Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/208

 196 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

Wesley printed it in his Charlestown Collection, 1737, with ver. 5 included, and changed hellish to infernal. In ver. 2 he put Here ye despairing sinners come, and in ver. 6, Into Thy arms I fall, but he left Watts s last line unchanged, My Jesus, and my all.

Three days after his ordination, in June, 1736, George Whitefield wrote to a friend, Never a poor creature set up with so small a stock. . . . Help, help me, my dear friend, with your warmest addresses to the throne of grace. At present, this is the language of my heart

A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, &c.

Charles Wesley and his friends sang this hymn with the criminals on their way to Tyburn on July 19, 1738. The poet found that hour under the gallows the most blessed hour of his life.

Richard Watson quoted the last verse with solemn and deep feeling when George Marsden visited him in his last illness. The hymn has had a wonderful ministry of comfort for souls in sight of eternity. The Rev. William Robinson, an Independent minister in Hertfordshire, who died in August, 1854, told a member of his church that he never failed to repeat the verse

A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, Into Thy hands I fall,

once or twice daily, and, if he could choose, would like to die with the words on his lips. Dr. Doddridge told his students at Northampton, I wish that my last words may be those lines of Watts

A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Thy kind arms I fall.

Hymn 270. Come, sinners, to the gospel feast. CHARLES WESLEY (i).

Hymns for those that seek and those that have Redemption in the Blood of Jems Christ, 1747 ; Works, iv. 274. The Great Supper. Luke xiv. 16-24. Twenty-four verses. Ver. 5 reads

See Him set forth before your eyes, Behold the bleeding Sacrifice ! His offer d love make haste to embrace, And freely now be saved by grace.

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