Illuminations
Washed in the Blood
by Anthony Esolen
We Roman Catholics have at least anecdotal evidence of the existence of Purgatory. It comes when we attend Mass and must listen to the music. What is worse than doggerel? What doggerel leaves on the bottom of your shoe, maybe, because when the slack and slovenly stuff begins, I find myself scraping my feet on the floor and looking furtively roundabout for the exit. I think fire would be much nicer. At least it would burn up the hymnals and reduce them to ash.
"How long, O Lord!" I cry.
"Shh! About twenty minutes," says my wife, Debra.
You will look in vain in our hymnals au courant for the cry of the sinner to be made clean, whatever it takes by way of purgative suffering of his own, as such suffering is made one with the suffering of Christ. We do not so much ask for healing as presume that we have it already. We do not so much want Christ to steep us in the fuller's lye to be made white, as we shrug and say that Jesus won't care overmuch if we are muddy. The grit and blood of the Savior—we don't think of them. They might cast a cloud on our satisfaction, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
So it is with good, sharp refreshment, like iodine on a wound, that I turn to one of William Cowper's finest hymns, known as "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood" (1772). Cowper was to his friend and collaborator John Newton as the man of interior sorrow is to the man full of sorrow for his evil deeds in the world. He underwent periods of deep depression, despairing of his eternal destiny, certain that vengeance was all that God would visit upon him. I might say that he was like Blaise Pascal, but without the comfort of trusting in the efficacy of the sacraments. Yet God heard Cowper's cries from out of the depths, and the man wrote sacred poetry that will be sung as long as speakers of English have a taste for intelligence, profound faith, deep personal feeling, and poetic talent.
"That's about twenty minutes longer," says Debra. But let's hope for more.
A New Fountain of Eden
The hymn is a fusion of Zechariah 13:1 with the vision of the martyrs in Revelation, who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, applied to the lives of individual Christians. Says the prophet: "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness." It is like a new fountain of Eden, ever-springing, never to be lost again.
We must be steeped in that blood
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains.
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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