No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus -- Charles Frederick Weigle

Knowing the circumstances of this composer’s moment of inspiration gives this song a poignant hue, at least you might think so. Just listen to Charles Frederick Weigle tell the story (see YouTube link below). It was in the wake of the breakup of perhaps Weigle’s most significant earthly relationship that he wrote “No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus” in 1932, so you might think he was despondent, and calling out to Him from a sense of desperation. At least, that’s what I was thinking. But, you might re-think that assumption, after you hear what he has to say.  You might even say he was still married, but not quite like the two people shown in the wedding picture here.

Weigle’s testimony is pretty vivid. He declares that he gave up everything to spread the word as an evangelist. He experienced the thrill of seeing people responding to the gospel early on in his ministry apparently, and it got deep inside him until he knew without a doubt that this was something he just couldn’t ignore for any reason. Despite what must have been many years of struggle emotionally with his spouse, and her eventual departure from their marriage when the composer was 61, Weigle said that three years later he was still excited and thankful to be doing God’s will and experiencing all the ways He was blessed by the Lord. And, so with a burst of energy he wrote this song in just a few moments, as he overflowed with gratitude toward his Divine companion. And, then he sings his own composition, letting the hearer listen to his passion for this friend Jesus who was so crucial to his life. The only thing better, perhaps, would be to see him tell this story and watch his face as he sang how much he felt Jesus cared for him. Perhaps it was in fact his wife’s departure that brought home to Weigle just how important Jesus was to him. He no doubt loved people here on earth, including his wife, but not more than Jesus. One can imagine that in the wake of his earthly loss, this attitude endured, perhaps even more strongly in the next 34 years that Weigle lived. Perhaps he’d discovered that his divine marriage mattered to him more.

Was Weigle bitter or depressed after the episode that severed his earthly marriage? Other sources indicate he did in fact suffer depression and considered suicide. What got him through this? Perhaps that’s the answer we hear on the You Tube site – that strength from the Jesus-relationship carried him along. He sounds like a guy who, though tossed by an earthly storm in a rocky sea, was someone who felt stronger now, knowing that Jesus stayed with him. Yes, it must have been awfully tough, to be 61 and lose one’s life-partner – at least, that’s how he probably thought of her, and she him, too. But, Weigle doesn’t sound regretful. He wants his hearers to focus on what he—and they—still have, even if life’s events have turned sour. Jesus. That’s the one word answer Charles Weigle had for his life in 1932.   

Information on the song was obtained from the books  Amazing Grace – 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1990, Kregel Publications; The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Listen to the story told by the composer on this YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha3APG-NVUI

Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned -- Samuel Stennett

Was he thinking of marriage at the age of 60, of matrimony like King Louis IV’s (see the picture)? The words he wrote near the end of his life seem to ring with what a wise poet had penned many centuries earlier as he gazed upon his beautiful mate. Samuel Stennett had fallen in love probably at least twice in his life, as he set about composing the words for “Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned” in 1787. Like the poet whose words spilled out yearnings of devotion in the book with Solomon’s name on it, Stennett too wanted to express his deepest feelings. Some people might blush to say things that speak so openly of another person, but maybe that’s the gift of advanced age – candor – that permits one to share without hesitation.

Samuel Stennett was born of a minister father, and indeed a long family-line of ministers that probably imprinted his faith on him at an early age.  Five generations of Stennetts would be ministers in England, including Samuel and a brother who were among the 4^th generation. Samuel inherited from his grandfather the penchant for hymn writing, and eventually wrote 39 in all, including also “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks”. The hymn “Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned” also was originally known by two other titles, “The Chief Among Ten Thousand” and “The Excellencies of Christ”, and had up to nine verses, although we often have just four of them in published collections today. It’s said that the hymn has historically been a favorite for communion time among the churches that have favored Stennett’s hymns, so we can guess that perhaps that tradition was actually promoted by Stennett himself. It is further suggested that the Song of Solomon (5:10-16) was a relevant text that Stennett read to gather his thoughts, the passionate recitations of a man and his bride. ‘Wait, Stennett!’, someone might have said, ‘that’s far too mushy to describe us and our Lord”.  And, doesn’t it seem a bit of a contradiction to call someone ‘sweet’ and ‘majestic’ in the same breath?

