And let our bodies part

And let our bodies part. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). From Volume II of Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems (1749), where it was hymn CCXXXIII, entitled ‘At Parting’. It was XLIII in the section entitled ‘Hymns for Christian Friends’. It was in two parts: Part I had six 8-line stanzas, Part II four stanzas. Part I was printed, with slight alterations, by John Wesley* in A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780) in 12 four-line stanzas, in the section ‘For the Society, Parting’. Part II, beginning ‘O let us ever dwell/ On the transporting Thought’, was much more dramatic, featuring an encounter with the risen Christ: Is this the Man of Woe, Whom...