James Montgomery's Muse

The Pastor's Letter (March 1978)

 
Dear Friends,

In the year 1832, James Montgomery the hymn-writer was travelling between Gloucester and Tewkesbury with a friend. He noticed several rows of women and young girls working in a field. They were piercing holes in the ground, and into each hole were dropping one or two seeds. Montgomery had never seen this method of sowing before, and when he asked his friend about it, he was told it was called "dibbling" by the local farmers and workers. A friendly debate then arose between the two men as to the merits and demerits of the system. "Give me broadcast sowing," said Montgomery, "scattering the seed to the right hand. and to the left, in liberal handfuls." But the other man held firmly to the individual method they had just witnessed.

As they went on their journey, Montgomery tells us that he "fell immediately into a musing fit." The subject of his musing was this business of sowing seed. The more he mused, the more he realised that each of the ways of sowing was "excellent in its own way, and best in its own place." The important things were: that the seed is good, the ground be prepared, and the seed diligently sown in the ground.

It's not hard to appreciate the spiritual turn that James Montgomery's mind was beginning to take. From the things of natural husbandry to those of spiritual; it as only a short step. "By degrees," he tells us, "my thoughts subsided into verse, and I found them running in lines, like furrows, along the field of my imagination." By the time the two men reached the next village on their route, James Montgomery was able to sit down with pen in hand and commit to paper his well-loved hymn: -

It's a good sentiment for any of us, in any day of the Church's existence. The Psalmist himself expressed it for his day: -

James Montgomery himself sowed many "seeds" of praise and worship in the hymns that he left to the Church, and they have been reaped a million times over in the congregations of the Lord's people: "Stand up and Bless the Lord," “Angels from the realms of glory,” “Prayer is the Soul's sincere desire,” “O Spirit of the Living God," "Forever with the Lord;" and many more. John Wesley saw a time of great "refreshing from the hand of the Lord" in the town of Epworth, where his father had preached for the best part of his life; and he was not slow to make the spiritual connection. "O let none think his labour of love is lost because the fruit does not immediately appear! Near forty years did my father labour here; but he saw little fruit of his labour ... but the seed sown, now has sprung up, bringing forth repentance and remission of sins."

The Lord has built into the very fabric of this creation that He has made the principle of "seedtime and harvest," and we rob ourselves of the will to work in the gospel by forgetting it. "While the earth remaineth," the Lord told Noah in the covenant promise, "seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." That blessed illustration is ever before us and all around us, and it will most assuredly hold good in its spiritual outworking until all the purposes of God in the covenant of redemption have been fully and gloriously realised. As Montgomery expresses it in his last verse:

May we all be diligent labourers in the field.