as a reference for this phrase in either the excellent work done by Munson and Drake (though they provide no references at all in connection with the phrase “Come, Almighty to deliver”), nor in the extensive list of Scriptures at hymnary.org.

² There may be no connection at all, but in a biography of Charles Wesley, his biographer recounts Wesley being caught in a violent storm at sea in 1736 (some time before “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” was published in 1747, and before his conversion in 1738), and quotes Wesley as saying, “I prayed for power to pray, for faith in Jesus Christ, continually repeating his name, till I felt the virtue of it at last, and knew that I abode under the shadow of the Almighty.” John Whitehead, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. … with the Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A., collected from his private journal, and never before published (London: Stephen Couchman, 1793; repr., Boston: Dow and Jackson, 1845).

Charles Wesley’s Use of Scripture in Hymnody

“If … we were to add all the allusions and quotations from all the commentators and Christian writers through the centuries as a supplement to all those from the poets, philosophers, and historians both classical and modern (supposing that this were in fact possible) it seems clear that they would be but as a drop in a bucket beside Wesley s use of the Scriptures. This is the vast ocean from which he draws. His verse is an enormous sponge filled to saturation with Bible words, Bible similes, Bible metaphors, Bible stories, Bible themes…. Indeed, in the memorable words of Dr J. E. Rattenbury, ‘A skilful man, if the Bible were lost, might extract much of it from Wesley’s hymns. They contain the Bible in solution.'”

Frank Baker, Charles Wesley’s Verse: An Introduction (London: Epworth, 1964), 33-34.

Wesley’s Use of Words

“[Charles] Wesley displayed a Miltonic facility for incorporating polysyllabic Latinate words into the texture of his verse in such a manner that they illustrated his theme, introduced a modulation into the verbal music, and varied without disrupting the rhythm. Adjectives and adverbs ending in ‘-able, -ably’ and ‘-ible, -ibly’ were particular favourites, but nouns and verbs were used with similar effect. A well-known and deservedly praised example is found in the opening stanza of one of his Nativity Hymns:

“Let earth and heaven combine
Angels and men agree
To praise in songs divine
Th’incarnate deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.

“This illustrates what Dr Davie describes as the threading of Latinisms on the staple Anglo-Saxon of his diction so that both ‘criss-cross and light up the other’s meaning’–witness, ‘songs/divine’, ‘contracted/span’, and ‘incomprehensibly/man’. Moreover, every word is used precisely, not only … carefully chosen and carefully placed, but so carefully chosen and placed that clear thought about its exact meaning is demanded of the reader, and always rewarded. Wesley’s is the art of the etcher, sharp and definitive rather than vague and suggestive.

…

“When all has been said, however, it must be reasserted that the basic texture of Wesley’s speech was provided by Anglo-Saxon, in which every now and then was woven a bright pattern of classical words. Wesley’s Anglo-Saxon was derived (like that of many of our greatest writers) from the King James Version of the Bible. This was partly because
Bible words and phrases permeated the atmosphere that he breathed as a boy at Epworth, and partly because the solid purity of their diction appealed to his clean, direct mind. Even his pre-conversion translations from the classics are more Anglo-Saxon than Latin in their vocabulary. Certainly after his conversion he deliberately choose homespun words, both because they formed the language of the English Bible and because they spoke most clearly to the ordinary man. Although Wesley is occasionally Miltonic in his use of the sonorous Latin word, in general he is much more akin to his distant kinsman Daniel Defoe in his use of robust though rarely colloquial common speech. Charles Wesley’s Latinisms generally enforce and illustrate for the educated man the basic meaning conveyed in staple Anglo-Saxon to the less erudite worshipper. The deliberate Latinisms, therefore, are comparatively few, though always significant.

