God, having graciously laid his hand upon my body, and disabled me for the principal work of the ministry, has thereby given me an unexpected occasion of writing the following hymns.  Many of the thoughts are borrow’d from Mr Henry’s Comment, Dr Gell on the Pentateuch, and Bengelius on the New Testament….

Reader, if God ministers grace to thy soul thro’ any of these hymns, give him the glory, and offer up a prayer for the weak Instrument, that whenever I finish my course, I may depart in peace, having seen in Jesus Christ his great salvation.

In its original published form, the hymn in question consists of two stanzas and is actually part of a group made up of Nos. 1157, 1158, and 1159, that take their inspiration from Isaiah 66:19, 20. The first hymn appears on page 391.  It reads as follows:

1157.  I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations - - that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. --- lxvi. 19.

1. ALMIGHTY God of love,
   Set up th’ attracting sign,
   And summon whom thou dost approve
   For messengers divine;
   From Abraham’s favour’d seed
   Thy new Apostles chuse,
   In isles and continents to spread
   The dead reviving news:
   
   
2. Them snatch’d out of the flame
   ’Thro’ every nation send
   The true Messias to proclaim
   The universal Friend;
   That all the God unknown
   May learn of Jews t’ adore,
   And see thy glory in thy Son
   ’Till time shall be no more.

Just as an aside, for a moment it might be worth noting that Charles Wesley cites in his Preface that one of his ‘sources’ for his poetry in this collection of hymns was ‘Mr Henry’s Comment’.  In fact, it is possible to detect in these verses some distinct influence from Matthew Henry. To take just one example, look at the first line (above) of the second stanza of this Hymn No. 1157 of Charles Wesley.  Although there is no mention of the words ‘snatch’d’ or ‘flame’ in the King James translation of Isaiah 66: 19, these two very same words both appear in Henry’s comment on this verse from Isaiah.  However, the genius of Charles Wesley was to turn some of the plain (and often verbose) prose of the famous commentator into the inspired poetry of these lines from the 'Orpheus of Methodism!

This Hymn No. 1157 of Charles Wesley appeared again in print some eighteen years later, selected under John Wesley’s editorship (as part of hymn No. 440) in his celebrated publication of ‘a little body of experimental and practical divinity’, with the title A Collection of Hymns, for the use of the people called Methodists, first printed in London by J. Paramore, at the Foundry, in 1780.  However, John Wesley transformed the original Hymn No. 1157 of his brother into a composite hymn of six verses, each with eight lines.  He did this by joining to Hymn No. 1157, from the 1762 Short Hymns on Select Passages of the Holy Scriptures, the next two hymns (Nos. 1158, and 1159, on pages 391-2) that were all published by Charles in the same volume in 1762.

Here is the second of these two extra hymns, developing the theme begun by Charles in his Hymn No. 1157, and inspired by another verse from the Book of Isaiah:

1158.  And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord, out of all nations, upon horses – to my holy mountain Jerusalem. – lxvi. 20.

1. O THAT the chosen band
   Might now their brethren bring,
   And gather’d out of every land
   Present to Sion’s King;
   Of all the ancient race
   Not one be left behind,
   But each impell’d by secret grace
   His way to Canaan find!
   

2. We know, it must be done,
   For God hath spoke the word,
   All Israel shall their Saviour own,
   To their first state restor’d:
   Re-built by his command,
   Jerusalem shall rise,
   Her temple on Moriah stand
   Again, and touch the skies.

The third of these 1762 hymns of Charles (No. 1159), that John Wesley added on to make his six-verse Hymn No. 440 in his 1780 Collection, was again inspired by Isaiah 66: 20.  Here it is as it was first published by Charles Wesley:

1159.

1. SEND then thy servants forth
   To call the Hebrews home,
   From west and east, and south and north
   Let all the wanderers come;
   Where’er in lands unknown
   Thy fugitives remain,
   Bid every creature help them on
   Thy holy mount to gain:
   
   
2. An offering to their God
   There let them all be seen,
   Sprinkled with water and with blood,
   In soul and body clean;
   With Israel’s myriads seal’d
   Let all the nations meet,
   And shew thy mystery fulfill’d,
   Thy family compleat.

