Here is Love Vast as The Ocean

More than a hundred years ago, a great renewal of genuine Christianity swept through Wales led by Evan Roberts. There had been signs of renewed life in many churches in the months previously, but Evan Roberts was moved by the Spirit to preach at gatherings across Wales. Church buildings overflowed; thousands of new converts were made. Church historians and students of revival movements know this as the Welsh Revival of 1904.

Evan Roberts preached a very simple message:

1. Confess all your sins.
2. Remove all doubtful things from your life.
3. Submit to the Spirit.
4. Publicly stand and confess Christ.

There was one hymn “Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean”, that came to express that Revival and was used mightily by God during that time. The English translation of the original Welsh lyrics goes like this:

Here is love, vast as the ocean,

Lovingkindness as the flood,

When the Prince of life, our ransom,

Shed for us His precious blood.

Who His love will not remember?

Who can cease to sing His praise?

He can never be forgotten

Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion,

Fountains opened deep and wide;

Through the floodgates of God’s mercy

Flowed a vast and gracious tide.

Grace and love, like mighty rivers,

Poured incessant from above.

And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice

Kissed a guilty world in love.

A century later, the Rev. Roy Jenkins of the BBC described it in this way, “Just after eleven o’clock on a Wednesday evening in 1904, a solo voice rang out with the hymn, “Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean”. Maybe a thousand people were in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Abertillery at the time, leaning over the galleries, packing every pew and squeezing into every spare corner. They’d been here for more than four hours, in a service of intense emotion. Meetings like it were taking place across Wales night after night, with fervent prayer and passionate singing – and similar disregard for the clock. They were both excited and appalled, many left puzzled and some frightened, but it was reckoned that in little over a year a hundred thousand people had made a new commitment to Jesus Christ. For a period, whole communities changed as men and women found themselves drawn into a powerful experience of God; and sparks from their awakening were soon to ignite fires in more than a dozen other countries. And the hymn that soloist struck up spontaneously about “love vast as the ocean” was heard so often that it became known as “the love song of the revival.”

“Here is Love, Vast as the Ocean” had come from the pen of William Rees, born in 1802 in Denbighshire. In poor health as a child, he contracted smallpox when he was three and lost his right eye. From an early age, he worked as a shepherd but kept studying in his spare time with very little formal education to his credit. Brought up as a member of a Calvinistic Methodist congregation, he became a pastor of the small Congregational church at Flintshire in 1832. He then went on to minister in Denbigh, and later in Liverpool for thirty-two years. His eloquence made him one of the greatest Welsh preachers and popular lecturers of his time. Rees combined a powerful evangelical faith with a radical view of politics; as the Salvation Army would later express it, a heart to God and a hand to man.

One of the most notable revival singers was a young woman, Annie Davies of Maesteg. According to one account printed in 1907, her voice emerged from a meeting in Pontycymer, and with it, the song by Rees. She sang, with tears on her face and victory in her voice, the mighty love-song of the revival—the hymn of Dr. William Rees, “Dyma gariad fel y moroedd.” The song is of the marvel of divine love, flowing as vast oceans of tender mercies in never-ebbing floodtide; of the very Prince of life dying, dying to redeem our forfeit life.

“Here is love, vast as the ocean”, expresses William Rees’ faith, a faith rooted in understanding what it means to be human and what it is that God has done for us. Those who gathered in the chapels across Wales would have felt a keen sense of their own humanity; Evan Roberts tells them that Jesus takes on that humanity and brings it back from its lostness and restores it to a place with God. God breaks into our lives because by ourselves we could do nothing, “Who His love will not remember? Who can cease to sing His praise?”, William Rees asks us. “Through the floodgates of God’s mercy, Flowed a vast and gracious tide”, Rees writes.

Being a Christian is about grace; it’s about sensing God’s mercy and his grace for ourselves. This is unnerving for churches, which like to think that they are the dispensers of salvation. It is also unnerving for people who believe being a Christian is about subscribing to an organization and that nothing more is expected of them.

