Just after recent solar eclipse was over, the first verse of an Easter hymn by Charles Wesley came into my mind:
Love’s redeeming work is done;
Fought the fight, the battle won:
Lo, our Sun’s eclipse is o’er!
Lo, he sets in blood no more.
Did Charles Wesley witness an eclipse? Did the sun look red at the time?
Perhaps we can never know the answers. But what is very clear in Wesley’s verse is the play on words – he clearly identified the Sun with God’s Son who was ‘eclipsed’ at the Crucifixion, but reappeared in glory at the Resurrection.
Note:
St. Boniface Church, Sunday March 29th, 6.30pm: The Passion of Christ – a service of hymns, anthems, readings and prayers for the start of Holy Week.
Charles Wesley 1707-1788
There was a notable eclipse in over England on 22 April 1715 so Charles Wesley may well have seen it and at the impressionable age of 8 he probably remembered it well. Edmund Halley of comet fame described it and no doubt made more sense than that verse above. What does it mean? Poetic licence I suppose.
There was another one in 1733 visible in Sweden and may have been seen in England also.