314 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
John Wesley says (Works, xii. 357), I find scarcely any temptation from anything in the world : My danger is from persons.
O for a heart to praise my God, A heart from sin set free !
John Fletcher said, Here is undoubtedly an evangelical prayer for the love which restores the soul to a state of sinless rest and scriptural perfection. An old Congregational minister and his wife talked much of Christian perfection, but finally made up their minds that if it consisted in the ability to sing this hymn with the whole heart, they and the Methodists were not far asunder.
Mary Langford, who became the mother of John, Edward, George, and William Corderoy, was the daughter of the first lady class-leader at Lambeth, and as a girl collected money for the building of City Road Chapel. She died almost in the act of quoting the first line of this hymn.
Hymn 530. O Jesus, let Thy dying cry. CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Short Hymns on Select Passages of Scripture, 1762 ; Works, x. 430, 57. Verses I and 2 : Matt, xxvii. 46 ; verses 3 and 4 : Ezek. xxxvi. 26.
In ver. 3 Charles Wesley wrote, Which bleeds for having grieved its Lord. Cardinal Newman once said, True penitence never forgives itself.
Hymn 531. Thou hidden love of God, whose height.
TERSTEEGEN (22) ; translated by JOHN WESLEY (36).
Verborgne Gottesliebe du appeared in Geistliches Blumengiirtlein, 1729, headed The longing of the soul quietly to maintain the secret drawings of the love of God.
Wesley s translation, as he tells us in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection, was made at Savannah in 1736. It was printed in Psalms and Hymns, 1738 ; Works, i. 71. Ver. 4 there reads
Ah tear it thence, that Thou alone
May st reign unrivall d Monarch there : From earthly loves I must be free Ere I can find repose in Thee.
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