Illuminations
All the Colors of the World
by Anthony Esolen
I am not the first to note with dismay that the rainbow, once the radiant and quiet pledge of God that he would never again deluge the world to wash away the filth of man, is now raised as the banner of New Sodom, bubbling up from the bituminous sands of the Dead Sea. Such as it is, the banner is an advertising ploy, bright and garish and belligerent, like much of the bad art of our time, ignorant of history, tradition, culture, and the bewildering shades of the human experience. It is not for barbarians. It is not innocent enough for the barbarian. It is for the mad and decadent and blind.
The response to bad post-Christian symbolism is not bad symbolism of our own. In the battle before us, the Lord has given us a gift of inestimable value. Our opponents, though clever, have no taste, know nothing of the West's heritage of art and poetry, and, being ill-read, are not used to considering the depths of man's despair and joy in his encounters with the divine. Let us not squander the gift. Let us not meet stupidity with stupidity. Let us learn from the masters.
Cowper's Trials
The poet William Cowper (1731–1800) knew, as did his collaborator, the former slave-driver John Newton (1725–1807), the dark mines of the human soul. For much of his life, Cowper suffered periods of intense depression. When he was a young man, he broke under the stress of making a career for himself in the English government, and attempted three times to take his own life. He had to be put away in a house for the insane, run by the devout poet and physician Nathaniel Cotton.
After he recovered, he took up residence in the home of an Anglican clergyman, Morley Unwin, where he met Newton, who encouraged him to take up poetry again and to put his considerable lyrical talents to the crafting of hymns for congregations of ordinary Christian farmers and workingmen—not odes for collegians to study, but ballads to be remembered and cherished and sung on a Sunday.
Newton had plenty of talent that way himself, and so he and Cowper began to compile works for what would be published eventually as the Olney Hymnbook. These were texts alone, to be sung to whatever melody well-known to the people would fit the meter. Meanwhile, Cowper fell into madness again, this time occasioned by his dreadful fears that he had been predestined to damnation. It took him a year to recover; the widow of the Reverend Unwin cared for him until the Lord restored him to health and hope.
The Hymn
It was after this second period of spiritual darkness that Cowper wrote the hymn "Sometimes a Light Surprises," which our worthy pastor chose for the offertory this Easter. It is not specifically an Easter hymn, but rather a meditation on the lights and shades of the Christian's life, in the warmth of Easter. Here is the first stanza:
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in his wings;
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain.
Not one line of it is political. There is not a single pious slogan. There is nothing of the breathless, forced cheer of the contemporary Praise 'n' Worship salesman, whose only colors are strawberry pink and lemon yellow. Cowper writes about what he knows. You are singing to the Lord, and you are not cheerful, until and unless the light from the Lord takes you by surprise, granting you a calm and clear day after the time of gloom.
If we make it seem that every mood of the Christian heart must be for dancing, we do a terrible injustice to the sadness of our lives, and to the Puddleglums among us who find comfort in music of a minor key (as is the melody, Light, to which the hymn is commonly set). Moved by that light, we can then consider the history of how God has wrought his plan in the world, and that gives us strength to face the uncertainties of our lives:
In holy contemplation
We sweetly then pursue
The theme of God's salvation,
And find it ever new;
Set free from present sorrow,
We cheerfully can say,
"Let the unknown tomorrow
Bring with it what it may."
For the big and the small are as nothing to God; it is no more and no less a work for him to guide the history of the human race than it is for him to bring light to a single human heart, or, to use the words of Jesus, to care for the flowers of the field and the birds of the air:
It can bring with it nothing
But he will bear us through;
Who gives the lilies clothing
Will clothe his people, too;
Beneath the spreading heavens
No creature but is fed;
And he who feeds the ravens
Will give his children bread.
At this point, a pious finger-painter would not be able to resist launching forth into sparkles and ponies. We would have Rainbow Religion, under the brand of orthodoxy. Cowper is too good a poet for that, too faithful, too true to our experience, and to the Lord who, to use the famous lines from another of his poems, "works in mysterious ways / His wonders to perform." Let these words strengthen us with Easter confidence, no matter what comes our way:
Though vine nor fig-tree neither
Their wonted fruit should bear,
Though all the fields should wither,
Nor flocks nor herds be there;
Yet, God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice;
For, while in him confiding,
I cannot but rejoice.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
33.2—March/April 2020
on How Bodily Resurrection Informs Social Justice by W. Ross Blackburn
29.5—Sept/Oct 2016
on the Loss of True Community & Rising Political Desperation by Karl D. Stephan
35.6—Nov/Dec 2022
on the Divine Promise Fulfilled by the Child of Bethlehem by James M. Kushiner
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