Wesley Corpus

Hymns for the Nation (1781)1 Baker list, 422 423 Editorial Introduction: In 1775 the Continental Congress established an army and began the military struggle for independence from Britain. The outcome of this struggle was uncertain for a few years. But on October 19, 1781, the American and French forces successfully forced the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, in the Battle of the Chesapeake. While formal peace was still over a year away, this decisive victory marked the end of a major British land force in North America. As news of the defeat reached England, George III lost control of Parliament to the peace party and the staunch royalists were deeply disheartened. Charles Wesley was among the disheartened supporters of the king and the war. He expressed his anguish in a (growing) set of Hymns for the Nation that began to appear in late 1781. The hymns reflect clearly the British sense of being humbled by the defeat, though occasional glimmers of hope shine through that God might yet reverse the tables. Charles shows concern for those still loyal to the king in America, given the defeat, and betrays his presumption that the colonists will not succeed in building their own nation (see hymn 8). While there is a faint echo of the apocalyptic tone of "Hymns for 1745" in hymn 9, Charles's resignation to a more traditional amillennial eschatology is evident in hymn 16, stanza 5. The publication history of this collection is complex. Charles issued an initial pamphlet with nine hymns (Part I in Table of Contents below), which he followed very shortly with another pamphlet containing eight more hymns (Part II in Table of Contents below). The pagination in the second pamphlet started over, but the numbering of the hymns did not it began with hymn 10. Within a month Charles released another printing that combined the two parts, in which the numbering of both the hymns and the pages was consecutive. Since there were minimal textual changes, and they all appeared in the same year, the text of this combined edition (shown in red font in the list of editions) is given below. This combined edition was reprinted once, apparently in 1782. Then an edition was printed that added the fifteen hymns of Hymns for the National Fast (1782) to the collection.