The Love of God

I. Hymn by Lehman

The popular gospel hymn “The Love of God” was first published in Songs That Are Different, Book 1 (Pasadena, CA: Lehman Songs Co., 1918), edited by Frederick M. Lehman (1868–1953). Lehman was a minister in the Church of the Nazarene, and he had recently moved to Pasadena from Kansas City with his wife Emma and eight of his nine children, including his daughter Claudia Faustina [Lehman] Mays (1892–1973) and her young family. The song “The Love of God” was registered for copyright on 15 August 1917, words credited to F.M. Lehman, music credited to F.M. Lehman and Claudia Lehman Mays.[1] When the song was printed in Lehman’s songbook, it carried the same attributions. This early version of the song spanned four stanzas with a refrain.

Of special interest to this song is the final stanza, which was reportedly “penciled on the wall of a narrow room in an insane asylum by a man said to have been demented. The profound lines were discovered as they laid him in his coffin.” The history of those lines and that story are treated below in section III.

When the song was printed in Songs That Are Different, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Combined (1924), it was allowed to take up two pages, eliminating the need for repeats and second endings. Also notice how one of the original lines of the hymn, “God clothed in coats of skins,” was revised here to say “God gave his Son to win.” In this printing, Claudia’s role was redefined as being the source of the harmonization rather than co-composer of the melody.

In 1948, Lehman published a pamphlet titled “History of the Song ‘The Love of God’” (registered for copyright on 15 September 1948). From this emerged a brief explanation of how Lehman came to write the song:

While at camp meeting in a mid-western state, some fifty years ago in our early ministry, an evangelist climaxed his message by quoting the last stanza of this song. The profound depths of the lines moved us to preserve the words for future generations. Not until we had come to California did this urge find fulfillment, and that at a time when circumstances forced us to hard manual labor. One day, during short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and, seated upon an empty lemon box pushed against the wall, with a stub pencil, added the two stanzas and chorus of the song.

FML LoG

Fig. 3. “History of the Song ‘The Love of God’” (Los Angeles: F.M. Lehman, 1948). Courtesy of Church of the Nazarene Archives.

II. Text: Analysis

The central theme of the hymn is the depth of the love of God. This is reflected well in Ephesians 3:17–19, “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (ESV), or see also Romans 8:35–39. The reconciliation mentioned in the first stanza is described in 2 Corinthians 5:17–20 and Colossians 1:19–20. The “guilty pair” are possibly the two thieves on the cross, who are mentioned in the second stanza.

The story of the thieves can be found in Matthew 27:38–44, Mark 15:27–32, Luke 23:32–43, and John 19:18. Praise coming from “the sick and halt and blind” was a regular part of Jesus’ earthly ministry, such as the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11–19 or the blind man at Siloam in John 9. Expressions of continual praise can be found in passages such as Psalm 34:1 or 2 Corinthians 6:10. The endurance of God’s love is proclaimed in the common Old Testament refrain, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Ps. 136:1 and elsewhere).

Revelation 6:15–17 describes people in the last days calling on mountains and rocks. The songs of saints and angels are recounted in Revelation 4, 5, and 7.

Reflecting on the overall message of the song, Baptist pastor Cameron Frank offered this perspective:

The words of this hymn remind me somewhat of the last two sentences in John’s gospel. He signs off with a note that if all the works of Jesus were to be recorded, the earth could not contain the books that would be written. The love of God, similarly, is indescribable in its magnitude and steadfastness. In truth, the words of the hymn could almost stop with “the love of God is greater far” because there is nothing that God’s love isn’t greater than.

If we know how and where to look for it, we can see his love everywhere. From the beauty of the world to Him allowing us to breathe another breath, to the community and relationships He gives us—these are all a part of God’s general revelation of His love. But no greater love has been shown to us than that Jesus died for our sin and, as a result, God welcomes us into His family.[2]

III. The Final Stanza

Much mystery has surrounded the genesis of the final stanza. The story of these lines being written by a lunatic trace back to the poem’s earliest known printing in The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 31 January 1789, p. 2, where the text was headed “On the Love of God: Written by a person reputed to be an Idiot.” Later that year, six lines were printed in The New-Jersey Almanack for the Year of our Lord 1790 . . . Carefully Calculated for the Latitude and Meridian of Philadelphia (Trenton: Isaac Collins, [1789]), on a page for August (Fig. 5). The next earliest printing contains all eight lines, given in A Selection of Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse and Prose (Philadelphia: Daniel Lawrence, 1792), where it is likewise headed “On the Love of God.” The origin of these lines, it would seem, traces from New England, possibly Philadelphia.

This eight-line stanza made its first known appearance in England in The Evangelical Magazine, September 1793, p. 117, uncredited with no heading. The poem’s first appearance in a hymnal was in The Lord’s Songs: A Collection of Composures in Metre (Salem, MA: Joshua Cushing, 1805), compiled by Joshua Spalding.

