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Calvary: From Brush to Pen
by Wally Court
There was a time when Christians hung religious
pictures or mottoes on the walls of their homes; icons that
daily gave expression to their faith.
It was the fall of 1918. World War I was
nearing its conclusion, and in a hospital in southern England,
a young British Army medical corpsman, suffering from malaria,
was experiencing a feverish hallucination.
"It was as if a door in the heavens opened and some deeply
solemn melodies came floating down to me," he would recall.
"It was a vision of Christ, turning toward a
path – rough, gloomy and foreboding. The shadow-hung path led
to Calvary, dimly discerned in the distance. The face was
turned so that one could see those sad eyes, infinite
compassion, unfathomed sorrow, most tender pity and exquisite
grief. And yet it was a manly face, holding the look of one
who has seen what lies at the end of the road, and faces it,
calm and unafraid."
In reality, the hallucination had taken his
befuddled mind back to the days of his youth and to the
shadowy, gas-lit depiction of Christ: The Man of Sorrows, that
hung in his father's modest home in Nunhead, England.
His parents were Salvation Army officers and
the painting, most likely a reproduction, had moved with the
family from appointment to appointment, five in all, over
seven years, and by now was an integral part of the family's
worldly goods.
To a seven-year-old, emotionally remote in a
family unit consisting of father, stepmother, three older and
one baby sister, the picture and its predictable outcome would
remain with him for the rest of his life.
Where the picture came from remains a mystery –
A contents sale?
Clipped from a magazine? A gift? Rescued from a
trash bin? And since it has long since been lost, the name of
the artisan who created it is also unknown.
But for all its anonymity the picture was
destined to play a significant role in the Salvation Army's
musical ministry.
What is known is that the young man was
Bramwell Coles, a budding composer. In his semi-delirious
state he sketched some musical notation. While convalescing,
he fashioned his notations into the selection, Man of Sorrows,
a classic of Salvation Army music literature.
Both Coles's music and the painting are based
on the words in Isaiah 53:3. "He is despised and rejected of
men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid
as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised and we
esteemed him not."
The selection unites four familiar hymns that
center on Christ's passion, beginning with the Philip Bliss
hymn of the same name:
Man of sorrows! what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
He then employed a melody he had composed to
words written by Eliza Read, a Salvationist from the Shanhill
Road Corps in Belfast.
I heard of a Saviour whose love was so great
That he laid down his life on the tree;
The thorns they were pierced on his beautiful brow
To pardon a rebel like me.
He pardoned a rebel, a rebel like me
He pardoned a rebel like me.
The thorns they were pierced on his beautiful brow
To pardon a rebel like me.
He follows that with an arrangement of the song
I think of all his Sorrow, written by his mentor Colonel
Richard Slater . . .
I think of all his sorrow,
The garden and the morrow,
When cruel death did follow:
'Twas for me, 'twas all for me!
. . . and concluded with the chorus of the hymn
The Broken Heart by Thomas Dennis, an assistant Anglican
pastor in Haslemere, Surrey.
He died of a broken heart for me,
He died of a broken heart;
Oh, wondrous love! for you, for me,
He died of a broken heart.
Man of Sorrowshad a moving and auspicious
reading at the Army's 1928 Composers' Festival in London,
England. In the audience were the future King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth.
"Man of Sorrows towers above all Coles' other
compositions for sheer artistry, inspiration and beauty of
religious expression," wrote one critic.
"It seemed as though the very soul of the
composer had been laid bare, and his longings and aspirations
exquisitely portrayed in musical form," added wrote another.
During the next five decades, Bramwell
maintained an ongoing manuscript pilgrimage from Gethsemane to
Calvary, skillfully melding the melodies of well-known hymns
that would bring the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday
to the minds, and souls, of his listeners.
These instrumental compositions included the
selections When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, The Old Rugged
Cross and The Hill of Calvary. He also fashioned music to
words associated with Christ's atoning work written by
prominent Salvationist poets of the day.
In 1947, Bramwell's life-long pilgrimage to the
Cross resulted in the congregational song Here at the Cross
that still finds expression in Salvation Army Easter services
throughout the world.
How can I better serve thee Lord,
Thou who hast done so much for me?
Faltering and weak my labour has been;
O that my life may tell for thee.
Dull are my ears to hear they voice,
Slow are my hands to work for thee,
Loath are my feet to conquer the steeps.
That lead me to my Calvary.
Strength for my weakness, Lord, impart,
Sight for my blindness, give to me;
Faith for my doubtings, Lord, I would crave.
That I may serve thee worthily.
The chorus laid all his human frailties and
soul's longings at the foot of the Cross.
Here at the Cross in this sacred hour,
Here at the source of reviving power,
Helpless indeed, I come with my need;
Lord, for thy service, fit me I plead.
"No Salvationist composer could so movingly
portray the Calvary theme as Bramwell Coles. Here he was at
his best," said his good friend and fellow traveler, Lieut.
Commissioner Archie Wiggins. "He was indeed a man of God
otherwise he could not have written the way he did."
And while time has erased the name of the
mystery painter, the name of the musician, his music and his
obsession with Christ's passion lives, rescued, as it were,
from temporary delirium to eternal destiny.
Colonel Bramwell Coles' biography, In the
Firing Line, and an accompanying CD of Colonel Coles' music
including Man of Sorrows, is available from Salvationist
Publishing and Supplies in the United Kingdom, armybarmy.com,
or <wlcemc@rogers.com>.
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