76 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED
the teaching to extreme lengths. In 1762, George Bell, the ex- Life Guardsman, declared that God had no more need of preaching and Sacraments, and that none could teach those who were renewed in love unless they enjoyed that blessing themselves. Wesley lost two hundred members of his London Society through this outburst of fanaticism. This hymn is said to have been written as a protest against the rash assertion, I am as holy as God, made by some one in Charles Wesley s presence.
Hymn 47. Hail! Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. CHARLES WESLEY (i).
The first hymn in Hymns for Children, 1763 ; Works, vi. 371. The second verse is omitted
Thou neither canst be felt, or seen ;
Thou art a Spirit pure, Who from eternity hast been, And always shalt endure.
Ver. I reads, Of Thee we make our early boast.
Wesley wrote a preface for this publication on March 27, 1790
To THE READER,
There are two ways of writing or speaking to children : the one is, to let ourselves down to them ; the other, to lift them up to us. Dr. Watts has wrote on the former way, and he has succeeded admirably well, speaking to children as children, and leaving them as he found them. The following hymns are written on the other plan : they contain strong and manly sense, yet expressed in such plain and easy language as even children may understand. But when they do understand them, they will be children no longer, only in years and in stature.
Hymn 48. Praise ye the Lord ! tis good to raise. ISAAC WATTS, D.D. (3).
Psalm cxlvii., from The Psalms of David, 1719; headed The Divine Nature, Providence, and Grace. After four verses the word Pause is printed, then four verses follow.
Wesley gives it in Psalms and Hymns, 1743, with two verses omitted. When he visited Rochester about 1784, he was the
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