A.M. Toplady, for some time vicar of Broad
Hembury, near Honiton. While walking out with some friends in Somerset,
he was caught in a storm, and the party sheltered in a well-known cave
by the roadside, where, standing under its rocky entrance, he wrote this
famous hymn:
Rock of ages, cleft for me.
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the Water and the Blood,
From Thy riven Side which flow'd,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
All these hymns are sung in every part of the world where the English
tongue is spoken.
The two ladies were good singers, one soprano and the other contralto,
while I sang tenor and my brother tried to sing bass; but, as he
explained, he was not effective on the lower notes (nor, as a matter of
fact, on the high ones either). He said afterwards it was as much as he
could do to play the music without having to join in the singing, and at
one point he narrowly escaped finishing two bars after the vocalists.
Still we spent a very pleasant evening, the remembrance of which
remained with us for many years, and we often caught ourselves wondering
what became of those pretty girls at Torquay.
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