And of course the Hallelujah Chorus: it was when the Messiah was
performed in 1743, that “King George II (who happened to be present), started
up, and remained standing”3– at the “King of Kings” part of that chorus. The
audience obliged as well. At least so the story goes. In any case, standing for
the Hallelujah Chorus has turned “syllabic painting” into “syllabic posture” – a
representative action moved by a reality from heaven, where the Messiah is
now present as to His Divine Human.
Another person comes into the picture for the Messiah – Charles Jennens,
a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interest. He became a devotee
to Handel’s music, and being opposed to the Deism of the day (more on
that below) he actually brought the libretto of Biblical quotes from the King
James Bible to Handel. Jennens was by then a close friend of Handel, having
collaborated with him on Saul, and the earlier Rodelinda in 1725. So the biblical
text was thanks to Jennens, who wished to restore “God’s ability to intervene
in human affairs,” denied by Deists who deemed God the “clockmaker of the
Universe.” (God wound it up and then left it to tick on its own, without any
trace of its Author.)
Let us take a look at Deism, coming as a culmination of the historic era
known as the Age of the Enlightenment cum Age of Reason, roughly from
1620 to 1789 – the French Revolution –with Copernicus, Galileo, Locke,
Newton and Franklin as key figures.4
Some main concepts of the Enlightenment were the right of selfgovernment and the natural rights of all human beings. Two major works
printed on Deistic principles were Tindal’s 1730 Christianity as Old as Creation,
which became the Deist’s Bible, claiming that true Christianity is the natural
religion of all time. The Gospels are subject to verification by human reason:
we can know all that is in the Bible without the Bible. Another was Diderot’s
Encyclopedie from 1751 through the next dozen years, which “replaced the
Bible” among all literati and even royalty – Frederick and Catherine the Great
among them. It was during the Enlightenment that Deism turned to finding
God “on your own” without the Bible or Divine Intervention – just when the
Lord “intervened” again in His Second Advent!
Deism shared its platform with the “Great Awakening” – from 1720
into the 1740s. This was the “shared religious experience” phenomenon –
enthusiastic preaching outdoors to large gatherings, both in the colonies,
i.e. America, and back in England and Germany. Names included Jonathan
Edwards, George Whitefield, Howell Harris, Jakob Spener in Germany, and of
3 http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/12/19/taking_a_stand_for_messiah/
4 The Age of Reason – contemporary with Age of Enlightenment - with Thomas Paine through Immanuel
Kant as key figures.
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