“This predominant use of the mother tongue was the more noteworthy in an era of neo-classicism, when scholars were fond of larding their weighty tomes with Greek and Latin
quotations. John and Charles Wesley sometimes used Latin and Greek in conversation and in correspondence for the sake of privacy or precision, and knew as many classical tags as the next Master of Arts, but both carefully refrained from any form of classical ostentation. Just as their volumes were reduced in size, so their sentences were freed from superfluity and ambiguity for the sake of the ‘man in the street’. They wrote plain English for plain people. This economy in words was the result in part of training, in part of a purified taste, and in part of deliberate restraint for the purposes of evangelism. The result both in prose and in verse was a lucid, direct, forceful style whose influence on the spread of Methodism, as even on English literature, was greater than has often been recognized.

“Moreover, Anglo-Saxon is direct and monosyllabic compared with the elaborations and profundities of Latin and Greek. Words derived from Anglo-Saxon are therefore likely to be more vigorous than those from the classical languages, whose strength lies in the ability to express a finer precision of thought. The one is more appropriate for action, the other for contemplation. For the most part Charles Wesley’s verse is not mystical nor quietly contemplative; certainly it does not embody an eager pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The note of wonder and awe is never far away, but primarily Wesley’s hymns are poems of action–of theological action, the action of God in Christ, matched by the responding action of man.

…

“As a tribute to Charles Wesley’s precision, flexibility, and economy in the use of words, we can do no better than to quote John Wesley’s preface to the 1780 Collection, remembering that this statement applies chiefly to his brother’s verse, which makes up the bulk of the volume: ‘Here is no doggerel, no botches, nothing put in to patch up the rhyme, no feeble expletives. Here is nothing turgid or bombast on the one hand, nor low and creeping on the other. Here are no cant expressions, no words without meaning …. Here are (allow me to say) both the purity, the strength, and the elegance of the English language: and at the same time the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity.'”

Frank Baker, Charles Wesley’s Verse: An Introduction (London: Epworth, 1964), 19-20, 23-24, 27-28.

Hymn Studies

I’ve been posting two-page hymn studies on my Academia page; they may be found here. To date, I have looked at the following hymns:

A Mighty Fortress

All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name

Be Thou My Vision

Brethren, We Have Met to Worship

Christ Arose

Come, Thou Almighty King

Come, Thou Fount

Holy, Holy, Holy

How Sweet and Aweful

O Worship the King

Jesus Shall Reign

The Church’s One Foundation

Mohler on hymns

Two takeaways from Al Mohler on hymns. I listened to a portion of a 1999 sermon mediated through a Doxology and Theology podcast.

Mohler referred approvingly to Geoffrey Wainwright speaking of a hymn as a “sung confession of faith.” The original reference is in Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life; A Systematic Theology (New York: Oxford, 1980), 183.

“A hymn without theological content is no true hymn. … A theology that cannot be sung is no true theology.”

Watts on Writing for All Christians to Sing

I am enjoying reading through Isaac Watts’s introduction to his Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, wherein he makes a case for congregational singing of the psalms in such a way as reflects the coming of Christ. He makes a point which has often occurred to me: that hymnody which endures is almost always hymnody which reflects those things which all Christians agree upon, and does not major on matters upon which Christians may differ. It is not that hymnody cannot address such matters, but by its nature, it will likely not receive wide and lasting acceptance. At any rate, here is how Watts puts it as he speaks of the portions of the psalms he has chosen to “imitate” in his compositions:

“These I have copied and explained in the general Style of the Gospel; nor have I confined my Expressions to any particular Party or Opinion; that in Words prepared for publick Worship and for the Lips of Multitudes, there might not be a Syllable offensive to sincere Christians whose Judgments may differ in the lesser Matters of Religion.”

Wilbur, Critiquing Art and Music

Greg Wilbur, “Critiquing Art and Music”

Not a long piece, but it highlighted an unconscious way that I thought of songs: text as content/message and music as vehicle/medium. But Wilbur helpfully points out:

“the lyrics have form and content, the music has form and content, and the marriage of text and notes have another layer of form and content.”

