Odd Bag

Have you ever heard of William Cowper? Probably not. But it is much more likely that you know some of what William Cowper has written. Know the phrase, “Variety is the spice of life”? That was William Cowper–

Variety’s the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.

(Book II, The Timepiece, l. 606)

And if you go to church, or sing hymns, you may know more of what he has written. Perhaps most famous:

There is a fountain fill’d with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, as vile as he,
Wash’d all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransom’d church of God
Be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing Thy power to save;
When this poor lisping stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.

Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared
(Unworthy though I be)
For me a blood-bought free reward,
A golden harp for me!

‘Tis strung and tuned for endless years,
And form’d by power divine,
To sound in God the Father’s ears
No other name but Thine.

But then also,

Oh! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refershing view
Of Jesus and his word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void,
The world can never fill.

Return, O holy Dove, return!
Sweet the messenger of rest!
I hate the sins that made thee mourn
And drove thee from my breast.

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

And finally,

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

William Cowper and John Newton wrote a hymn book called Olney Hymns. It was very popular in its day and some survive in popularity today. To have written such great hymns William Cowper must have been a great man, right? But the story of William Cowper’s life is not what you would expect after reading those hymns.

Cowper suffered from severe manic depression and in 1763 when he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords, he broke under the strain of the approaching examination and experienced a period of insanity. At this time he tried three times to commit suicide and was sent to Nathaniel Cotton’s asylum at St. Albans for recovery. Then again in 1773, Cowper, now engaged to marry Mrs. Unwin, experienced a new attack of insanity, imagining not only that he was condemned to hell eternally, but that God was commanding him to make a sacrifice of his own life.

In the aftermath of his suicide attempts he penned the following poem,

Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,
Scarce can endure delay of execution,
Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas:more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master.
Twice betrayed Jesus me, this last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore hell keeps her ever hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors;
I’m called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram’s.

Him the vindictive rod of angry justice
Sent quick and howling to the center headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb, am
Buried above ground.

It is a sad loss that the people singing “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins” do not really know the man who wrote those words. When people go to church to sing hymns they want to think about great hymns written by great men. But it would be better if they knew also “Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion” for though those words do not rest sweet upon the ear, they speak words of truth, words of brokenness, needed to be heard. All the great men people think they see are broken men. They are broken in ways that shock and dismay us. And far from being a thing shirked from, it should be a truth that informs our understanding of words lifted in praise.

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(1) Wikipedia article on William Cowper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cowper
(2) Selected quotations from William Cowper: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Cowper
(3) Poems of William Cowper: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/abuse-of-the-gospel/
(4) Olney Hymns Online: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/newton/olneyhymns.toc.html