106 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
hence to show the revellers their champion, and the whole congregation their state by nature. Much good I saw im mediately brought out of Satan s evil. Then I set myself against his avowed advocate, and drove him out of the Christian assembly. I concluded with earnest prayer for him. Mr. Stevenson says, These circumstances are believed to have sug gested the writing of the hymn. It has been used in cases where persons were said to be possessed by evil spirits.
In his Journal for January 31, 1740, Wesley tells how he visited a woman who was dangerously ill at Kingswood. I was long striving, striving to come to my Saviour, and I then thought He was far off ; but now I know He was nigh me all that time. I know His arms were round me ; for His arms are like the rainbow, they go round heaven and earth.
In his Plain Account of Kingswood School, 1781, Wesley writes : I have nothing to fear, I have nothing to hope for, here ; only to finish my course with joy.
Happy, if with my latest breath
I might but gasp His name, Preach Him to all, and cry in death,
"Behold, behold the Lamb!"
��Hymn 99. Let earth and heaven agree. CHARLES WESLEY (i)
Hymns on God s Everlasting Love, 1741, No. II ; Works, iii. 71.
Reprinted in the Arminian Magazine, 1778, entitled The Universal Love of Christ.
Three verses are omitted. In ver. 6 swiftly is substituted for freely.
The Rev. R. Butterworth quotes a passage from Chrysostom given by Brooks, the Puritan : If I were the fittest in the world to preach a sermon to the whole world, gathered together in one congregation, and had some high mountain for my pulpit, from whence I might have a prospect of all the world in my view, and were furnished with a voice of brass, a voice as loud as the trumpet of the archangel, that all the world might hear me, I would choose to preach upon no other text than that in the Psalms, " O mortal men, how long will ye love vanity, and follow after leasing ? "
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