Samuel Medley was a midshipman in the navy, but being sorely wounded in a terrible naval battle off Cape Lagos, he refused to continue as a naval officer. During his recovery he was soundly converted under the influence of his grandfather Tonge. After being at the head of a school for a time, he accepted a Baptist pastorate. Medley wrote a number of hymns, of which “O could I speak the matchless worth,” “Awake, my soul, to joyful lays,” “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and “Mortals, awake, with angels join,” are still found in most of our hymnals. He claimed no literary merit for himself, but his hymns have found a hearty response in England, and even more in America. Joseph Grigg (1720-1768) was not a Methodist or a Baptist, but a Presbyterian. He is further noteworthy as an “infant phenomenon,” having written a very familiar hymn, “Jesus, and shall it ever be?” at the age of ten years. He was in humble circumstances at first, “a laboring mechanic.” He was assistant minister in a prominent London Presbyterian church for four years, then “married well” and retired, still writing and preaching. His “Behold, a Stranger at the door,” with a stirring tune by T. C. O’Kane, has been widely used in America as an evangelistic hymn with a refrain. _Chapter XVII_ HYMNS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND I. RISE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH Although the Wesleys were Church of England clergymen, the tide of religious feeling they set in motion could not sweep over the mass of the population without its waves dashing across all ecclesiastical and traditional barriers. But John Wesley’s somewhat arrogant spirit, the extreme methods which he found necessary to reach the lower classes, so desperately in need of a new religious impulse, above all, his sharp reaction against the high Calvinistic theology of the Church, repelled many who had been deeply affected by the Methodist atmosphere that enveloped them and had felt a new sense of obligation to bring back their people to a true religious life. II. EARLY COLLECTIONS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNS The effectiveness of the spontaneous Methodist singing was evident enough and the Evangelical ministers of the Established Church felt the need of collections of hymns that should achieve the same results without what seemed to them the doctrinal vagaries and emotional extravagances of the Wesleyan hymns. Nor were they at first willing to set entirely aside the psalmody that had served the church for so many generations. As might be expected, the earliest collections of hymns for use in the Established churches were largely based on Nonconformist and Wesleyan materials, since most of their editors, and the churches they wished to serve, were under the influence of the Countess of Huntingdon, who in turn was in close touch with the Calvinistic-Methodist movement.