Right in the centre of the city of London, between City Road and Bunhill Row, there lies a patch of green which houses the mortal remains of over 120,000 souls.
The old graveyard rejoices in the name of Bunhill Fields, and it was here that the very cream of England's "Non-conformity" were laid to rest when their mortal toils were ended. Some of them died violently, suffering the martyr's lot rather than deny the One who had redeemed them through His own death on the cross. Others came down to their grave as "a shock of corn fully ripe." Old and young are buried there; famous and not so famous; but all with this in common, that they would not "conform" to the strictures of religion that they deemed contrary to God's revealed truth as it is in Christ Jesus our Lord. There lie the remains of John Bunyan, and Thomas Manton, and Isaac Watts; of Oliver Cromwell, and Daniel De Foe, and Thomas Goodwin; the great John Owen lies buried there, as does Lady Ann Erskine, and the mother of the Wesleys, and hundred of others. Among those "hundreds of others" there stands a stone —
Bunhill Fields now lies almost unnoticed and unknown in the heart of busy London – for the world has no time for such things as these. But, sad to say, many of those who lie buried there are unknown and their past labours for the cause of Christ have gone unnoticed by the mass of professing Christians today. Perhaps it is an indication of this state of affairs that the Baptist churches of this land can publish and accept a hymn book which includes "universalism", and "heresy", and "popery", and yet which doesn't list one hymn from the pen of one of non-conformity's greatest sons: this same Joseph Hart.
Joseph Hart was born in the year 1712 "within the sound of Bow bells," which made him a true Londoner. When we say that he records his "peace with God" as being realised in the year 1757 – 45 years later, and only eleven years before his death - we must surely appreciate that The Day of his Salvation was one of those days when the sun doesn't seem to break through until it is almost time for it to set again. And yet, how many lessons there are for us to draw from this long day of God's dealing with one of his choicest servants, when the light would break through for a few hours, as it were, only to hide itself again behind many dark and ominous clouds.
"About the twenty-first year of my age," Joseph Hart tells us in his "Experience", "I began to be under great anxiety concerning my soul." The Law of God had been preached in the young man's hearing and he had seen of a truth that this Law condemned him. However, instead of turning to the One who had borne the whole brunt of that Law for sinful men, he took himself off to what old John Bunyan would have called "The Town of Morality", and "I strove to subdue my flesh by fasting and other rigorous act of penance and mortification," he tells us, hoping that they "would pass as current coin with heaven."
They didn't pass, of course, and then Joseph Hart launched into a kind of "easy believism"; an "insipid kind of religion", as he himself calls it. He had got the gist of what it meant to be saved into his head and he was resting on this. "But, alas," he tells us, "all this while my heart was whole; the fountains of the great deeps of my sinful nature were not broken up!" And this too passed over and into another period of this day which was now fast drawing to a close. "I fell into deep despondency of mind," he tells us; the burden of his sin was now beginning to weigh more heavily upon his soul than he had ever known before, and "I felt," he tells us, that there wasn't "a friend in the world to whom I could communicate the burden of my soul." The blackest hour of that Day of his salvation was now upon him, but it was to be a true darkness before sunrise. He now considered himself "a gospel sinner"; – one who had sinned away every opportunity of heaven and Christ for their portion – "I looked on myself as … one who had trampled under foot the blood of Jesus …" But, now the Day had fully dawned and the "Sun of Righteousness arose with healing on his wings" upon the soul of Joseph Hart.
It was "Whitsunday, 1757," he tells us, "when I happened to go in the afternoon to the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane." "I listened with much attention," he goes on, and "I was hardly got home when I felt myself melting away into a strange softness of affection which made me fling myself on my knees before God. … I cried out, 'What me, Lord?' His Spirit answered in me, 'Yes, thee.' I objected; 'But I have been so unspeakably vile and wicked.' The answer was; 'I pardon thee fully and freely.'" The Day of Salvation had now truly dawned for Joseph Hart, and now his heart, and his tongue, and his pen would be loosed to the glory of the One who had dispelled all the clouds of darkness and brought salvation down. How richer the church of Christ for such manifestations of God's sovereign dealings in the salvation of souls; how we impoverish ourselves by shutting such dealings away – as Bunhill Fields itself is a "fountain sealed" to so many in our day. Joseph Hart has left us a wealth of experience in song of how the God of all grace deals with some to their eternal bliss. Well does he exhort the sinners in one of his grandest hymns: –
This Page Title – The Day of Their Salvation – Joseph Hart The Wicket Gate Magazine "A Continuing Witness". Internet Edition number 62 – placed on line September 2006 Magazine web address – www.wicketgate.co.uk |