386 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
one, until tea-time, our time was spent chiefly in fervent prayer or singing. After singing the Covenant Hymn, Mr. Fletcher went to Mrs. Fletcher, and said to her, " Well, my dearest friend, will you join with me in joining ourselves in a perpetual covenant to the Lord? Will you with me serve Him in His members ? Will you help me to bring souls to the blessed Redeemer ; and, in every possible way, this day, lay yourself under the strongest ties you can, to help me to glorify my gracious Lord ? " She answered, like one that well knew where her strength lay, " May my God help me so to do ! "
On July 12, 1778, during his Conference in Dublin, Wesley says, After I had several times explained the nature of it, we solemnly renewed our covenant with God. It was a time never to be forgotten ; God poured down upon the assembly " the spirit of grace and supplication " ; especially in singing that verse of the concluding hymn
To us the covenant blood apply.
��Hymn 746. O God, how often hath Thine ear. W. M. BUNTING (249).
- Renewing the Covenant.
I wrote it out of the fulness of personal feeling, while yet a youth at school. He was not eighteen. His brother says it was sent anonymously by W. M. Bunting to his father, then editor of the Wesley an Methodist Magazine. He produced and praised it one morning at the breakfast-table, in ignorance that its author was present. As it seems to me, a very partial critic, it "mourns as a dove," while it mounts "up as on wings of eagles. " It was written before he entered the ministry in 1824, and has never lost its hold on Methodism. It appeared in the 1831 Supplement to the Methodist hymn-book. It is a tender and heart-searching call to our Church on the first Sunday of the New Year, when it meets for renewal of its covenant with God.
Just below Agnes Bulmer s lofty Pindaric " Ode for the New Year," and Joshua Marden s lyric, " What is Time ? " came a little " Hymn for the New Year " and the Covenant Service, signed "Juvenis," which has since been sung by millions of Methodists, and will doubtless be sung by millions more,
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