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Monthly column on hymns and songs

Are you the next Charles Wesley?

I had occasion recently to address a highly evangelical seaside gathering on the seven questions people ask most often about hymns. Some, I confess, are a bit tricky: What is a hymn? Others are almost equally complex. Balancing the real snorters, however, come one or two simpler ones, and I have been asked to share some of the material (honestly!) with a wider audience.

So, at some risk of repeating what you already know, I face Question Number Four on my list, which is simply: Who is the next (or the new) Charles Wesley? It is often put to us in these days of our literary pygmies, but the marks of such a figure are far easier to spot than, for instance, those of the new Don Bradman or the next Bobby Charlton. How may we recognise CW2 when he comes?

First, is he a Church of England clergyman? You think that is irrelevant or marginal; Charles did not.

Next, is he a travelling evangelist? We know Wesley the hymnwriter, but to him the gospel far outweighed other work in importance. He believed that Christ died for the sins of all; 'O let me commend my Saviour to you' is his own line, fittingly inscribed on his statue in Bristol.

Third, has he an older brother called John? A vital qualification; Charles's warmest admirers admit that sometimes he went OTT in sentiment or style. John Wesley, the tireless, ruthless and shameless editor, sometimes saw fit to cut words, lines, stanzas and even hymns from his younger brother's extraordinary output. Or change them. Mostly, he got it right. Every writer needs an honest and able mentor, with (in the last resort) the power of veto.

Four, does he write his own music? This is a negative; if he does, rule him out. Charles had a musically outstanding son and grandson, but was himself content to write words to the tunes of others. Some were old, some were new, but none were by him.

Five, does he know Latin and Greek? The Wesleys were classically educated and it shows. I don't mean just the occasional hidden quotation or even their precision in the use of words, but their understanding of metre and syllable, sound and sense.

Six, can he ride a horse? Maybe this should have come first; quite indispensable. 'Love divine, all loves excelling, joy of heaven to earth come down'; we can hear his brain trotting the words out as the miles of English farmland flowed past. Or time for a gallop: 'Come, let us anew our journey pursue, roll round with the year, and never stand still till the Master appear!'
I am not inventing this. 'Never stand still' was about right, and Charles did not spend weeks in the study polishing his composition. He wrote in his mind as he rode, and one tantalisingly brief eyewitness account shows him dismounting at the London's City Road Chapel, thrusting the reins into the hands of a groom, and rushing into the house calling out 'Pen and ink, pen and ink!' By contrast, some items offered for worship today seem to have been put together somewhere along the roadworks on the M25. In the rush hour. On a mobile phone.

There you have it; what could be simpler? We might add as desiderata (Lat.) an outstanding saint for a mother, a feckless tyrant for a father, and a tragic genius for a sister. Or a workload of about three hymns a week for 50 years. I count these as optional. As soon as we see the six infallible and easily identifiable marks, there is our man. Or, to speak plainly, woman.

Christopher Idle