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The Song Forever New

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

These Lenten devotions draw on the rich theology of Charles Wesley’s hymns to offer a strengthening of personal assurance and a call to Christian action. The book is divided into three sections: daily reflections for the forty days of Lent; meditations for the eight days of Easter; and a final section of helps for morning and evening prayer.

The pattern throughout the book is the same. Each devotion consists of a Bible reading from the Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation or an occasional Old Testament passage. There follows a Wesley hymn (with suggested tune), a reflection, and finally a prayer for the day. The Bible readings and the hymns dovetail nicely, and there is plenty of insight into Wesley’s life and zeal for Christ. On the other hand, these are pretty serious devotions, requiring a considerable degree of ‘user input’. They are long in comparison, say, to an Eddie Askew contemplation or a Thomas Merton excerpt.

The biblical texts are fairly manageable - a pericope from the Gospels, a paragraph from the Epistles or a core quotation from one of the prophets. The hymns provide typically four to six long stanzas - sizeable enough to delve into the riches of Wesley’s thought far more fully than contemporary congregational volumes permit. So far so good, but it is the reflections which are the drawback. They are really quite long; a substantial page of exposition is offered, drawing attention to details of the hymn in question and applying it to life and faith. The prayer at the end, however, is aptly short, if somewhat florid.

In other words these are personal devotions for the serious student, or those who have the luxury of time on their hands. The author actually directs us to “Take time with the hymns. Meditate on them. Ponder the deep meaning of the words...”.  Furthermore, the reflection sections are pretty analytical and use a rather rich vocabulary. This is not untypical: “Wesley’s alliteration...serves to intensify the tragic dimension of the state in which we find ourselves apart from God...Wesley offers no easy panacea for our affliction...”

You may judge for yourself whether your average church member would be comfortable with this. In middle class, well-educated churches these devotions might go down well. Selected days might just work in a house-group setting, and I suppose lovers of Wesley’s hymns would welcome this book with open arms, written as it is by the president of the Charles Wesley Society. But these are not studies for the busy, the overworked or overwrought.

I don’t want to descry this book, however. Provided you have the stickability, you’d certainly come out of Lent/Easter enriched. I’d guess that you would be struck by the sheer breadth of Wesley’s Christianity. You would have a definite ‘take’ on life, death and resurrection, which would probably leave a lasting impression. It’s just that, as with all devotional materials, it has to ‘work’ for you.