O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing

"O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing" was written by Charles Wesley in 1739 to celebrate the first anniversary of his evangelical conversion. Wesley, the younger brother of John Wesley and the co-founder of the Methodist movement, wrote the hymn after his Moravian mentor Peter Böhler said to him, "Had I a thousand tongues, I would praise Christ with them all." The phrase captured Wesley's imagination, and he composed a hymn of eighteen stanzas (later condensed) that overflows with praise for the name, blood, and grace of Jesus. Wesley placed this hymn first in his collection "Hymns and Sacred Poems," and for generations it was the opening hymn of the Methodist hymnal — setting the tone for the entire Wesleyan worship tradition. The hymn reflects the explosive joy of the early Methodist revival, when thousands across England and America were coming to faith through the preaching of the Wesleys and George Whitefield. Its bold evangelistic declarations — "He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free" — capture the transformative power that the Methodists experienced and proclaimed. Wesley is estimated to have written over 6,500 hymns, earning him the title "the sweet singer of Methodism."