16. John Kent
16. John Kent In the town of Bideford, in the county of Devon, in December 1766 this remarkable hymn writer was born of poor parents ``rich in faith’. As a lad of 14 he was apprenticed to his father, a shipwright at Plymouth Dock. In his spare time he sought diligently to improve his education and to cultivate his gift for spiritual verse. In 1803 his first Hymn Book appeared.
He has recorded his experience of divine grace in a poem as a preface to his hymns, and this manifests the depth and soundness of his conversion.
While yet in his fifties he became totally blind, but some of his sweetest hymns were taken down by his little grandson to whom he dictated them as the words came to him. At the end as he lay dying he extended his hand cold with the chill of death, and exclaimed ``I rejoice in hope; I am accepted-accepted!’ Thus he fell asleep in Jesus on the 15th November, 1843 aged 77. But while the little that is known of John Kent unfolds the glory of redeeming grace in the salvation of a sinner, there is a depth of spiritual beauty and as John Hazelton has said a ``force, fulness and fervour’ in his hymns that reach heavenly pathos and leave one overwhelmed with a sense of God’s covenant love. Such is especially the case with the hymn:
Let Zion, in her songs, record The honors of her dying Lord Triumphant over sin;
How sweet the song, there’s none can say But he whose sins are wash’d away, Who feels the same within.
We claim no merit of our own, But, self-condemn’d before thy throne, Our hopes on Jesus place; In heart, in lip, in life depraved, Our theme shall be, a sinner saved, And praise redeeming grace.
We’ll sing the same while life shall last, And when, at the archangel’s blast, Our sleeping dust shall rise, Then in a song for ever new The glorious theme we’ll still pursue, Throughout the azure skies.
Prepared of old, at God’s right hand, Bright, everlasting mansions stand, For all the blood-bought race; And till we reach those seats of bliss, We’ll sing no other song but this: A sinner saved by grace.
Even Julian, the great hymnologist, gives grudging tribute to their strength and earnestness in his Dictionary of Hymnology, but as in dealing with Joseph Irons and Hart, Julian cannot refrain from lowering his estimate of their value because they are ``Calvinistic!’ However, we believe they will comfort, and aid the praise of many of the children of God as long as time shall last. To end this brief account we quote the first verse of another of his delightful hymns:
What cheering words are these; Their sweetness who can tell? In time and to eternal days, "Tis with the righteous well."