The attribution of these lines to an Idiot was repeated in several other sources in the first part of the nineteenth century. The story of these lines being inscribed on the wall of an asylum appears as early as 1831 in John Whitecross, The Pleasing Expositor (New York: Jonathan Leavitt), p. 271, where we see “The following lines, composed by a lunatic, were found written on the wall in his cell after his death.” The merits of this story are highly questionable, considering how this brief Christian poem is actually a skilled adaptation of an older, secular poem.

The secular version dates to 1740; it was printed as “The Caution Moderniz’d from Chaucer” in The Second Volume of Lyric Harmony Consisting of Eighteen Entire New Songs and Ballads . . . As Performed at Vaux-Hall Gardens (London: James Simpson, 1741), in a song with music composed by Thomas Augustine Arne (1710–1778). The preface was dated January 1740/1—during a time in which the official New Year was transitioning from March 25 back to January 1, so the publication was January 1741 (New Style) and the song was certainly composed before then, likely in 1740. The stanza in question is the final (fourth) stanza, beginning “Cou’d we with ink the ocean fill,” but instead of extolling the love of God, the lyricist says, “To write the tricks of half the sex / Would suck that ocean dry / Gallants! beware, look sharp, take care / The blind eat many a fly.”

In 1746, the text appeared in two sources, one being The Reading Mercury, a weekly paper, for 4 August 1746, and the other being The London Magazine, also for August 1746. This latter copy contains an important heading, “The Precaution: Moderniz’d from Chaucer, and sung by Mr. Lowe at Vaux Hall,” thus connecting it to the score by Arne. Like the score, the text here begins “From sweet, bewitching tricks of love,” a poem addressed to young men advising them to choose a mate wisely. Again, the last (fourth) stanza begins “Could we with ink the ocean fill,” but the sixth line here says “drain that ocean” rather than “suck.”

When this poem appeared in The Humours of London, a Choice Collection of Songs (London: J. Cooke, ca. 1770), it was credited to “Mr. Smart,” meaning English poet Christopher Smart (1722–1771). Smart’s authorship has been confirmed in The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart, vol. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), where editor Karina Williamson indicated, “Smart’s authorship is attested by his friend John Lockman” (p. 422).

Regarding the attribution to Geoffrey Chaucer (14th cen.), this is an error. The original text is by John Lydgate (1370–1451), an English monk and poet. Lydgate’s poem, written in Middle English, is titled “Beware” and begins “Loke wel aboute, ye that lovers bee” (“Look well about, ye that lovers be”). Every stanza ends with a version of the caution, “Beware, therfore: the blynde eteth many a flye!” The final stanza here is the most relevant to the study at hand, which says:

In sothe to sey, thogh al the erthe so wan
Were parchemyn smothe, white, and scribable,
And the grete see, called occian,
Were turned ink, blacker than is sable,
Eche stikk a penne, ech man a scrivener able,
Nought coude thay write womens trecherie.
Beware, therfore: the blynde eteth many a flye![3]

English scholar Kathleen Forni offered this perspective on the chauvinism found in the secular texts:

Although to modern readers these antifeminist lyrics may seem to violate a more refined and restrained courtly sensibility, in Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love, R. Howard Bloch suggests that misogyny, by logical necessity, accompanies the idealization of the feminine found in courtly discourse. Bloch demonstrates that the paradoxical Western view of women as “Devil’s Gateway” and “Bride of Christ” dates back to the asceticism of the early Christian era. Due to a variety of social and cultural factors, including the increasing economic and matrimonial power of women, this dichotomy is revived in the early Middle Ages, and Bloch suggests that the treacherous, duplicitous female is a necessary corollary to the inaccessible, idealized courtly lady. The posturing of the impotent and exasperated lover or spouse could then, as now, be grounded in conviction or experience, but by the late Middle Ages such poems, circulating in secular miscellanies, appear to have become a rhetorical game or exercise. The wimpy, inept, mentally self-castrated male, so prominent in courtly poems, is matched by the virago who beats him, tricks him, and cuckolds him.[4]

In summary, regarding the sources behind Lehman’s last stanza, the text is by Christopher Smart, adapted from a poem by John Lydgate, which in turn was Christianized by an anonymous American author ca. 1789. If there is any truth to the story of lunacy, it could be in the performance of the song as it was done at Vaux Hall, or in the idiocy or immaturity of men who choose their mates poorly.

IV. Underlying Imagery

But the rabbit trail goes deeper than John Lydgate. The imagery in his text is much older than his English rhyme. For Christians, this idea is expressed in John 21:25, although not in the same terms: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (ESV).

