Charles lacked the breadth of view, the practical cast of mind, the wisdom, of his brother; and in measures of Church administration his influence over the latter was slight. Perhaps the remark of Dr. Stevens is justified : •' Had the leadership of Methodism early devolved upon him by the death of his brother, as was at one time like- ly, it woidd ]ir(]bal)ly have been either extinct to-day, or hardly distinguisliable as a special religious agency in the world" {Hist, of Methodism, ii, 275). It was as a hymnist his influence over Methodism was so great and so blessed.
5. His Jlymns.— Charles Wesley's fame rests, and will forever rest, upon his hymns. Upon these it is secure for all time. Critics, however, have found certain faults in these hymns. These alleged defects we will first give. They call attention to "the prosaic, literal, doctrinal character of many of the lines: their occasional harsh- ness, and the preponderance of the subjective element of personal experience" (A mer. Presb. Rev. April, 1867, p. 343). "The paucity of his topics produces frequent repetition. He has little variety of manner, and less variety of matter. . , . Many of his pieces wear the ex-
clusive aspect of the sectarian;, he casts his mite into the treasury of a party; he writes as a poet of ]Mcthod- ism, not as the servant of the universal Church" (INlilner, Life of Watts'). Certain extravagant expressions and violations of correct judgment and taste are pointed out: as, e.g., the remarkable hymn, "Ah, lovely appear- ance in death," the lines of which, the objector allows, "are invested with all his own grace and tenderness" (Bird, JiibUoth. Sac. Jan. 1GG4, p. 143). [Dr. Whcdon stoutly defends this hymn, taking issue with Dr. Floy and critics generally. He saj-s it is rarely excelled for originality, solemnity, and pathos; compares it with Byron's celebrated passage in the Giaour, and awards the palm to the poem of Wesley, "describing an inex- pressible moral and divine beauty connected with repose from the toils, sorrows, and sins of life, and the hush of the spirit to its eternal and ineffable repose" (Meih. Quar. Rev. April, 1867, p. 307).] Finally, George Mac- donald — an undoubted authority — denies them " much literary merit" {England's Antiphon, 1869. See also ad- verselv, J. D. Burns, in the Encyckrp. Brit., 8th ed., xii, 189). '
On the other side, we give the judgment of a Luther- an critic. Rev. Frederic M. Bird, a most thorough and ardent student of Wesleyan hymnology. We quote from an able, elaborate, and interesting review in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan. and April, 1864: "The more extensively and closely his writings are examined, the more will be found in them worthy to be admired and used" (p. 129). "Dr. Watts has been commonly con- sidered the most powerfid of hymnists. The published Wesleyan hymns are five times as nimicrous as his ; and of this immense mass the literary standard is far higher than that of the lesser bulk of the more celebrated writ- er. Set aside one hundred of Watts's and five hundred of Wesley's best hymns, there will be no comparison between the remainder in style and poetic merit. Dr. Watts was a poet at certain times, and under special inspiration; Charles Wesley was a poet by nature and habit, and almost always wrote as such. Of course his effusions are not equal among themselves; but he es- tablished and obser^-ed, through all his multiplicity of, verses, a standard which no other hymn-writer, up to his time, was able to approach, and which none has since surpassed" (ibid.). " No other sacred poet has at- tempted such a 'variety of matter;' and his versatile muse handles all these multifarious topics with unequal- led, almost with unvarying, ease and grace. . . . There are no hymns in the world of such 'spontaneous devo- tion ;' none so loftily spiritual ; none so unmistakably genuine and intensely earnest, as the best-known and most largely used of Wesley's. It is the highest praise of the few noblest hymns of Watts and Cowper that they reach an elevation on which the Slethodist poet generally sat, and express a mental state which was habitual with him" (p. 140). "No hymn-writer is more intellectual; none puts more doctrine, thought, solid mental pabulum into his poems. And certaiidy none is more awakening and edifying; few others, in fact, approach him in native moral earnestness, force, fire; and none possesses a higher, purer, more consistent, uniforrft, and positive spirituality" (p. 311). "As a po- lemic poet Charles Wesley has never been equalled. . . . The most powerful, combative, and controversial poems we have ever seen appeared in Hymns on God's Ever- lasting Ljove, published in 1741, and greatly eidarged in 1756"" (p. 288-289). Mr. Bird gives a fine resume of these rhyming polemics. " The Funeral Hymns of Charles Wesley are, perhaps, the noblest specimens of his genius" (see further, p. 298 sq.). "Doddridge and Steele are diluted reproductions of Dr. Watts. Mont- gomery, a professed and life-long poet, is inferior to Wes- ley in all the qualities mentioned above, and in no re- spect above him in propriety, harmony, and grace of style. Heber, the most elegant and mellifluous of sa- cred poets, is not more polished and fluent than his Methodist predecessor; nor has he anything of his so-