408 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
in particular told me he could hardly utter the words of it. These were most of them poor people who work for their living.
Hymn 804. O God, to whom the faithful dead.
JOSIAH CONDER (73?).
In Congregational Hymn-bock, 1836, headed Whose faith follow. The first line reads, happy dead.
Hymn 805. Come, let us join our friends above.
CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Funeral Hymjis, 2nd Series, 1759 ; Works, vi. 215. The first hymn of the set. Ver. 2 reads
Part of His host hath cross d the flood, And part is crossing now.
The second hymn in the pamphlet is, How happy every child of grace ; the third, And let this feeble body fail. These are the riches of the collection the rest are tributes to friends, such as John Meriton, James Hervey, Thomas Walsh, Mr. Lampe, Mr. Hutchinson, Grace Bowen, and others.
John Wesley (Works, xiii. 514) once in company referred to Dr. Watts s tribute to Wrestling Jacob, and added, Oh, what would Dr. Watts have said if he had lived to see my brother s two exquisite Funeral Hymns, beginning, " How happy every child of grace " and " Come, let us join our friends above " ? This was the hymn that John Wesley and his congregation in Staffordshire were singing at the hour when Charles joined the company in heaven. When Wesley preached his farewell sermon in Dublin on July 12, 1789, he gave out and commented on this hymn, which he said was the sweetest his brother ever wrote.
Richard Watson says, The funeral hymns have but little of the softness of sorrow, perhaps too little, but they are written in that fulness of faith which exclaims over the open tomb, " Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Dr. Stevens writes (History of Methodism, Bk. iv. chap. 2) : Many of his elegies have an unearthly power ; a sadness of the grave pervaded by the rapture of heaven. His Funeral Hymns, occasioned, with hardly an exception, by actual deaths, constitute the most perfect part of the Methodist psalmody, and for a hundred years and more these testimonials
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