Gentle Jesus, meek and mild

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Charles Wesley* (1707-1788). First published in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) in fourteen 4-line stanzas. The full original text is printed in Frank Baker’s Representative Verse of Charles Wesley (1962), pp. 41-2. Various abridgements of the hymn have been published, with a variety of opening lines. In addition to the original first line, Wesley’s stanza 8, ‘Lamb of God, I look to thee’, and his stanza 13, ‘Loving Jesu(s), gentle Lamb’, have been chosen as the start of the hymn. The description of Jesus as ‘meek and mild’ has often been criticised, and William Blake*, who clearly knew the hymn, was moved to ask (in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’) ‘Was Jesus gentle, or...