Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

Charles Wesley

On April 29, 2011, millions of people around the world turned on their televisions to watch one of the most anticipated spectacles of the year: the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The ceremony featured a number of hymns, one of which was “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” a hymn that is both appropriate and seemingly paradoxical for a wedding. This ceremony was so celebrated because it represented the “dream” for romance - a prince finding his princess, true loves coming together, and a couple rising above the odds to be together. This, we argue so easily, is love. And yet this hymn reorients us to see that this beautiful wedding and marriage is only, and can only ever be, a reflection of the Love above all loves. We are only able to love one another because Christ first loved us. God is love, and we are the mirrors and bearers of that love to each other. Let us pray that we would continually be filled with Love, that we might bless each other, and become more and more like He who loves us.

Charles Wesley, the 18th child of Samuel and Susanna Wesley, was born at Epworth, Dec. 18, 1707. He was educated at Westminster School and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. In 1735, he took Orders and immediately proceeded with his brother John to Georgia, both being employed as missionaries. He returned to England in 1736. For many years he engaged with his brother in preaching the Gospel. He died March 29, 1788. Charles Wesley has been justly assigned the appellation of the "Bard of Methodism." His prominence in hymn writing may be judged from the fact that in the "Wesleyan Hymn Book," 623 of the 770 hymns were written by him; and he published more than thirty poetical works, written either by himself alone, or in conjunction with his brother. The number of his separate hymns is at least five thousand.

Blessings, Dorene

Sources:
hymnary.org/person/Wesley_Charles
hymnary.org/text/love_divine_all_love_excelling_joy_of_he