Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/254

 243 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

Shrewsbury to Whitchurch to pay a single sixpence. On October 24, 1753, he set out on foot to join John Wesley in Cornwall. At Tiverton he bought a colt for five pounds. He rode a hundred thousand miles on its back. Such a horse as, in many respects, none of my brethren could ever boast of. For about twelve years he had charge of printing the Arminian Magazine; but the frightful errata, and the fact that Olivers inserted matter without consulting him, made Wesley at last look out for a more efficient substitute in 1789. He died in March, 1799, an d was buried in Wesley s grave at City Road.

His Hymn to the God of Abraham, adapted to a celebrated air, sung by Leoni, in the Jews synagogue, borrows some slight suggestion from the Hebrew doxology, which rehearses in metrical form the thirteen articles of the Jewish Creed. Olivers told a brother preacher at a Conference in City Road that he had rendered it from the Hebrew, giving it as far as he could a Christian character. He said he had called on Leoni the Jew, who had given him a synagogue melody to be set to it, which was to be named Leoni. He wrote the hymn at the house of John Bakewell (189) at Westminster in 1770, after hearing Leoni sing at the synagogue, where he went in company with Joseph Rhodes, precentor at the Foundery, who seems to have arranged the music. The hymn appeared as a tract as early as 1772, and found its place in the 1831 Supplement to the Wesleyan hymn-book. Leoni was a chorister in the Great Synagogue, Duke s Place, and a public singer at Drury Lane or Covent Garden. He died in Jamaica, where he became chazan of the English and German synagogue.

The first appearance of this hymn in any Wesleyan hymn- book was in Wesley s Pocket Hymn-book for the Use of Christians of all Denominations, 1785.

Thomas Jackson calls it one of the noblest hymns in existence. It will doubtless be sung by spiritual worshippers, of every denomination, with delight and profit, as long as the English language is understood. John Fletcher writes warmly of Olivers. His talents as a writer, a logician, a poet, and a composer of sacred music, are known to those who have looked into his publications.

James Montgomery says in the Christian Psalmist, 1825, There is not in our language a lyric of more majestic style, more elevated thought, or more glorious imagery. Its structure, indeed, is unattractive, and, on account of the short lines,

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