"Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" is a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley, first published in 1747. It was initially published as part of his Hymns for Those that Seek and Find and quickly became a central hymn in both Methodist and wider Christian worship. The hymn reflects Wesley's teachings on Christian perfection, expressing a longing for God's transforming and sanctifying grace.This is the rubric for the hymn in the 1935 (U.S.) Methodist hymn book.
The hymn has been set to various tunes, including "Blaenwern" and "Hyfrydol". It is sung in services, including royal weddings, across many denominations.
Background It first appeared in Wesley's Hymns for those that Seek, and those that Have Redemption (Bristol, 1747), apparently intended as a Christianization of the song "Fairest Isle" sung by Venus in Act 5 of John Dryden and Henry Purcell's semi-opera King Arthur (1691), on which Wesley's first stanza is modelled.
Wesley wrote:
Love Divine, all Loves excelling, Joy of Heaven to Earth come down, Fix in us thy humble Dwelling, All thy faithful Mercies crown;
Dryden had written:
Fairest Isle, all Isles Excelling, Seat of Pleasures, and of Loves; Venus here, will chuse her Dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian Groves.King Arthur: or, The British Worthy. A Dramatick Opera. Perform'd at the QVEENS Theatre By Their Majesties Servants. Written by Mr. Dryden (London : printed for Jacob Tonson, 1691) [Wing D2299] p. 48.
In Dryden's song, the goddess of love chooses the Isle of Britain over her native Cyprus; in Wesley's hymn divine love itself is asked to choose the human heart as its residence over its native heaven.
The last lines of the hymn are likewise adapted from existing material. Wesley's final lines,
Till we cast our Crowns before Thee, Lost in Wonder, Love, and Praise!
evidently derive from (and improve on) Addison's opening lines from his "Hymn on Gratitude to the Deity"
When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys; Transported with the view, I'm lost In wonder, love, and praise.The poetical works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq. (Glasgow, 1750), p. 198.
It has been suggested that Wesley's words were written specifically for the tune by Purcell to which Dryden's song had been set, and to which the hymn's words themselves were later set (under the tune name "Westminster") by John Wesley in his Sacred Melody, the "annex" to his Select Hymns with tunes annext (1761 et seq.).Watson. An Annotated Anthology, p. 197; Maurice Frost, ed., Historical Companion to Hymns Ancient and Modern ([London]: William Clowes, 1962), hymn 205 (p. 258). The 1675 edition of Sacred Melody is available through ECCO.
Like many hymns, Love Divine is loosely trinitarian in organization: Christ is invoked in the first stanza as the expression of divine love; the Holy Spirit in the second stanza as the agent of sanctification; the Father in the third stanza as the source of life; and the Trinity (presumably) in the final stanza as the joint Creator of the New Creation. Like many hymns, too, this one is a tissue of biblical quotations, including "Alpha and Omega" (st. 2) as an epithet of Christ, from ; the casting of crowns before God's throne (st. 4), from ; the promise that Christians shall be "changed from glory into glory" (st. 2 and 4), from ; as well as other, more general allusions. Candy Gunther Brown, "Singing Pilgrims..." in Sing them over again to me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America, ed. by Mark A. Noll and Edith Waldvogel Blumhofer (University of Alabama Press, 2006), p. 200.
Textual history
At its first appearance, the hymn was in four stanzas of eight lines (8.7.8.7.D), and this four-stanza version remains in common and current use to the present day, being taken up as early as 1760 in Anglican collections such as those by Madan (1760 and 1767), Conyers (1772), and Toplady (1776); in hymn books associated with Whitefield (1767, 1800) and the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion (1780, and 1800); and in Methodist hymn books slightly outside the mainstream (the Select Hymns of 1783; Spence's Pocket Hymn Books of the early 19th century; and the American "Wesleyan" Methodist hymn books).Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 698; A Collection of Hymns for the use of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection in America, compiled by Cyrus Prindle (Syracuse, N.Y. : Lucius C. Matlack, 1845), p. 236.
A second, abridged version (with the second stanza omitted), appeared as early as 1778 in Hymns and Psalms for the Service of Fitz-Roy Chapel (London, 1778), then in the Wesleyan "Large Hymn Book" of 1780, and thence in many others, chiefly British and predominantly Anglican, but including also many later official Methodist hymn books. A sample collation of 85 hymn books containing some version of this hymn suggests that the abridged version appears in roughly 25% of Protestant hymn books; the full four-stanza version in most of the remainder.Among the many collections that omit the second stanza are Hymns and Psalms for the Service of Fitz-Roy Chapel (London, 1778); John Wesley, A collection for hymns for the use of the people called Methodists ("The Large Hymn Book"), 3rd ed., 1782; The Hartford Selection (Hartford, Conn., 1802); John Rippon's popular and much reprinted Selection, consulted in the 'Comprehensive Ed.' (London, c. 1840); Parish Hymns (Philadelphia, 1848); Thomas Aylward's Sarum Hymnal (London, 1869); the successors to The Large Hymnal, e.g. A collection of hymns for the use of the people called Methodists (London, 1877); Common praise : Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs for use in the Church of England (London, 1879); Our own Hymn-book : a Collection of Psalms and Hymns..., compiled by C. H. Spurgeon (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1883; A Publication of Hymns by William & Christopher Batty, to which are added a selection from various authors (13th ed.; Kendal : Thompson Brothers, 1896); The English Hymnal (1906 and rev. ed., 1933); Hymns ancient and modern, std. ed. (London, 1924); The Presbyterian and Reformed Church Hymnary, rev. ed. (1927); Songs of Praise, enlarged ed. (1931); The Methodist hymn-book (London, 1933); The Pilgrim hymnal, rev. ed. (Boston, 1935); The BBC hymn book (Oxford, 1951); The Hymn Book of the Anglican Church of Canada (1971); Hymns Ancient & Modern revised (London: William Clowes, ); The Hymnal 1985 according to the use of the Episcopal Church (New York, 1985); Hymns and Psalms (London: Methodist Publishing House, 1983); and Baptist praise and worship (Oxford, 1991).
