The Life Of Joseph Hart 5

Thomas Wright | Added: Jul 07, 2026 | Category: Biography

Hart opened the new year with a hymn that has aptly been described as ‘an epitome of vital and experimental religion’, ‘Lamb of God! we fall before Thee’. Many a good man has regarded it as his creed, and has recited it on his death-bed with streaming eyes and quivering lip – deriving comfort from every sustaining sentence. Fitting companions to it are, ‘Oh the pangs by Christians felt’, and hymn 19, which contains the verse,

Our good Guide and Saviour

Hath helpèd thus far;

And ’tis by His favour

We are what we are.

Few hymnists can approach Hart when he is upon the subject of sorrow.

Boast not, ye sons of earth,

Nor look with scornful eyes;

Above your highest mirth

Our saddest hours we prize.

For though our cup seems fill’d with gall,

There’s something secret sweetens all.

Then there is that other cheering reminder:

Trials may press of every sort,

They may be sore, they must be short.

It should steadily be borne in mind that many of the hymns were intended simply for private reading – No. 24, for example, ‘A Dialogue between a Believer and his soul’, being quite unsuited for public worship. No. 26, ‘The Narrow Way’, reminds us, along with other hymns, that Hart was saturated with John Bunyan. The Christian’s way, as Hart sees it, is choked first of all by ‘two dangerous gulfs’ – Dead Sloth and Pharisaic Pride. The pilgrim is confused by the beckoning finger of Jack o’ Lantern and the cries of untrustworthy guides. At every turn he encounters new dangers and new foes; and these dangers passed, these foes overcome, he is confronted by the last foe of all, the ‘ghastly phantom, death’. The sequel is an answer to the question, ‘If this be the way, who can hope to attain the prize?’ ‘Be not afraid’, says Hart, ‘One is at your side, even though you neither feel nor see Him. Therefore, whatever foe oppose, you are absolutely safe.’

When all these foes are quell’d,

And every danger past;

Though death remains, he but remains

To be subdued at last.

We may sum it all up with, Only dastards doubts their God. To ‘The Author’s own Confession’ reference has already been made. Hymn 28 concludes with the oft quoted

Meanwhile that foe can’t boast of much

Who makes us watch and pray;

And in No. 32 Hart once more dwells lovingly on the recollection that Jesus was once a helpless babe in a little Syrian town, concluding with the tremendous stanza:

No less almighty at His birth

Than on His throne supreme:

His shoulders held up heaven and earth

While Mary held up Him.

In hymns 33 to 36, which were written on or near Good Friday, 1758, Hart endeavours to touch the human heart by the recital of our Lord’s sufferings, and in hymn 42 he deals with the subject of election, the doctrine which he had so stoutly championed even in his unregenerate days. Hymn 48 is the ouch for that gem of gems, the verse commencing, ‘But they that in the Lord confide’, a verse which sweetly harmonizes with the concluding lines of another hymn that has endeared itself to multitudes:

Fly to the throne of grace by prayer,

And pour out all your wishes there;

Effectual fervent prayer prevails

When every other method fails.

In No. 58 Hart once reveals some of the secrets of his own heart. His great and unwearied internal enemy, he tells us, was ‘Pride, accursed pride’, that ubiquitous enemy whose appalling power had so forcibly impressed him at the time he was compiling the notes to his ‘Herodian’. Even after he had become enlightened, he found it present at the most unexpected times:

This moment, while I write,

I feel its power within;

My heart it draws to seek applause,

And mixes all with sin.

This hymn was a favourite with the militant minister and hymn-book compiler, John Stevens, of Meard’s Court, Soho, who naturally changed part of the third verse into:

From sinner and from saint

I meet with many a blow.

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