"AMAZING GRACE" - Americans' favourite hymn according to the Gallup Poll - was written by the former captain of a slave ship. That "wretch," John Newton, eventually became an Anglican minister and worked to abolish the slave trade.
Isaac Watts, who wrote such well-known hymns as "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and "Joy to the World", was an accomplished writer in many areas. He wrote a textbook on logic that was used at Oxford. His children's hymnal may be the most popular children's classic ever published. Alice in Wonderland parodied some of its hymns (for example, "Tis the Voice of the lobster, I heard him declare.")
Isaac Watts' collection of psalms and hymns was still selling as many as 60,000 copies per year over 100 years after it was published. His Psalms of David went through 31 editions in its first 50 years, including a 1729 reprinting issued by Benjamin Franklin.
William Cowper wrote 68 hymns; John Newton wrote 280; Philip Doddridge wrote around 400; and Isaac Watts wrote 697. But Charles Wesley wrote 8,989.
William Cowper, who wrote a classic hymn on God's providence - "God Moves in a Mysterious Way His Wonders to Perform" - tried a number of times to commit suicide. He suffered from mental illness.
In 18th Century England, many hymns contained rhyming words that no longer rhyme today. For example, join could rhyme with divine or thine; and convert could rhyme with art.
Eighteenth-century hymn books were usually only collections of texts - they did not include musical notes. The first American hymnal to join tunes with texts was not published until 1831.
The usual method of singing in church was by "lining out" - having a leader say one line, and the congregation repeat it. (This was done because hymn books were expensive, and many worshipers could not read.) People did not sing one line immediately after another, as they do now.
EDITOR'S NOTE: "The remarkable hymn-writing skills of Charles and John Wesley" appeared on Page 17 of the September 2005 issue of Methodist Message.