Comments on: Glory Be to God on High http://timmybrister.com/2007/12/18/glory-be-to-god-on-high/ Trusting God :: Treasuring Christ :: Triumphing the Gospel Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:22:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Carol Blair http://timmybrister.com/2007/12/18/glory-be-to-god-on-high/#comment-29095 Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:41:50 +0000 http://timmybrister.com/2007/12/18/glory-be-to-god-on-high/#comment-29095 Thank you for this hymn by Charles Wesley, one of the great hymnwriters of the Church. Its posting is very appropriate, because yesterday, December 18th, was the 300th anniversary of his birth. Mr. Wesley wrote about 6,500 hymns–2,000 of them directly from Scripture–all 66 books. His purpose in hymn writing was twofold: to supplement his brother John’s preaching, and to teach Bible doctrine to the people of that day–most of whom were illiterate and couldn’t have read a Bible if they had had one. (You can see the doctrinal teaching of this hymn.) Some of Mr. Wesley’s better known hymns today include “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” “And Can it Be,” “O, For a Thousand Tongues” (his personal testimony in hymn form; original had 18 verses), and “Soldiers of Christ , Arise” — a poetical exposition of Ephesians 6:11-18; the original hymn had 16 verses.

As an illustration of Mr. Wesley’s use of even “obscure” books of the Bible in his hymns, from “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” the phrases “Sun of righteousness” and “with healing in His wings” come from the book of Malachi.

Carol Blair
Longview, TX

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