Theologically-motivated alterations The omission of the second stanza is consistent with several other loci of textual variation in the hymn in this respect: the passages which are most subject to change tend for the most part to be those that advance a distinctively Wesleyan "Perfectionist" account of the Christian life—i.e. those that suggest that one can be completely cleansed of sin in this life, by means of a "second blessing" whereby committed and sanctified Christians rest wholly in God and may be said to share the holiness of Christ himself.Candy Gunther Brown, "Singing Pilgrims..." in Sing them over again to me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America, ed. Noll and Blumhofer (2006), pp. 199-200, contrasts the attitudes toward sanctification expressed by this hymn and by Toplady's Rock of Ages as typical of the Wesleyan/Calvinist divide. Watson, Annotated Anthology, p. 195 strangely suggests the opposite, that the second stanza was omitted "presumably" because it was not Perfectionist enough.
Many—certainly including those of a more Calvinist persuasion, and even perhaps Wesley's brother John—found this idea troublesome. Even some fairly innocuous lines ("Let us all thy Life receive," stanza 3) were probably read as suspiciously Perfectionist, hence the common alteration to "Let us all thy Grace receive."Beginning, apparently, with John Wesley's "Large Hymn book" of 1780 and its successors, including the British Methodist hymn-book of 1933 and the American Methodist hymnal of 1935. William Taylor, Collection of Psalms and Hymns ... for the congregation of Northampton Chapel (London, 1777), p. 71, offers another variant, similarly motivated: "let us life and pow'r receive." William Taylor was one of the Countess of Huntingdon's preachers, whose activities led to the expulsion of her chapels from the Church of England.
The same is probably true of other oft-changed lines. Most of the more enduring alterations occurred in one or another of the hymn books that together constituted the fledgling ecumenical Evangelical hymnody that emerged in the decades around 1770, partly from the Calvinist wing of the Church of England, partly from Calvinistic Methodists and their circle; preeminently among them the collections of Martin Madan (1760 and many subsequent editions), his imitator Richard Conyers (1772); the more overtly Calvinistic Anglican Augustus Toplady; the hymn books of erstwhile Wesley ally, George Whitefield; and those associated with the Countess of Huntingdon's chapels (and their later incarnation as the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion). Madan in particular is known for his influential hymn tinkering:
Madan's knack in reconstructing the work of other hands made his book a permanent influence both for good and evil. A number of familiar hymns still bear the marks of his editorial revision.Benson, p. 330. "Conyers followed Madan's lead and appropriated fully two thirds of the contents of Madan's Collection" (Benson, p. 331).
It was doubtless on theological grounds that the line "Finish then thy New Creation" (stanza 4) was often replaced by "Carry on thy (or 'the') new creation," the latter suggesting an ongoing process of sanctification rather than its achievement; and "Let us see thy great Salvation / Perfectly restor'd in Thee," frequently changed to "...our whole salvation / secured by Thee"), a formulation which also resolves some ambiguous referents. Wesley's original probably meant (in crude paraphrase) "let us experience the great salvation that you provide, so that we will be perfected by participation in you"; unease with the ambiguity, and probably also with the theology, led to revised language that if less striking was felt to be clearer and more orthodox. Both of these changes were introduced by Augustus Toplady's collection of 1776, followed by the Countess of Huntingdon's collections (e.g. that of 1780 and 1800).Augustus Toplady, Psalms and hymns (London, 1776), pp. 102-103; A Collection to be Sung in ... Countess of Huntington's Chapels (1780), p. 126; A Select Collection of Hymns to be Universally sung in all the Countess of Huntington's Chapels (1800). A less radical change, 'thy great salvation ... restored by thee' was introduced by Madan's collection of 1760 and its followers (Martin Madan, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (London, 1760 and 1767); Richard Conyers, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, (London, 1772)); as well as by George Whitefield's collections (A collection of Psalms and hymns for Social Worship, extracted from various authors, and published by the Revd. Mr. Dyer (London, 1767); George Whitefield, A Collection of Hymns for social worship ... for the use of the Tabernacle Congregation (1767 and 1800).)
"Pure and sinless let us be" (stanza 4) was toned down, or at least made less absolute, by alteration to "Pure and holy," (Toplady 1776 again, followed again by the Countess of Huntingdon 1780 and 1800) and similar substitutes, especially the very common "Pure, unspotted" (Madan, Conyers, and Whitefield) and "Pure and spotless" (John Wesley's Select Hymns for ... all denominations, 5th ed. (1774) through 9th ed. (1783), followed by his "Large Hymn Book" (1780), and the Methodist "Pocket Hymn Books.")