205. Depth of Mercy

The Story Behind the Hymn

Charles Wesley wrote this hymn's text in 1740, only two years after his own dramatic conversion experience in May 1738 already discussed at length elsewhere in this collection in connection with 'O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing' (hymn 16) and 'And Can It Be That I Should Gain' (hymn 127), continuing the same intense, personally searching tone found in several of his other hymns written during this same early, emotionally charged period following his conversion.

The hymn's structure is built almost entirely around a repeated, urgent series of self-directed questions and confessions — asking whether mercy could genuinely still be available for someone who describes himself, echoing the apostle Paul's own language in 1 Timothy 1:15, as 'the chief of sinners' — rather than offering the more settled, confident declarations of praise found in many of Wesley's later, more established hymns.

The hymn's second verse, admitting to having 'long withstood His grace' and 'grieved Him by a thousand falls,' reflects Wesley's own candid acknowledgment of the extended period of spiritual searching and repeated failure that had preceded his eventual conversion, a period he did not shy away from describing honestly even in hymns intended for public congregational singing rather than only private reflection.

Carl G. Glaser, a German-American composer, wrote the tune most commonly associated with the hymn considerably later, and the completed hymn has remained a favored choice specifically for services of confession and repentance, its raw, questioning tone offering congregations a hymn that names genuine spiritual doubt and self-reproach directly rather than moving quickly past such feelings toward more comfortable, settled assurance.