Tag: Charles Wesley
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The lost verse from ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’
Hark! The herald angels sing is one of the most popular Christmas carols, and justifiably so. The words, originally drafted by Charles Wesley but improved upon by his friend George Whitefield, celebrates the purpose of Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem. It begins with the distinctive line: to ‘hark’, meaning listen, because angels, doing the work of…
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‘The veil is rent in Christ alone’
In Charles Wesley’s theologically rich hymn Tis Finished! The messiah dies, there’s a curious phrase: “The veil is rent in Christ alone”. Great hymn, but that line seems like gobbledegook. To my parents’ generation, the meaning might have been obvious because it’s actually based on a quotation from the Authorised Version of the bible. It…