HT: Religious Affections

Archaic Language in Hymnody

Mark Ward addresses the issue here. I would add two points:

(1) It seems to me that the excellence and beauty of the poetry in classic hymnody on average exceeds that of newer hymns. This is doubtless true, at least in part, because over time the very best in poetic expression has risen to the top and less stellar contributions have faded away. At the same time, I do think Christians in time past were generally better able to handle language, and poetry in particular, than they are today (in part, I suspect, because their surrounding culture, as a whole, could). The more that classic hymnody is “updated,” the more likely it is that the original excellence of a given piece is going to be compromised to some degree. I don’t disagree with the idea of cautious and limited updating for some reasons (here is my parade example), but in my thinking, such reasons are very few.

(2) Hymntexts that sound like they were not written in our own day, but are from time past, help to highlight the continuity that the church has through time. Scripture does emphasize the “new song,” and believers ought to be producing new songs. But singing things that were clearly not written in our era, we remind ourselves of our historical rootedness, and the faithful witnesses who have gone before.

All Cultures Are Not Equally Good

Excellent piece.

(HT: Scott Aniol)

“The Technological Church”

A very interesting series of brief essays by Jessica Huntrods, who specializes in media ecology as part of the Moody Media Lab, liberally sprinkled with interaction with McLuhan and Ellul. I don’t know that all of Jessica’s answers are right, or that all the directions she goes are good. But she does make some excellent points and lays out many thought-provoking juxtapositions of media ecology and the church. Some excerpts:

The faster our technologies develop, the clearer it becomes that humans are deeply changed by the environments created by our technologies, and by extension, these technologies also change the theologies we construct. Our technologies hold great influence over how we perceive God.

…most of what we have created has served not to bring us further into wholeness but to fragment us spiritually and relationally. Our technology encourages isolation and distance instead of presence, and it creates worlds of unreality instead of drawing us further into our true reality in Jesus. We have mediated ourselves so that we reflect not the incarnation of Christ but the opposite. Much of our technology is at work creating a discarnate world.

Ellul and McLuhan uncovered what is hidden to the technological idiot: technologies are not neutral. All technology has an agenda that it carries out regardless of human intentions. All technology creates winners and losers, and all technology creates unintended consequences that are larger than the original good it was intended to perform. There is always a cost.

A simple way to understand media ecology is to picture a remote island with a stable ecosystem. Then imagine a new invasive species is introduced to the island. The ecosystem doesn’t just add in another animal to the food chain and continue on as normal; the entire ecosystem drastically changes. Other species may respond with a population boom or with total extinction. No species is unaffected, and every relationship changes. Now imagine a specific human society in a specific time and place as an ecosystem in equilibrium. Every new technology introduced is an invasive species that radically changes every relationship between humans and other humans, technology, and society. The introduction of a new technology changes everything, and nobody is left unaffected.

In The Medium and the Light, McLuhan devotes an entire essay to the changes the microphone brought to the Roman Catholic liturgy. He argues that the introduction of the microphone to mass forced the church to change from Latin to the vernacular, it turned around the priests so they now face the congregation, and it necessitated speakers that made acoustic-minded architecture obsolete. It also makes it difficult for personal meditation during mass because the amplified sound comes from all directions instead of one source. It even changes the tone of the message: “…the microphone, which makes it so easy for a speaker to be heard by many, also forbids him to exhort or be vehement.”

Without smart phones (or even printed Bibles, to some extent), the preaching of the gospel is listened to and received corporately. With Bible apps on smart phones, the unified body of Christ acts more as a loosely associated collection of individuals who become sermon critics instead of receivers of the word. . . . each technology takes away possibilities for some things as it creates possibilities for other things. The Bible app is the Trojan horse that distracts us from the true message of the smart phone in worship, which is individualism.

And a fascinating quote from McLuhan:

…the serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception.

And another, which tightly connects to C. S. Lewis’s notion of the “clean sea breeze of the centuries”:

Today when we want to get our bearings in our own culture, and have need to stand aside from the bias and pressure exerted by any technical form of human expression, we have only to visit a society where that particular form has not been felt, or a historical period in which it was unknown.