Although there is certainly no change in the doctrine expressed regarding converted Jews proclaiming Christ as Messiah, it is interesting to note that John Wesley, in his 1780 edition, makes a number of slight, but noticeable, changes to his brother’s 1762 text.  These include: (i) some updated spellings (for example: John’s use of ‘choose’, instead of Charles’ older form of ‘chuse’); (ii) changes in the use of italics (thus: John’s ‘Hebrews’ for Charles’ ‘Hebrews’); (iii) changes of both italics and spelling in one word (like John’s use of ‘Messiah’ for Charles’ use of ‘Messias’); (iv) considerably reduced use of the apostrophe to indicate contractions of words (thus, typically, John’s uses ‘sealed’ instead of Charles ready use of ‘seal’d); (v) some changes of punctuation in some lines, perhaps to clarify meaning through use of parenthesis (for example, from Charles’ two lines, ‘But each impell’d by secret grace/ His way to Canaan find’, John alters the lines to read, ‘But each, impelled by secret grace,/His way to Canaan find.’); (vi) other lines have the order of the words changed with a resulting subtle change to the meaning expressed (for example: Charles writes, ‘From Abraham’s favour’d seed,/Thy new apostles chuse’, whereas John edits this to: ‘From favoured Abraham’s seed/The new apostles choose’); (vii) another kind of change noticed is one word substituted by a different word in a line, resulting in a subtle change to the meaning (an example is where Charles writes, ‘All Israel shall their saviour own/’, but John edits this to read: ‘All Israel shall the Saviour own/’, and, similarly, Charles has the line, ‘An offering to their God/’, which John changes to, ‘An offering to their Lord/’).

It needs to be noted that George Osborn, on pages 469-470 of Vol. IX (published 1870) of his monumental 13-volume edition of The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley: reprinted from the originals, with the last corrections of the authors; together with the Poems of Charles Wesley not before published, makes some silent (although generally minor) changes to the text of this hymn as it was originally published by Charles in 1762.  For example, in the first stanza, where Charles Wesley wrote: ‘Thy new Apostle’s chuse’, Osborn changed it to read, ‘Thy new apostles choose’, by substituting a lower case letter ‘a’ for the capital letter ‘A’ used by Charles’ in the word ‘Apostles’, and Osborn also updated the spelling for the word ‘chuse’ used by Charles.

For comparison, the version of the hymn that appeared under John Wesley’s editorial hand in the 1780 A Collection of Hymns for the use of the people called Methodists, is given below:
 

1. Almighty God of love,
   Set up th’ attracting sign,
   And summon whom thou dost approve
   For messengers divine;
   From favoured Abraham's seed
   The new apostles choose,
   In isles and continents to spread
   The dead-reviving news.
   
   
2. Them, snatched out of the flame,
   Through every nation send,
   The true Messiah to proclaim,
   The universal Friend;
   That all the God unknown
   May learn of Jews t’adore,
   And see thy glory in thy Son,
   Till time shall be no more.
   
   
3. O that the chosen band
   Might now their brethren bring,
   And, gathered out of every land,
   Present to Zion's King!
   Of all the ancient race
   Not one be left behind,
   But each, impelled by secret grace,
   His way to Canaan find.
   
   
4. We know it must be done,
   For God hath spoke the word;
   All Israel shall the Saviour own,
   To their first state restored;
   Rebuilt by his command,
   Jerusalem shall rise,
   Her temple on Moriah stand
   Again, and touch the skies.
   
   
5. Send then thy servants forth,
   To call the Hebrews home,
   From east, and west, and south, and north,
   Let all the wanderers come;
   Where'er in lands unknown
   The fugitives remain,
   Bid every creature help them on,
   Thy holy mount to gain.
   
   
6. An offering to their Lord
   There let them all be seen,
   Sprinkled with water and with blood,
   In soul and body clean;
   With Israel's myriads sealed
   Let all the nations meet,
   And show the mystery fulfilled,
   Thy family complete.

