256 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
again. Look to the blood of the covenant ; and say to the Lord, from the depths of your heart
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee !
Foul I to the fountain fly:
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
In March, 1776, when Toplady had become editor of the Gospel Magazine, he published an article, signed J. F. A remarkable calculation : introduced here, for the sake of the spiritual improvement subjoined, questions and answers relative to the National Debt. If our sins multiply with every second of our sublunary durations, at ten years old each of us would be chargeable with 315 millions and 36 thousand sins. The debt grows every day, but Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law ; being made a curse for us (Gal. iii. 13). This will not only counter-balance, but infinitely over-balance, ALL the sins of the WHOLE believing world. Then follows the great hymn in its four-verse form, No. 401, entitled A living and dying PR AVER for the HOLIEST BELIEVER in the world! The hymn was thus born two years before Toplady s death.
Toplady himself altered When I soar through tracts unknown, the form given in the Gospel Magazine, to When I soar to worlds unknown, in his Psalms and Hymns, 1776. Riven was also changed to wounded. He probably borrowed some hints for his hymn from Dr. Brevint s treatise on The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, prefixed to J. and C. Wesley s Hymns on the Lord s Supper, 1745. *O Rock of Israel, Rock of salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water which once gushed out of Thy side bring down pardon and holiness into my soul ; and let me thirst after them now, as if I stood upon the mountain whence sprung this water, and near the cleft of that rock, the wounds of my Lord, whence gushed this sacred blood.
Charles Wesley began one of his Hymns on the Lord s Supper with Rock of Israel, cleft for me.
Another of those hymns trembles on the verge of the same thoughts as Toplady s
O Rock of our salvation, see The souls that seek their rest in Thee ; Beneath Thy cooling shadow hide, And keep us, Saviour, in Thy side, By water and by blood redeem, And wash us in the mingled stream.
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