Charles Wesley was subjective; he expressed the feelings that the truths of the Gospel produced in him.[5]
God to him also was great, but as a Saviour, companion, friend. Why should he tremble? He was not Moses viewing the burning bush, but John leaning on the breast of Jesus. He shared the ecstasies of the apostles and disciples portrayed in the New Testament.[6]
So Watts gives dignity and majesty to the early topics of our hymnbooks on the attributes of God, his worship, the awe of the soul in the presence of its sovereign Lord in hymns like “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” “Great God! how infinite thou art,” “I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “Our God, our help in ages past,” while Charles Wesley fills the sweeter, tenderer, more intimate departments of salvation, forgiveness, communion with God, with the odor of the spikenard of his heart in hymns like “Depth of mercy! can there be,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” “Love divine, all loves excelling.” How well these singers of the Lord’s song supplement each other, and how much more symmetrical and complete are our hymnals because both have written in their own lines and styles!
Which is the greater hymn writer? That is a mooted question that need not be decided here. In Scriptural content the older man is superior, as, at his best, he is in majesty of style. For formal services of worship his hymns are more fitting and impressive. On the other hand, Wesley was superior in quantity and in the number of hymns of high quality. It must be granted that he is more poetical, more graceful, more suave and human. His range is more extensive, his emotion deeper and more noble. In immediate results on the lives of the people Charles Wesley is incomparably richer than Watts, for his hymns then and since turned multitudes unto righteousness.[7]
Space is wanting, and the profit would be slight, to give a catalogue of the sixty-four original issues of hymns that John published from 1737 to 1790, the mass of them for the use of the evangelistic campaign. They were largely occasional, issued to meet a pressing but only temporary need. They varied from a single sheet containing but a single hymn (Charles Wesley’s hymn praying for his brother’s long life) to the two volumes with two thousand and thirty short hymns on Scripture passages. It was not until 1780 that a regular hymnbook “for the use of the people called ‘Methodists’” was issued, containing five hundred and twenty-five hymns.