When the text of this hymn as published in the Wesleyan 1877 edition of the A Collection for the use of the people called Methodists is compared with that published by John Wesley in the 1780 Hymn-book, there are relatively few changes to be seen.  They are mainly in the form of (i) updating the use of an apostrophe to indicate a contraction of a word (as in the second line of the first stanza, where John Wesley (and Charles’) used ‘Set up th’attracting sign’, which in 1877 is changed to, ‘Set up the attracting sign’; (ii) slight changes in punctuation, the most noticeable being in the use of exclamation marks.  The 1877 editors add one extra exclamation mark to John Wesley’s 1780 text, placing it at the very end of the final line in the sixth and final verse.  (It might be worth noticing that John himself had removed the only exclamation mark that Charles had used – which was placed after the word ‘find’ at the end of the third stanza – and John then added just one where Charles had used none, by placing it after the word ‘King’ in the fourth line of the third stanza of the 1780 edition).  (iii) the substitution of capital letters where John – and Charles – used lower-case letters (as in the fifth stanza, line three, where ‘From east, and west, and south, and north’, is changed to, ‘From East, and West, and South, and North’ in the 1877 collection); and (iv) perhaps the most interesting change to 1780 text is where the editors of the 1877 Wesleyan hymnbook have removed one of John Wesley’s words, and substituted in its place a word that John himself had edited out of Charles’ original 1762 edition.  This change is found in the first line of the sixth stanza, which reads in the 1780 text, ‘An offering to their Lord’, but the 1877 editors change the line to read, ‘An offering to their God’ – which is, of course, exactly the line that Charles had first published in 1762.

Although the punctuation and spelling of the words of Charles’ 1762 hymn appears almost unchanged when the versions of the text found in the 1877 edition is compared with The Methodist Hymn-book of 1904, the 20th century editors still  make some significant changes to the text used in both the 1780 and 1877 hymn books.  The 1904 Methodist Hymn-book version of Charles Wesley’s 1762 hymn reads as follows:

1. Almighty God of love,
   Set up the attracting sign,
   And summon whom thou dost approve
   For messengers divine.
   
   
2. From favoured Abraham's seed
   The new apostles choose,
   In isles and continents to spread
   The dead-reviving news.
   
   
3. O that the chosen band
   Might now their brethren bring,
   And, gathered out of every land,
   Present to Zion's King!
   
   
4. We know it must be done,
   For God hath spoke the word:
   All Israel shall the Saviour own,
   To their first state restored.
   
   
5. Send then thy servants forth,
   To call the Hebrews home;
   From east, and west, and south, and north,
   Let all the wanderers come.
   
   
6. Where'er in lands unknown
   The fugitives remain,
   Bid every creature help them on,
   Thy holy mount to gain.
   
   
7. With Israel's myriads sealed,
   Let all the nations meet,
   And show the mystery fulfilled,
   Thy family complete!

 The most noticeable change made to the hymn in the 1904 edition of The Methodist Hymn-book, is that the editorial committee removed twenty lines from the total of 48 lines that appear in both the 1780 and 1877 texts (as well as in the original 1762 text as published by Charles Wesley).  They then arranged the remaining 28 lines of the hymn into seven verses, each made up of four lines.  The sequence of the lines is not changed, but the following lines of Charles Wesley’s original 1762 composition have been removed from the hymn, as follows:  (i) the eight lines (beginning with ‘Them, snatched out of the flame’ and ending with ‘Till time shall be no more’), forming the complete second verse of the 1780, and 1877 versions have been completely removed from the 1904 edition, as have also (ii) the last four lines of the third stanza (beginning with the line, ‘Of all the ancient race’ to ‘His way to Canaan find’), (iii) the last four lines of the fourth stanza (from, Rebuilt by his command’, to ‘Again, and touch the skies’), and (iv) the first four lines of the sixth stanza (beginning with, ‘An offering to their Lord’ to ‘In soul and body clean’).  These editorial cuts made in the 1904 hymn-book, appear to be aimed at changing some of the detailed eschatological interpretation and focus of the hymn as originally composed by Charles Wesley (and accepted by his brother John) regarding the future of the Jews in the plans of God.