"Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" is Charles Wesley's greatest single hymn - a text that moves from an apostrophe to divine love through a theology of sanctification to a vision of eschatological transformation, accomplishing in four stanzas what theologians have required entire treatises to explain. Written in 1747, it is athe supreme expression of Wesleyan theology in hymnodic form.
The Composition
Wesley wrote the hymn in 1747, publishing it in Hymns for Those that Seek, and Those that Have Redemption (1747). The immediate literary background was John Dryden's secular love poem "Fairest Isle" from King Arthur (1691), which begins "Fairest Isle, all isles excelling" - Wesley's "Love divine, all loves excelling" is a deliberate theological transformation of Dryden's secular love lyric into sacred address. The movement from "Joy of heaven, to earth come down" in the first stanza to "lost in wonder, love, and praise" in the final stanza traces the entire arc of the Christian life: incarnation, conversion, sanctification, and glorification.
Biblical Text
The hymn's doctrinal center is Ephesians 3:19 (KJV): "And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." Wesley's petition to be "filled with all the fullness of love" is a direct paraphrase of this verse, and the hymn's entire movement is toward the state Paul describes: being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. John 1:14 (KJV) - "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" - underlies the first stanza's "Joy of heaven, to earth come down; fix in us thy humble dwelling." 2 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV) - "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory" - provides the hymn's eschatological vocabulary of being "changed from glory into glory."
The Creator
Charles Wesley (1707-1788) was, alongside his brother John, the co-founder of Methodism and the most productive sacred poet in English. He wrote approximately 6,500 hymns, covering every aspect of the Christian life from conversion to death to glorification. Where his contemporary Isaac Watts was more the systematic theologian in verse, Wesley was the lyric poet of religious experience - he wrote from the inside of faith, from conversion's joy and sanctification's longing, rather than from doctrinal observation. His education at Christ Church, Oxford, gave him classical literary culture; his evangelical conversion in 1738 gave him the theological passion; and his extraordinary lyric gift gave him the art to combine them. "Love Divine" is his most theologically complete single hymn, containing in miniature the entire ordo salutis (order of salvation) of Wesleyan theology.
Musical Analysis
The hymn has been set to several tunes, the most widely used being "Blaenwern" (also spelled "Blaenrhondda") by William Rowlands (1860-1937), a Welsh tune of noble breadth, and "Love Divine" by John Zundel (1855), which is more commonly used in American hymnody. The Welsh tune "Blaenwern" is particularly well suited to the text's expansive theological vision - it is large-scaled, with long phrases that accommodate Wesley's extended syntax, and its harmonic richness matches the text's language of being "filled" and "lost" in wonder. The hymn is also sung to the "Hyfrydol" tune by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1830).
Theological Content
The hymn is a compressed expression of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification - the conviction, derived from 1 John 4:18 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23, that the Holy Spirit can bring the believer to a state of perfect love in which the heart is wholly directed toward God and neighbor. Wesley calls this "pure and spotless" love, "let us find that second rest," and "changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we take our place." This progression - from initial salvation ("take away our bent to sinning") through progressive sanctification ("changed from glory into glory") to final glorification ("lost in wonder, love, and praise") - maps the entire Christian life as Wesley understood it. The hymn's final image - being "lost" in wonder, love, and praise - is a mystical image of self-transcendence that draws on the tradition of theosis (deification) in Eastern Christianity as well as the Western mystical tradition.
Performance History
The hymn became central to Methodist worship from its first publication and spread with Methodism throughout the English-speaking world. It was a standard at Methodist camp meetings in America and at Keswick-type conventions in Britain that emphasized the deeper Christian life and sanctification. It is commonly sung at weddings, ordinations, and services of dedication - occasions where its theology of love transforming the whole person speaks with particular force.
Cultural Impact and Legacy
The hymn's legacy lies particularly in its final line - "lost in wonder, love, and praise" - which has been quoted, paraphrased, and alluded to in Christian literature, theology, and spirituality across the denominational spectrum. C. S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, described the Christian's final state in terms remarkably close to Wesley's; Thomas Merton's mystical writings use similar language. The image of self-loss in divine love, rather than self-preservation or even self-fulfillment, represents a theological counter-culture to modernity's insistence on individual self-actualization. Wesley's hymn continues to offer that alternative with lyric authority that no prose treatment has matched.