William Cowper and the theology of despair

William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”) has four poems in the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp: 27t BETHEL, 168 COWPER (first verse), 287 CAMBRIDGE, and 397 THE FOUNTAIN.

The text to CAMBRIDGE is among the bleakest in the book:

The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow;
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine
A contrite heart, or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel;
If aught is felt, ’tis only pain
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined
To love Thee, if I could;
But often feel another mind
Averse to all that’s good.

My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more;
But, when I cry, “My strength renew,”
Seem weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love Thy house of prayer;
I sometimes go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

When I lead or sing this song, I often wonder how many verses I should lead. On the one hand, it is a slow song and singing many verses takes a long time; also, each verse has the same theme, a lament for the poet’s inability to know whether they are truly “contrite.” On the other hand, each verse expresses a different aspect of that unknowing. The first verse raises the question. The second verse notes a sorrow about his sorrow: he feels sad, but he feels sad that that sadness doesn’t really seem to change him. The third verse notes the conflicting desires he has: he both wants and does not want to be good. The fourth verse laments that his prayers to be better seem to only result in his being worse. The fifth verse laments his inability to be comforted by what comforts others. Usually, I choose the first verse and one other, depending on what is on my mind at the time—but beware if you call on me to lead in a small singing! We might sing all five.

Cowper was an exceedingly famous poet of his day (the late 1700s). He was one of the main contributors to John Newton’s Olney Hymns, one of the most influential hymnbooks of his time. He also tried to kill himself three times, suffered from “melancholia” all his life (what we would probably call clinical depression), and was committed to an asylum. He wrote, “I, fed with judgement, in a fleshly tomb, am/Buried above ground.” (Knowing about his suicide attempts, I often mentally sing CAMBRIDGE in honor of friends who have died by suicide).

27t BETHEL also contains some despairing lines:

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His word?

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their mem’ry still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

It would be enough, I think, to end this essay here, without having to answer Cowper’s despair. It would be enough to acknowledge that, at times and at different levels, almost all of us feel the despair and depression that Cowper felt, some of us clinically so.

But Cowper does engage with his melancholia in different ways: through prayer, through hope, through theological reflection, and through gratitude.

Our text for CAMBRIDGE, already unusually long for a song in The Sacred Harp, is missing a final verse, which is a prayer:

Oh, make this heart rejoice or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be.

Cowper wants either the sure knowledge that he is truly contrite (and therefore able to “rejoice” that “happiness divine” will be his, or that he is not. If not, he prays that God will make him truly contrite, to break his heart, but then, to heal it as well. In BETHEL’s text, he prays:

Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest!

And also, he prays:

The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.

He implores for help from the Holy Spirit to overcome any obstacles to worship, anything that takes undue attention away from God.

If God will do this for him, he feels a certain hope that he will return to the blessedness he once felt:

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

Cowper reflects theologically on the “vile” state he finds himself in. He trusts in the saving power of Christ’s death to overcome even his own sinfulness. As he writes in the text we use for THE FOUNTAIN:

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Our familiarity with this text might lessen the impact of this image: Jesus Christ’s blood acting as a cleansing agent to clean the stains of our sinfulness. Even the thief who was crucified with Jesus rejoiced to see the fountain of salvation as they died together. Cowper in solidarity with the thief in his sinfulness, can wash his own sins away. Of course, we have seen Cowper return to a fearful state, and I think it is useful to recall another text of his. One of his most famous poems is quoted in the 1991 edition, which uses the first verse of the poem as the first verse of 478 MY RISING SUN. It, too, was published in Olney Hymns:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sov'reign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take:
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain:
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

Wikipedia states that the poem, given the descriptive title, “Light shining out of darkness,” was “written in 1773, just before the onset of a depressive illness, during which Cowper attempted suicide by drowning.” It is given a Bible verse, John 13:7, which states, “Jesus answered and said unto [Peter], What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”

Those of us who have felt the “bitter taste” of depression—Christian or not—find it hard to imagine a sweeter future. Cowper tastes the same bitterness, and, as a Christian, wonders why God is presenting a “frowning countenance” to him. His theological reflection is that our own sense is “feeble,” and likely to “scan [God’s] work in vain,” just because our senses are dimmed by the difficulties we face. He has a theology of hope here as well: he believes God’s “purposes will ripen fast” and that God will make what he is doing plain to us. It’s a vast and complicated world of cloudy storms and seas and “unfathomable mines,” but God, vaster and greater than the world, and working through it, will bring forth an overabundance of blessings that will “break with blessings on your head.”

It’s worth noting that these verses have sometimes been used to harm people in depression or other difficult situations; it’s good to remember that Cowper wrote as one of his worst periods of melancholia was beginning.

Finally, Cowper also expresses an attitude of thankfulness for the life he has, even with its difficulties. This is related to the hope he believes in for the final restoration of his own life, through the death of Christ, and in the power of the inscrutable God. We see his gratitude a bit in:

Forgive the song that falls so low
Beneath the gratitude I owe;
It means Thy praise, however poor,
An angel’s song can do no more.

Of course, his sense of inadequacy shows here too.  But his gratitude is emphasized in the text from THE FOUNTAIN, where he rejoices to see his sins washed away, and:

Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.

 William Cowper and Robert Robinson (Author of “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,” used in 135 OLNEY and 333 FAMILY CIRCLE) are among my favorite lyricists just because, like me, they experienced depression and “melancholia.” Singing these lyrics help me to express, in solidarity with them and other fellow depressives, the “bitter taste.” But they also lead me, through prayer, hope, theological reflection, and gratitude to engage with that depression in a “calm and serene” way.