Earthquake hymn

In the final months of 1755, news of a great earthquake in Lisbon that killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed most of the city began to circulate, in the slow ways of the eighteenth century, throughout Europe. The Great Earthquake of Lisbon also shook the foundations of philosophical and theological thought in Europe and inspired Voltaire’s bitter satire, Candide.

In England, the king called for a national day of fasting and mourning on February 6, 1756. According to John Wesley’s journal, “The fast-day was a glorious day, such as London has scarcely seen since the Restoration. Every church in the city was more than full, and a solemn seriousness sat on every face. Surely God heareth the prayer, and there will yet be a lengthening of our tranquillity.” Many sermons were preached. John’s brother, Charles, wrote a poem for the occasion, with an apocalyptic tone:

A voice out of the temple cries,
And from th’ eternal throne,
And all the storms of vengeance rise,
When God declares ’TIS DONE!
’TIS DONE! Ten thousand voices join
T’applaud his righteous ire,
And thunders roll, and lightnings shine,
That set the world on fire.

Anne Steele, too, wrote a poem; she entitled it “On the public fast, February 6, 1766.” It provides the text for 365 LEBANON in the 1991 edition of The Sacred Harp. We have three verses in the book; she wrote seven:

See, gracious God, before thy throne
Thy mourning people bend!
'Tis on thy sovereign grace alone,
Our humble hopes depend.

Tremendous judgments from thy hand,
Thy dreadful power display;
Yet mercy spares this guilty land,
And yet we live to pray.

Great God, and why is Britain spared,
Ungrateful as we are?
O be these awful warnings heard,
While mercy cries, Forbear.

What numerous crimes increasing rise
O'er all this wretched isle!
What land so favoured of the skies,
And yet what land so vile!

How changed, alas! are truths divine.
For error, guilt, and shame!
What impious numbers, bold in sin,
Disgrace the Christian name!

O bid us turn, almighty Lord,
By thy resistless grace;
Then shall our hearts obey thy word,
And humbly seek thy face.

Then should insulting foes invade,
We shall not sink in fear;
Secure of never-failing aid,
If God, our God, is near.

Steele wonders why Britian was spared when Portugal was not. It was certainly not because the people of Britian was better than the people of Portugal; she decries the “numerous crimes” and vileness of Britian, where, she believed, people increasingly were choosing “error, guilt, and shame” instead of God’s divine truth, despite calling themselves Christian.

She asks God to see the national fast as the God’s people in mourning for these sins, and petitions God to turn the people by God’s “resistless grace” to obey God’s word. She is confident that God will protect Britian from its enemies if this happens. In fact, a threatened attack from France, that persistent and “insulting foe” of Britian, did not materialized.

It is not particularly the place of this series to comment on what the poetry in The Sacred Harp can teach us or how it can change us. But perhaps the next time your sing LEBANON, you can remember the past tragedy of Lisbon, and the current tragedies in Gaza, in Ukraine, in South Sudan, and many other places of disaster, effected by human or natural causes, and ask what our response should be.