Not so! There has been a recent warning that too much red-meat is bad for the health and so I decided to stay with the more serene message of Christmas.
Since David attends a Methodist Church he should be happy that Pauline is sending the strains of Hark the Herald Angels through our house even as I write.
Charles Wesley penned the hymn over over 250 years ago. Arguably it has been the most loved and most sung carol ever composed.
Charles went on to write about 4,000 other sacred songs. He is the most prolific and inspired of all English speaking poets. I read one of his hymns every morning as part of my devotions. His verse, his sublime themes, his magnificent metre, his mastery of the language, his deep insights into the forlorn state of the human heart and of the infinite mercy of God to reach out accept, forgive and redeem, place him at the very apex of literary genius.
Through his writings and the preaching of his brother John, England averted the blood shed of a revolution that convulsed France in the 18th Century. Fully one million people, out of a English population of six million, were swept into the Kingdom of God during the religious revival that engulfed the land.
How wonderful! Why is it then that we have not heard more of Charles Wesley and why his body of work has not been enshrined with that that of Browning, Byron, Shakespeare and Shelley?
In a word: PREJUDICE. That very rooted and obstinate disposition I meet every day when I speak to people of the redeeming love of God and their refusal to listen. I have got used to it. Nothing much has changed in 200 years.
But I still recommend the poems of Charles Wesley as the greatest ever penned.
Merry Christmas.
Ian
