Him Prophet, and King, And Priest we proclaim, We triumph and sing Of Jesus’s name; Poor idiots[146] He teaches To show forth His praise, And tell of the riches Of Jesus’s grace. No matter how dull The scholar whom He Takes into His school, And gives him to see; A wonderful fashion Of teaching He hath, And wise to salvation He makes us through faith. To a generation brought up to regard Sankey’s _Songs and Solos_ as the best possible hymns for mission-halls and open-air services, a study of Wesley’s hymns is a liberal education. For the most ignorant of the converts the hymns were the one and only means of culture. They could not read, much of the preaching must have been beyond their comprehension, but the hymns, read slowly, a line at a time, soon became familiar, and the favourite hymns sung over and over again in the house, the class-room, and the family circle, became a part of their very life. Methodist biography shows how the life and death of the saints has been cheered and sanctified by these spiritual songs. The most important, and by far the largest, part of Wesley’s _Collection_ was devoted to hymns of the Christian life. It is divided into sections: For Believers Rejoicing, Fighting, Praying, Watching, Working, Suffering, Seeking for Full Redemption, Saved, Interceding for the World. It begins with his own translation of Johann Andreas Rothe’s great hymn Now I have found the ground wherein Sure my soul’s anchor may remain, The wounds of Jesus, for my sin, Before the world’s foundation slain; Whose mercy shall unshaken stay, When heaven and earth are fled away This is followed by his version of Zinzendorf’s hymn Jesu, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress. After these Moravian hymns are a number of Charles Wesley’s, which celebrate the joys of believers, for ‘How should not he be glad, whom the glad tidings have reached?’[147] It is often difficult to understand John Wesley’s principle of classification, but in this section almost every hymn of the seventy-five is obviously well placed under the title ‘For Believers Rejoicing.’ The notes of thanksgiving are very varied, from the calm confidence of ‘Now I have found the ground’ to the simple songs written for him ‘that in God is merry,’ such as O what shall I do My Saviour to praise, So faithful and true, So plenteous in grace, So strong to deliver, So good to redeem The weakest believer That hangs upon Him! and My God, I am Thine, What a comfort divine, What a blessing to know That my Jesus is mine!