Experience of God’s love transforms the lives of those who receive it and it transforms their relationships with others. “Heaven’s peace and perfect justice, Kissed a guilty world in love”, declares that the ways of God’s Kingdom should be the ways of God’s people; if we do not act in peace, justice and love, then we are not God’s people.

The text of stanzas 1 and 2 was written by William Rees. Exactly when he penned these words is not known. The text of stanzas 3 and 4 was possibly written by William Williams (1717-1791). Williams is best known as the author of the hymn “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.” The hymn “Here is love vast as the ocean” was translated from Welsh to English by William Edwards in The Baptist Book of Praise of 1900. The tune (Cymraeg) was composed in 1876 by Robert Lowry (1826-1899). Lowry is remembered for such hymns as “Christ Arose,” “Nothing but the Blood,” and “Shall We Gather at the River,” and for the tunes used with “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “We’re Marching to Zion,” “I Need Thee Every Hour,” and “Something for Jesus.”

The “updaters” have gotten their hands on this one too. They left stanzas 1 and 2 alone, but under the assumption that absolutely no one today can possibly understand what “thee” and “thou” mean any longer (and some, perhaps, to make the entire song in the third person rather than having the first two stanzas in the third person and the last two in the second person), they have altered stanzas 3 and 4 thus:

Let us all His love accepting

Love Him ever all our days

Let us seek His Kingdom only

And our lives be to His praise.

He alone shall be our glory

Nothing in the world we see

He has cleansed and sanctified us

He Himself has set us free.

In His truth He does direct me

By His Spirit through His Word

And His grace my need is meeting

As I trust in Him, my Lord

All His fullness He is pouring

In His love and power in me

Without measure, full and boundless

As I yield myself to Thee.

In 2009, Gary Brumley made his own version, updating stanza 3 and the first half of stanza 4, replacing the last half of stanza 4 with additional lyrics, and adding a stanza 5.

Let me all Your love accepting,

Love You Lord, through all my days

Let me seek Your kingdom only

And my life be to Your praise.

You alone shall be my glory,

Nothing in the world I see

You have cleansed and sanctified me,

You Yourself have set me free.

Into Truth You always lead me

By Your Spirit through Your Word;

And Your grace my need is meeting,

As I trust in You, my Lord.

Sweeter than the taste of honey

Is Your Word unto my lips

Like a lamp that’s brightly burning

Do your precepts light my steps.

Jesus, I will ever follow

By Your strength, for Your renown

Here I lay my life before You,

Casting down my every crown.

You’re my Lord! You are my Captain!

You’re my Treasure! You’re my King!

May my heart be meek and lowly

For the increase of Your fame.

Yet others have added these words to the hymn:

Here is love that conquered evil:

Christ, the firstborn from the grave;

Death has failed to be found equal

To the life of Him who saves.

In the valley of our darkness

Dawned His everlasting light;

Perfect love in glorious radiance

Has repelled death’s hellish night.

That same love beyond all measure,

Mocked and slain by hateful men,

Lives and reigns in resurrection

And can never die again.

Here is love for all the ages,

Radiant Sun of Heav’n He stands,

Calling home His Father’s children,

Holding forth His wounded hands.

Here is love, vast as the heavens;

Countless as the stars above

Are the souls that He has ransomed,

Precious daughters, treasured sons.

We are called to feast forever

On a love beyond our time;

Glorious Father, Son, and Spirit

Now with man is intertwined.

No love is higher, no love is wider

No love is deeper, no love is truer

No lover is higher, no lover is wider

No love is like Your love, O Lord

This is a hymn with which most of us are probably unfamiliar because it has not appeared widely in any of the hymnals published during the twentieth century for use in churches of Christ, nor is it currently common in any of our books available now. Today, contemporary Christian artists have rediscovered it and added to its sweetness.

The composition however stands as one of the most powerful hymns ever penned, showing the connection between God’s love and the gospel—a witness that expressed a deep love for God and a deep love for one’s neighbour. Where are the William Rees and Evan Roberts of our time?

What was Evan Roberts’ message? Confess all our sins; remove all doubtful things from our lives; submit to the Spirit and stand and confess Christ.

And why? Because we are offered love, love vast as an ocean.

https://youtu.be/FX6u6ULIdmk