Though it’s not discussed in historical records, Stennett must have experienced love himself while on earth, similar to what the writer expresses in Song of Solomon. Stennett had at least one son, who like the four generations before him, became a minister. So, we can presume that the composer-minister Stennett had also experienced earthly marriage by 1787, when he was pondering his spiritual marriage to Christ. And, having been a minister for nearly 50 years, he must have had significant relationships with members of that church. In fact, it’s said these close connections reached inside the English throne, to King George III and other government officials. Do you suppose Samuel was drawing a comparison between the Divine King and his terrestrial sovereign with the first few words of ‘Majestic Sweetness’? After 60 years, Stennett must have, like others before and after his time, grown weary of earth’s ways. In eight short years, he went to meet his ‘groom’, in 1795. Perhaps he was thinking of his own life up to that point as a betrothal, a prelude to a nuptials ceremony that would culminate above. Kinda makes you reevaluate death, huh?     

Information on the song was obtained from the books  “Amazing Grace – 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions”, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1990, Kregel Publications; “101 Hymn Stories”, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1982, Kregel Publications; and “The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 

See the following website for the hymn’s 9 different original verses:

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/m/a/j/majestic.htm

Biography of Stennett: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/t/e/n/stennett_s.htm

And: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Stennett

And: http://www.hymnary.org/person/Stennett_S

Love Divine -- Charles Wesley

Here’s a tough question: What could one say about a single composition that would be unique among the more than 6,000 hymns written by Charles Wesley? What was Wesley saying or feeling when he wrote “Love Divine” in 1747? Answer: Love, perfection-style, to put it briefly. That much is obvious from the hymn’s title and the words this great hymnist penned, including the words ‘pure’ or ‘perfect’ (four times) that Wesley uses to characterize His affection for me. What else was happening in Wesley’s heart and mind as he wrote? Wesley was in his 40th year when he composed “Love Divine”, making one wonder what episodes in the life of the composer might have affected him by this time.

Commentators have speculated that Wesley’s hymn words are in fact a reworking of a secular song “Fairest Isle” that is sung by the goddess Venus in the play King Arthur by John Dryden. Also, some of Wesley’s words may have been based on Joseph Addison’s “Hymn of Gratitude to the Deity”. OK, that doesn’t diminish Wesley’s effort. He just shows that he was aware of his surroundings, and appreciated other artists of his day and their efforts. We may gather that Wesley probably attended plays, therefore, and listened to other composers’ music, borrowing what his contemporaries had said on the ‘Love’ subject, and astutely adapting for his audience what would have been familiar words they might have heard elsewhere already. Clever, huh? Much more could be said about the hymn’s genesis, but you may read all about it at one of the links below (a Wikipedia entry on this hymn).

A personal evolution in Wesley’s life, two years after “Love Divine’s” publication in Hymns for Those that Seek and Have Redemption (1747), also might suggest the song’s subject was especially personal for him. Wesley was married in April 1749 (to Sarah [Sally] Gwynne), a reportedly happy union that endured throughout Wesley’s remaining life; so, assuming his relationship with Sally developed and culminated in marriage over a period of several months or perhaps a few years, was his own experience with love tuning his heart and mind for this great work?

Try this exercise, one that really brought home how my imperfect attempts (and resulting confirmed bachelorhood, at least as of April 2011) at love contrast with God’s. I pondered how many names I could remember of the opposite gender that I have tried to ‘love’ (tried to, or at least thought about dating, OK?) in the last 30+ years. It was more than I thought it would be when I first began. And, with some alarm, some of the names I discovered I could not even recall – not even a first name, ouch! Wesley probably had no problem remembering Sally’s name, right? But, like me, he may have had other failed ‘love’ attempts whose names he couldn’t recollect…or probably wisely chose not to mention to Sally! What of God’s love, the kind that knows every hair on everyone’s head, not to mention names? And, also the kind that knows the heartache of rejection. God knows all, and has felt from one extreme to another on the love spectrum, too. Think He might be the one to talk to if I feel a little pouty over my ‘love’ deficit here?

