Wednesday, September 20, 2006

A Favourite Hymn - and wonders of grace

Libbie, over at 'Musings of an English Muffin' has posted three verses of a Charles Wesley hymn. I encourage everyone to read it before reading this -mostly as if you don't you'll have no idea what it's about (http://englishmusings.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-husbands-favourite-hymn.html).

The chaplain of Glasgow prison once found a young woman of eighteen or nineteen standing in her cell with her hymn-book in her hand (I presume it was a gift from a prison-visitor or some such person, - H.H.). "She looked up, and, holding it out, said to me, 'This is a hymn which I'm much ta'en up wi'.' I read the first two lines,

Weary of wandering from my God,
And now made willing to return,
(these are the first lines of the ORIGINAL verse 1, which is omitted in 'Grace Hymns'. - H.H.)

and found my eyes filling with tears as I looked at her and said, 'Are you weary of wandering from your God?' The answer was, 'Yes, indeed I am.' Thereupon I had the great privilege of dealing with an anxious soul.
"Next Sunday we not only sang the hymn, but I preached especially to weary wanderers. The following day an old man grasped my hand As I entered his cell, and in an earnest and solemn voice said, 'When the great day comes there will be found a soul among the redeemed, brought there through that hymn we sang yesterday, for,' he continued, 'when you read out 'Weary of Wandering from my God', I said, That's me. I'm weary, and I'm made ready to return, and,' he added, 'come back to my God I have.'"

From John Telford, 'The Methodist Hymn-book Illustrated' (London, The Epworth Press, Fifth edition, 1929) Pp. 225-6

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