At the midsummer point of the year, the Christian Church celebrates the Feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, which this year falls on Sunday. In England it used to be a time of popular celebration, of fairs and bonfires, much of which may have had more to do with ancient traditions of the summer solstice than of the birth of John the Baptist, the Forerunner, who was sent to prepare the way of the coming Messiah.

In St Luke’s Gospel not only is Jesus a child of promise, so too is his cousin, John the Baptist, who is announced by an angel to his father, Zechariah, who is struck dumb until he is asked what the child’s name is to be. He writes down “John”, in Hebrew, Yohanan, – “God has given grace”. The name expresses the vocation, as does Jesus, Yeshua, which means “God saves”.

Zechariah then bursts into song, the canticle the Christian Church knows as the Benedictus, praise to God for his mercy and salvation which in the Anglican tradition is said or sung at morning prayer.

The Christian Church inherited the rich tradition of psalmody from its Jewish roots, psalms which include both intensely personal prayers of devotion, of praise, of lament, sometimes almost of desperation, to psalms that may have been first crafted for great occasions of temple liturgy. They have remained a powerful, shaping spiritual resource for generations.

Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd”, with its evocation of God’s providential care even in “the valley of the shadow of death”, remains a resource whose words still speak to human loss and need. The Christians of Colossae are urged to “sing psalms, and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in their hearts to God”. The angelic choirs give voice to the worship of heaven, and the worship and singing of the Christian Church reflected and was one with that heavenly worship.

Martin Luther wrote that music was a gift of God “instilled and implanted in all creatures . . . nothing is without sound or harmony, but the human voice is the most wonderful gift of all”. The one who sings, it has been said, “prays twice”.

The Reformation brought about a great renewal of Christian music and hymnody. In England, apart from anthems for choirs, it was late coming, for the only popularly sung resources which went with the Prayer Book service were metrical versions of the psalms. It was the Methodist revival of the 18th century, and the genius of John Wesley, and in particular of his brother, Charles, together with Isaac Watts, which began the great tradition of English hymnody.

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley, whose hymns still remain a remarkable distillation of Christian faith and experience. It is Charles who prays “Heavenly Adam, Life divine; Change my nature into thine”, showing an understanding of the Christian life and the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit which is close to the Orthodox understanding that we are called to become “partakers of the divine nature”. “Hark the herald angels sing!” teaches the saving mystery of the Incarnation – “veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail the incarnate Deity!”

Charles longs for a heart to praise – “a humble, lowly, contrite heart, believing true and clean, which neither life nor death can part, from Him that dwells within.” He prays, in a morning hymn, “Fill me, radiancy divine, scatter all my unbelief”.

Quite coincidentally, this is also the 200th anniversary of another great hymn-writer, Christopher Wordsworth, the nephew of William Wordsworth and Bishop of Lincoln. He taught the faith through his hymns. It was, he said, “the first duty of a hymn-writer to teach sound doctrine, and thus to save souls”.

His hymns were drawn from Scripture and the ancient Fathers of the Church, as we can see in his hymns for Epiphany (“Songs of thankfulness and praise”); Easter (“Alleluia, alleluia, hearts to heaven and voices raise”); and Ascension (“See the conqueror mounts in triumph”).

In the end Charles Wesley is the greater poet and hymn writer, but both he and Christopher Wordsworth are above all teachers of the faith, reminding us that “orthodoxy” does not mean right belief but right glory. Their hymns invite us to lift up our hearts, pointing us to the glory of heaven where we shall be “lost in wonder, love and praise”.

The Right Rev Dr Geoffrey Rowell is the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe