John Bakewell (1721-1819), a Methodist schoolmaster, wrote several hymns, and is widely known as the author of ‘Hail, Thou once despisèd Jesus.’[157] Benjamin Rhodes (1743-1815), converted under the preaching of Whitefield, and for many years a Methodist preacher, wrote one really fine hymn, ‘My heart and voice I raise.’ Another of the early Methodist preachers, John Murlin, ‘the weeping prophet,’ published a small volume of hymns, some of which are quite as good as most of the eighteenth-century songs. IV Eighteenth-century Hymns III.—The Olney Hymns The contribution of evangelical Churchmen, apart from the Wesleys, to the hymnody of the eighteenth century, is slight, with the important exception of the remarkable collection of hymns issued by William Cowper and John Newton, which takes its title from the little Buckinghamshire town in which Newton was for years curate for an absentee vicar. Our little England has been the mother of so many famous sons that it often happens that some out-of-the-way village or obscure country town is rich in memories of the great and good, for Half of her dust has walked the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages. Such a spot is Olney, the town of Cowper and of Cowper’s Mary, of John Newton, and for a time of Thomas Scott, of whom Newman speaks as ‘the writer who made a deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly speaking) I almost owe my soul.’[158] Where William Carey, after some hesitation on the ground of his slight abilities, was ‘allowed to go on preaching,’ and finally sent forth to the ministry by the unanimous vote of the Baptist Church, over which John Sutcliff presided. Where also Dr. H. J. Gauntlett, when a boy of ten, was organist at the parish church.[159] The Olney hymns are at once the ‘monument’ of ‘an intimate and endeared friendship’ and of a memorable literary partnership. ‘The old African blasphemer’ must have felt it even more a matter of thankfulness that he found himself collaborating with William Cowper than that he should become minister of the nearest church to the Mansion House. John Newton’s romantic story is too well known to be repeated here. He is a unique figure in the Christian choir, and the story of our hymn-writers would be vastly poorer if his life were omitted. Influenced, as he gladly recognized, by the mother who died when he was a boy of seven, his soul lay open to intellectual and spiritual impressions, even in the midst of his wanderings and sins. Euclid, as well as Thomas à Kempis, shared in the saving of his soul and kept him from sinking to the level of his companions and oppressors. His hair-breadth escapes were so many and so remarkable that he might well regard them as interpositions of Providence, indicating that he was ‘a chosen vessel’ whom God had designated to special work when his hour should come.