A Hymn Most Wonderful - 'Sometimes I Hear Strange Music'
One on my hobbies is finding old hymn books and reading through them to see what hymns I know and what hymns I don’t from amongst their number. Recently, I came across an old hymn book compiled by Ira D. Sankey, called ‘Sacred Songs and Solos’. It was while skimming through this book that I came across one of the most incredible hymns I have ever read. It is the hymn, ‘Sometimes I hear strange music’ composed by Eben E. Rexford.
Eben E. Rexford has written many hymns, including the much loved, ‘Brightly beams our Father’s mercy’, but his hymn, ‘Sometimes I hear strange music’ concerns a subject matter that I am not sure any other hymn quite does, and certainly not in the same manner. That subject matter is one that I have found most exciting and intriguing ever since I was a young Christian – which is when God gives the Christian a glimpse of heaven, which could perhaps be described in the words of heaven anticipated. It is as if, for a brief time, the Lord pulls back the curtain of heaven the merest of touches, or, as Eben E. Rexford has it in his hymn, when God for a time seemingly leaves heaven’s door ajar, so that the Christian is allowed to experience, if only for a few moments, something of the joy and wonder of heaven itself.
It was the prophet Isaiah who perhaps has had the clearest example of this very thing, in his vision of heaven’s throne room as per Isaiah 6, but he is far from being alone. The author of the letter to the Hebrews describes the experience with incredible detail in Hebrews 12:18-24. The Apostle Paul recalls his own experience of it in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, and then is found praying for it for others in Ephesians 3:14-19.
Nor is this experience exclusive to people of the Bible! The following recollection of Jonathan Edwards remains one of the most exciting pieces of writing I have ever read outside of the Bible:
“As I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that was for me extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The Person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thoughts and conceptions, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; such as to keep me a greater part of the time in floods of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve Him and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity.”[1]
D.L. Moody describes his own similar experience with, perhaps, a little more of his sometimes characteristic bluntness:
“I began to cry as never before, for a greater blessing from God. The hunger increased; I really felt that I did not want to live any longer. I kept on crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day in the City of New York – oh! What a day, I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I can only say, God revealed Himself to me, and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand.”[2]
In his hymn ‘Sometimes I hear strange music’, Eben E. Rexford manages to encapsulate this same experience of heaven anticipated in the most poetic and beautifully illustrative way. That this hymn has become lost to much of the church today is perhaps indicative of the church’s loss of much of the presence of God from its midst. Below are the beautiful words of this hymn, and below that is a link to where a very talented friend has put these words to music of his own.
Oh, that the church would be able to sing these most beautiful words from its own experience once again! May God be merciful to us in this day. Amen.
Sometimes I hear strange music
Sometimes I hear strange music,
Like none e’er heard before,
Come floating softly earthward
As through heaven’s open door:
It seems like angel voices,
In strains of joy and love,
That swell the mighty chorus
Around the throne above.
(Chorus)
O sweet, unearthly music,
Heard from a land afar –
The song of Heaven and Homeland,
Through doors God leaves ajar!
Now soft, and low, and restful,
It floods my soul with peace,
As if God’s benediction
Bade all earth’s troubles cease.
Then grander than the voices
Of wind, and wave, and sea –
It fills the dome of heaven
With glorious harmony.
This music haunts me ever,
Like something heard in dreams –
It seems to catch the cadence
Of heavenly winds and streams.
My heart is filled with rapture,
To think, some day to come,
I’ll sing it with the angels –
The song of heaven and home.
Eben E. Rexford, 1848-1916.
This hymn can be found excellently performed at the following link:
[1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable: The Baptism and Gifts of the Holy Spirit, (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 1995) p.87.[2] Lloyd-Jones, p.87-88.