Information on the song was obtained from the books “Amazing Grace – 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions”, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, 1990; and “The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006.

More biographic information on composer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wesley

http://www.wholesomewords.org/biography/bwesley.html

Link to all four verses that the composer originally wrote: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/l/d/ldalexcl.htm

A history and background of the song: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Divine,_All_Loves_Excelling

Beulah Land - Edgar Page Stites

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married. (Isaiah 62:4) Beulah Land…it sounds peaceful and beautiful, doesn’t it? A lot of people must agree, because there’s a lot of places named after it, no doubt as a method of attracting business. There are more than just a few churches with this moniker, from Beulah Land Bible Church in Macon, Georgia, to Beulah Land Baptist Church in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and probably lots more in between. Farms in Texas, Arkansas, and Nebraska, a housing development in Wyoming, and a rustic resort in North Carolina all advertise themselves with this name, according to Google. There’s a restaurant in Pensacola, Florida and even a pub in Portland, Oregon that wears the name. You may remember the 1980 movie about post-Civil War Georgia, starring Leslie Ann Warren and Michael Sarrazin – Beulah Land got 6.9 out of 10 stars by reviewers. Do you like dogs? There’s a website called Beulah Land Labradors…I wonder if the dogs are always serene, of non-biting persuasion? What’s more interesting is that this name ‘Beulah’ appears only one time in the entire Bible. How would you like to have had stock in that name when it was created?! A poetic description of God’s home, like the one in a prophet’s book, has a lot of power to sway us, and maybe that’s what motivated the composer of the song “Beulah Land” to write the words that are so familiar. Indeed, anyone today whose heart has been touched by the song probably would buy stock in Beulah Land, if that were possible. Is it possible?

Christ had motivated Edgar Page Stites for many years by the time he composed the words to “Beulah Land”. In 1876, he was so moved he could only write two of its four verses at a time, on consecutive Sundays. After the second Lord’s Day effort on the song, Stites was once again overcome with emotion. “I could only pray and weep”, he says. Stites had become a believer in Christ when he was 19, during the great revival of Philadelphia, what most call the Awakening of 1857 and 1858. Soon afterwards, he joined the Methodist Church in Cape May, New Jersey and became a local missionary. He started new churches in the South Jersey area, and in 1869, Stites and other ministers and lay Christians founded the “Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association”, an organization to direct a Methodist camp meeting near Ocean Grove, New Jersey. Some say that Stites actually wrote “Beulah Land in 1875 (not 1876), along with his musical collaborator on the song, John R. Sweney, for that camp meeting association. Other well-known hymn writers of the day visited the camp during the summers, including Ira D. Sankey, William H. Doane, William J. Kirkpatrick, Fanny Crosby, Eliza Hewitt (Stites’ cousin), and others. Stites concludes the story of “Beulah Land”saying, “I have never received a cent for my songs. Perhaps that is why they have had such a wide popularity. I could not do work for the Master and receive pay for it." Perhaps Stites was truly “laying up treasure in heaven” when he refused pay for this popular and moving song. The word Beulah means “married”, an apt description of a place and a relationship with a spouse (God) who will not fail to take care of us. The imagery in the tune’s words also speak of a place that is fertile, and of an intimate bond with a special person – an eternal companion. Now who wouldn’t sign up to live in Beulah if that’s the way it is there? In our day, we cannot concretely buy stock in “Beulah Land”, but we could safely say that God does want us, like Stites did, to invest in Heaven.

Information on Edgar Page Stites was gathered from the following two websites: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/s/t/i/stites_ep.htm http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Beulah-Land