When Peter Moger announced among the local clergy that he was setting-up a sermon series of favourite hymns, why did I immediately volunteer to speak about, ‘O Love that wilt not let me go?’
Was it the melodramatic side to my nature, which rather responds to Victorian tear-jerkers with swoopy tunes, or that Dr A L Peace, who wrote the tune, named it ‘St Margaret?, or was it the fact that the hymn has a kind of mythical status in my family...?
I first heard of it from my father, “that was the hymn”, he used to say, “they sang at Auntie Mary’s funeral”. Whether he really liked the hymn himself or perhaps thought it a bit over-emotional, was never quite clear. But from that point onwards, ‘O love that wilt not let me go’ was always associated in my mind with Antie Mary, (herself a near-mythical figure, whom I had never known) and with funerals.
As I came to know the hymn – for it occasionally cropped-up in the repertoire of my school chapel, though I’m sure that by the 1960’s it would have been considered pretty dated – anyway, as I came to know it for myself, it always struck me as eminently suitable for funerals. And I should still, to this day, like to think that people might manage to sing it at mine, however, much it has fallen into disuse, and however challenging the tune to those who don’t know it. And, as we shall hear in a moment or two, there are reasons why it is suitable for funerals.
But first let me tell you a bit about Auntie Mary. She was a lowland Scot, from a large, middle-class Victorian family. For most of her life she was a spinster, and trained and practised as a nurse, eventually becoming a matron.
For a few years, in middle-age I believe, she was married to one of her cousins, who was older than her, and predeceased her by many years.
In my father’s growing-up years, which were way back in the 20’s and 30’s, she lived as a widow in a mansion flat in central London, and attended one of London’s two Church of Scotland congregations, at Crown Court. My father, and his brothers and sister, used to take tea with her regularly, and were very fond of her, though what her personal qualities were, I don’t really know. Once, when the family was on holiday in the Lake District, they climbed Scafell Pike – and at the top, my father’s younger sister said, “let’s have a minute’s silence to think about Auntie Mary.”
That’s about all I know of her. I think she died in the early 50’s, before I was born. When her name is mentioned, I think of London Mansion flats, a grey-haired matron, and ‘O Love that wilt not let me go’.
But, you will have noticed that Auntie Mary was a Scots Presbyterian. And it was from the pen of a Church of Scotland Minister that this hymn came in 1882. The author was George Matheson. He was 40 years old, and wrote it in his Manse at Innellan, Argyllshire. The unusual think about Matheson was that he was blind, and had been from his youth.
There is a legend, which is apparently completely untrue, that Matheson wrote these words when his fiance broke-off their engagement on learning that he had recently become blind. It’s a wonderfully heard-rending story, but according to Matheson’s sister, and according to the date he wrote the hymn, many years after his sight failed – it can be nothing but fiction.
What George Matheson did say of the hymn was this, “it was composed with extreme rapidity; it seemed that its construction only occupied a few minutes, and I felt myself rather in the position of one who was bneing dictated to than of an original artist. I was suffering from extreme mental distress, and the hymn was the fruit of pain.”
This was explained later, by his sister, who told a hymn researcher that he had, at that time, suffered a sad bereavement. Though of whom either Miss Matheson or the hymn researcher didn’t see fit to tell us!
But, you see now the association of the hymn with bereavement, making it particularly suitable for funerals: and one can read the lines from the point of view either of a sadly bereaved person – “I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain that morn shall tearless be” (v.3) or, indeed, from the point of view of the person passing through the very experience of death itself, “I give thee back the life I owe,” (v.1), “I yield my flickering torch to thee” (v.2), “I lay in dust life’s glory dead,” (v.4). Either way, it’s a hymn of an individual’s Passion, looking towards Resurrection.
One of the striking things about the hymn is that God is addressed not personally, but through abstract nouns – Love, Light and Joy – and one impersonal symbol – ‘O cross’. And yet it is an intensely personal hymn. Behind these seemingly abstract or impersonal nouns is Someone “who will not let me go, who follows all my way, who seeks me, and lifts up my head.” The tension between the impersonal names and the highly personal actions creates some of the charge which makes this hymn powerful.
Another factor – all the more poignantly effecting when we know of Matheson’s disability – is the use of images of light and colour in virtually every verse except the first, (where the image of the ocean depths itself has powerful emotive connotations.) But, just think of the light and colour imagery, in vv.2-4: the flickering torch, the borrowed ray, the sunshine’s blaze, and the eternal daylight of God. The rainbow, seen through rain (the raindrops of tears?, and then life’s glory, forcefully blossoming in red – a red that is all the more vivid because it stands out against its background, or womb, of dust: red, the colour of blood, passion and love.
All this I find moving, on a poetic level. But what is the theology of the hymn? Well, it’s a theology of overwhelming grace, God takes the initiative – we can only respond.
So often, if we think of Presbyterianism, and the Calvinism in which it’s rooted, we may think of a picture of God which is forbidding, fearful and capricious. God chooses the elect and damns the reprobate. Human choice has nothing to do with it. This is a view of grace, seen from the outside as both irresistible and random. It’s a view which seems calculated to inspire anger and defiance rather than love.
But Matheson write from within the experience of irresistible grace – not speculating coldly whether it touches him and not others. He simply expresses that great truth that the doctrine of irresistible grace really enshrines – that God’s is a love that simply will not let us go. It pursues us tirelessly and will win in the end. We don’t have to love God first to make him love us. We may even try to struggle free from the implications of his love for us – but it will remain there as an overwhelming reality – an ocean, a blazing sun. It brings to my mind dimly remembered verses from another poet – this time a Catholic one: Francis Thomson – The Hound of Heaven.’
But Matheson doesn’t describe the prolonged human flight from God. He gives voice to the moment of grateful yielding, - describing it as rest for the weary soul, and a growing assurance in a true promise of things unseen.
The fruit of this yielding, this rest, this assurance, is captured in vivid descriptions of the life we call eternal, both in this world and the next: - it is richer, fuller, brighter, fairer, tearless and endless.
I have suggested that this is a hymn for funerals and bereavement because it speaks so powerfully of death and eternal life.
But perhaps it’s also a hymn for those moments in Christian life which evangelicals describe as conversion. In those moments, somehow, somewhere, deep within we say “yes” to the love, light and joy which is God. We say “yes” through resting on the Cross of Christ, and on nothing else; and in those moments we experience the truth of St Paul’s words:- “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” when Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory”. (Col.3-4).