There is a long list of worthies who have been cheered in life and death by this hymn, but the champion story of them all is the "Legend of the Raven." I must quote it intact:
In a village near Warsaw there lived a pious German peasant named Dobyr. Without remedy, he had fallen into arrears of rent, and his landlord threatened to evict him. It was winter. Thrice he appealed for a respite, but in vain. It was evening, and the next day his family were to be turned into the snow. Dobyr kneeled down in the midst of his family. After prayer they sang:
Commit thou all thy griefs
And ways into His hands.
As they came to the last verse, in German, of Part I.,
When Thou wouldst all our needs supply,
Who, who shall stay Thy hand?
there was a knock at the window close by where he knelt, and, opening it, Dobyr was met by a raven, one which his grandfather had tamed and set at liberty. In its bill was a ring, set with precious stones. This he took to his minister, who said at once that it belonged to the king, Stanislaus, to whom he returned it, and related his story. The king sent for Dobyr, and besides rewarding him on the spot, built for him, next year, a new house, and stocked his cattle-stalls from the royal domain. Over the house door, on an iron tablet, there is carved a raven with a ring in its beak, and underneath, this address to Divine Providence:
Thou everywhere hast sway,
And all things serve Thy might;
Thy every act pure blessing is,
Thy path unsullied light.
"ROCK OF AGES."
When the "Sunday at Home" took the plebiscite of 3,500 of its readers as to which were the best hymns in the language, the "Rock of Ages" stood at the top of the tree, having no fewer than 3,215 votes. Only three other hymns had more than 3,000 votes. They were "Abide with me," "Jesu, Lover of my soul," and "Just as I am."
1 Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
2 Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfil Thy law's demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone:
Thou must save, and Thou alone!
3 Nothing in my hand I bring;
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly:
Wash me, Saviour, or I die!
4 While I draw this fleeting breath—
When my eye-strings break in death—
When I soar to worlds unknown—
See Thee on Thy judgment throne—
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!
Tune—"Redhead, No. 76."
Toplady, a Calvinistic vicar of a Devonshire parish, little dreamed that he was composing the most popular hymn in the language when he wrote what he called "A living and dying prayer for the holiest believer in the world." For Toplady was a sad polemist whose orthodox soul was outraged by the Arminianism of the Wesleys. He and they indulged in much disputation of the brickbat and Billingsgate order, as was the fashion in those days. Toplady put much of his time and energy into the composition of controversial pamphlets, on which the good man prided himself not a little. The dust lies thick upon these his works, nor is it likely to be disturbed now or in the future. But in a pause in the fray, just by way of filling up an interval in the firing of polemical broadsides, Augustus Montague Toplady thought he saw a way of launching an airy dart at a joint in Wesley's armor, on the subject of Sanctification. So, without much ado, and without any knowledge that it was by this alone he was to render permanent service to mankind, he sent off to the "Gospel Magazine" of 1776 the hymn "Rock of Ages." When it appeared he had, no doubt, considerable complacency in reflecting how he had winged his opponent for his insolent doctrine of entire sanctification, and it is probable that before he died—for he only survived its publication by two years, dying when but thirty-eight—he had still no conception of the relative importance of his own work. But to-day the world knows Toplady only as the writer of these four verses. All else that he labored over it has forgotten, and, indeed, does well to forget.
It was this hymn which the Prince Consort asked for as he came near to death.
