Paradise Found

Regular visitors to this blog may have noticed a predeliction for the hymns of Charles Wesley. This year is the 300th anniversary of his birth and to mark that date one of the things that has been done this year is the release of a CD, which I have just purchased. It is by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. Maddy Prior came to prominence in the seventies with the folk rock band Steeleye Span (All around my hat, etc). The Carnival Band specialise in old instruments. I believe they came together to play some Christmas carols at first (they have three or four good Christmas CDs by now) and then later did a collection of 18th Century hymns ('Sing lustily and with good courage'). I remember being in the car with my friend Alan Davey one day and he played this latter album on CD. I was immediately struck and had to get it which I did. More recently I managed to track down a CD version which I've continued to enjoy.

I'd not noticed Paradise Found, which came out back in May, but there was a reference to it in The Times the other week and when I looked there it was on i-tunes and Amazon. I wouldn't want a praise band in church but this is very pleasant (a remarkably old fashioned idea by the way). Everything is done in the folk (rather than operatic) idiom which I think is a better way to sing hymns. There's plenty of well known stuff on this CD (Love Divine All Loves Excelling, Ye Servants Of God, Soldiers Of Christ Arise, Jesu Lover Of My Soul, etc) but often to an unfamiliar tune. There are also new ones to me like Dead Dead The Child I Loved So Well and Come On My Partners In Distress (not all the verses below but some of them). There's a very bouncy 'Come away to the skies' that grabs my fancy most on first listening.

Come on, my partners in distress,
My comrades through the wilderness,
Who still your bodies feel;
Awhile forget your griefs and fears,
And look beyond the vale of tears,
To that celestial hill.

Beyond the bounds of time and space,
Look forward to that happy place,
The saints’ secure abode;
On faith’s strong eagle pinions rise,
And force your passage to the skies,
And scale the mount of God.

See where the Lamb in glory stands,
Encircled with His radiant bands,
And join the angelic powers.
For all that height of glorious bliss,
Our everlasting portion is,
And all that Heaven is ours.

Who suffer with our Master here,
We shall before His face appear
And by His side sit down;
To patient faith the prize is sure,
And all that to the end endure
The cross, shall wear the crown.

Thrice blessèd, bliss-inspiring hope!
It lifts the fainting spirits up,
It brings to life the dead;
Our conflicts here shall soon be past,
And you and I ascend at last,
Triumphant with our Head.

That great mysterious Deity
We soon with open face shall see;
The beatific sight
Shall fill the heavenly courts with praise,
And wide diffuse the golden blaze
Of everlasting light.

The Father shining on His throne,
The glorious co-eternal Son,
The Spirit one and seven,
Conspire our rapture to complete;
And lo! we fall before His feet,
And silence heightens Heaven.

In hope of that ecstatic pause,
Jesus, we now sustain Thy cross,
And at Thy footstool fall,
’Till Thou our hidden life reveal,
’Till Thou our ravished spirits fill,
And God is all in all.