The most exhaustive study to date of this metaphor of oceans, ink, and parchment was made by Irving Linn in 1938. Linn considered the earliest example to be from Sanskrit literature in India, from the legend of the ten avatars (the Dashavatara), relating to Krishna, although this legend has gone through many versions over many centuries, and Linn did not offer a date for his source. Nevertheless, he wrote:

In the Malabar version of the legend, it is declared that his kindnesses to the poor and his good acts among men were so numerous “that in case the whole sea was filled with ink, and the earth made of paper, and all the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe were only employed in writing, they would not be sufficient to give an exact account of all the miracles wrought by Kisna (= Krishna) in one hundred years time, in the third period of the world called Duapersinge, containing 864,000 years.[5]

He also offered an example from Vasavadatta, “the oldest known romantic novel in Sanskrit”:

Vasavadatta’s confidante, Kalavati, speaks as follows: “The pain that hath been felt by this maiden for thy sake might be written or told in some wise or in some way in many thousands of ages if the sky became paper, the sea an ink-well, the scribe Brahma, and the narrator the Lord of Serpents.[6]

An example from first-century Judaism is cited by Carlton Young and J.R. Watson:

In the first century there was a tribute by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai to his teacher, Rabbi Hillel: “If all the heavens were parchments, and all the seas quills, and all the seas were ink, it would still be impossible to write down even a part of what I learned from my teacher.”[7]

Two examples exist within the Quran (7th cen.):

Though the sea became ink for the Words of my Lord, verily the sea would be used up before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even though we brought the like thereof to help. [Surah XVIII (The Cave), verse 110]

And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea, with seven more seas to help it were ink, the words of Allah could not be exhausted. [Surah XXXI (Luqman), verse 27]

One of the most frequently cited sources is the Akdamus (or Akdamut) Millin, penned in Arabic by Rabbi Meir ben Yitzchak in Worms, Germany, in the 11th century. The text is intended to serve as an introduction to the reading of the Ten Commandments at Shavuot (Pentecost).

Eternal strength is His
beyond description—
Were all the skies parchment,
were all the forests quills,
Were all the seas ink,
and all the gathered waters,
The dwellers of earth, scribes
and recorders of initials—
The glory of the Master of heaven
and Ruler of earth.[8]

In trying to summarize these various manifestations of the same idea and how they apply to Lehman’s place in the song’s development, Benjamin McFarland wrote:

There’s a lesson here. In the twentieth century, Lehman was given the third verse of “The Love of God” first as an act of grace, communicated globally and over centuries, not last as an instant and focused deus ex machina to his initial efforts. He held onto that third verse like a diamond in the rough. Then, when it was time, Lehman fashioned the two previous verses for the diamond’s setting.[9]

Marshall Segal, president of Desiring God, has added:

That Lehman treasured the lyrics is hardly surprising. Living just a handful of miles from the Pacific Ocean, he would have known, with acute awareness, the roaring vastness of the sea, the tall and swaying elegance of palm trees, and the bursts and hues of California sunsets. Day by day, he held the brilliant orangeness of its oranges and smelled the lively tartness of its lemons. The ocean, the trees, the sky, the earth were enormous and familiar friends of his—and yet each so small next to the love he had come to know in Christ.[10]

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
6 August 2024

Footnotes:

Catalogue of Copyright Entries, pt. 3, N.S. vol. 12, no. 10 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), p. 1166: Google
Cameron Frank, “The Love of God,” A Frank Voice: https://www.afrankvoice.com/hymns-history/the-love-of-god
Kathleen Forni, ed., “Beware (The Blynde Eteth Many a Flye),” The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Selection (2005), TEAMS Middle English Text Series, University of Rochester: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/forni-chaucerian-apocrypha-beware
Kathleen Forni, ed., “Beware,” The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Selection (2005): https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/forni-chaucerian-apocrypha-beware
Irving Linn, “If all the sky were parchment,” PMLA, vol. 53, no. 4 (Dec. 1938), p. 952.
Linn, PMLA, p. 953.
Carlton Young & J.R. Watson, “Could we with ink the ocean fill,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH; also cited by Linn, pp. 954–955, and McFarland (2024).
Akdamus Millin: With a New Translation and Commentary Anthologized from the Traditional Rabbinic Literature. Translated and Compiled by Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov Salamon (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications Ltd., 1978).
Benjamin J. McFarland, “The true story of ‘The love of God is greater far,’” Christian Scholar’s Review (26 June 2024): https://christianscholars.com/the-true-story-of-the-love-of-god-is-greater-far/
Marshall Segal, “Love Beyond Telling: The Surprising History of a Favorite Hymn,” Desiring God (24 Sept. 2021): https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/love-beyond-telling

Related Resources:

Irving Linn, “If all the sky were parchment,” PMLA, vol. 53, no. 4 (Dec. 1938), pp. 951–970: JSTOR

“The Love of God”: https://hymnary.org/text/the_love_of_god_is_greater_far