“And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.” – 1 Corinthians 15:14 (NKJV)

An Easter Day standard, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” is one of the most well-known of the Wesleyan hymns. Dating from 1739, it comes from a period where John & Charles Wesley had found themselves out of favor with their fellow Anglican ministers because the Wesley brothers had embraced a “fiery, evangelistic”* style of preaching. Charles had been invited by a friend from his Oxford days, George Whitfield (who was also in the same trouble with the Anglicans) to start preaching “in the open air”. In London, George asked Charles to stand with him as he preached to thousands, which led to Charles getting a vision for reaching the multitudes.

He was invited by a farmer to preach in his field in the outskirts of London, and roughly 500 came and listened to Charles Wesley preach. He was elated after that experience, and soon he was preaching to thousands. “My load was gone, and all my doubts and scruples. God shone upon my path; and I knew this was his will concerning me.” A man named Joseph Williams heard him preach in Bristol and spoke of Charles’s earnest labor to convince his hearers that “they were all by nature in a sinful, lost, undone, damnable state; that notwithstanding, there was a possibility of their salvation, though faith in Christ…”

This beginning of the real ministry of Charles Wesley is marked through the exuberant eleven — 11! — verses to “Hymn for Easter Day”, published in 1739. The Alleluias were not originally part of the text, and were added later to make it singable to the tune from the Lyra Davidica, a collection of hymns and tunes from 1708. The collection was one of many containing hymns translated (mostly) from German, at a time when Anglicanism was heavily influenced by German evangelical pietism. Notably, this tune — what we know as “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” — is the only tune to survive to this day.

It’s exuberance and unending praise to the risen Lord is just like that of the preaching of Charles Wesley. May our praise be equally so.

*quotes from Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan, (c) 2003 Robert J. Morgan