Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35a)
On June 6, 1882 George Matheson penned the hauntingly beautiful words to the hymn “0 Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Here’s how he describes it:
“My hymn was composed in the manse of lnnelan [Argyleshire, Scotland] on the evening of the 6th of June, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse of that time. It was the night of my sister’s marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice rather than of working it out myself I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”
When he was about 20, George went totally blind and his fiancée broke off their engagement because, she told him, she didn’t want to go through life with a blind man. So, twenty years later, he wrote these words on the occasion of his sister’s wedding. His sister had cared for him for many years and, no doubt, he was sad and anxious about the loss of her help and company. Who knows what all the “mental suffering” he is referring to is (no doubt, he thought about the wedding/marriage he never had and wondered about what life would be like in the future without his sister’s aid and companionship), whatever the case, these circumstances are suggestive of the depth of his pain.
0 Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
— Rev Dr Ligon Duncan