206 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
On April 20, 1882, two days before Dr. Gervase Smith died, his old friends and brother ministers, Benjamin Gregory and William Hirst, held a little service in his sick-room. This hymn was sung, and the third verse was repeated at the dying man s request. It was sung at the funeral service in Highbury Chapel a week later.
Hymn 295. Happy the man that finds the grace.
CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ, 1747 ; Works, v. 234. Prov. iii. 13-18. Nine verses. Who is changed to that in the first line.
The Rev. Dr. Allen says, The old hymns which have done so much to preserve Methodist doctrine, and to promote our type of experience, fellowship, and evangelism have been sacredly retained (in The Methodist Hymn-Book, 1904). The hymns in the middle of the book, which relate to the conscious life of God in the soul, are almost exclusively the compositions of Charles Wesley. These hymns are unique, and when they lose their charm the power of Methodism will decline, and her glory fade away.
Hymn 296. Riches unsearchable. CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jesus Christ, 1747; Works, iv. 230. Seven verses of eight lines each, beginning Ye simple souls that stray. In ver. I the original reads, And pleasures from the well, but in 1780 the metre was changed to short metre. Ver. 4 reads, Our guardians to that heavenly bliss.
Henry Moore states in the Coke and Moore Life that John Wesley wrote it in the midst of the Bandon riots. But the hymn was printed in 1747, and the riots occurred in 1750. In a footnote to his two-volume Life of John Wesley, Moore says, It has been denied that Mr. John Wesley was the author of this hymn. I must still think that he was : I believe, I was not misinformed. There is, I think, also some internal evidence. The hymn has the purity, strength, and sobriety of both the brothers ; but it seems to want the poetical vis animi of Charles,
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