Chapter 5

“In poverty, retirement, and with God.”Of all that is best in inward spiritual life, much can be learned from this inspired Dutchman. He wrote no hymns, but in his old age he composed a poem on “Heaven's Joys,” which is sometimes called “Thomas à Kempis' Hymn”:High the angel choirs are raisingHeart and voice in harmony;The Creator King still praisingWhom in beauty there they see.Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing,Trumpets' notes of triumph pealing,Radiant wings and white stoles gleamingUp the steps of glory streaming;Where the heavenly bells are ringing;“Holy! holy! holy!” singingTo the mighty Trinity!“Holy! holy! holy!” crying,For all earthly care and sighingIn that city cease to be!These lines are not in the hymnals of today—and whether they ever found their way into choral use in ancient times we are not told. Worse poetry has been sung—and more un-hymnlike. Some future composer will make a tune to the words of a Christian who stood almost in sight of his hundredth year—and of the eternal home he writes about.89 /opp 62Martin LutherDr. Martin LutherHymnal97 /69MARTIN LUTHER.“Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott.”Of Martin Luther Coleridge said, “He did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as he did by his translation of the Bible.” The remark is so true that it has become a commonplace.The above line—which may be seen inscribed on Luther's tomb atWittenberg—is the opening sentence and key-note of the Reformer's grandest hymn. The forty-sixth Psalm inspired it, and it is in harmony with sublime historical periods from its very nature, boldness, and sublimity. It was written, according to Welles, in the memorable year when the evangelical princes delivered their protest at the Diet of Spires, from which the word and the meaning of the word “Protestant” is derived. “Luther used often to sing it in 1530, while the Diet of Augsburg was sitting. It soon became the favorite psalm with the people. It was one of the watchwords of the Reformation, cheering armies to conflict, and sustaining believers in the hours of fiery trial.”“After Luther's death, Melancthon, his affectionate coadjutor, being one day at Weimar with his banished friends, Jonas and Creuziger, heard a little maid singing this psalm in the street, and said, ‘Sing on, my little girl, you little know whom you comfort:’”A mighty fortress is our God,A bulwark never failing;98 /70Our helper He, amid the floodOf mortal ills prevailing.For still our ancient foeDoth seek to work us woe;His craft and power are great,And, armed with cruel hate,On earth is not his equal.* * * * * *The Prince of Darkness grim—We tremble not for him:His rage we can endure,For lo! his doom is sure,One little word shall fell him.That word above all earthly powers—No thanks to them—abideth;The Spirit and the gifts are ours,Through Him who with us sideth.Let goods and kindred go,This mortal life also;The body they may kill,God's truth abideth still,His kingdom is for ever.Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, in Saxony, Nov. 10, 1483. He was educated at the University of Erfurth, and became an Augustinian monk and Professor of Philosophy and Divinity in the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 he composed and placarded his ninety-five Theses condemning certain practices of the Romish Church and three years later the Pope published a bull excommunicating him, which he burnt openly before a sympathetic multitude in Wittenberg. His life was a stormy one, and he was more than once in99 /71mortal danger by reason of his antagonism to the papal authority, but he found powerful patrons, and lived to see the Reformation an organized fact. He died in his birthplace, Eisleben, Feb. 18th, 1546.The translation of the “Ein feste burg,” given above, in part, is by Rev. Frederick Henry Hedge, D.D., born in Cambridge, March 1805, a graduate of Harvard, and formerly minister of the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Me. Died, 1890.Luther wrote thirty-six hymns, to some of which he fitted his own music, for he was a musician and singer as well as an eloquent preacher. The tune in which “Ein feste Burg” is sung in the hymnals, was composed by himself. The hymn has also a noble rendering in the music of Sebastian Bach, 8-4 time, found inHymns Ancient and Modern.BARTHOLOMEW RINGWALDT.“Great God, What Do I See and Hear?”The history of this hymn is somewhat indefinite, though common consent now attributes to Ringwaldt the stanza beginning with the above line. The imitation of the “Dies Irae” in German which was first in use was printed in Jacob Klug's “Gesangbuch” in 1535. Ringwaldt's hymn of the Last Day, also inspired from the ancient Latin original, appears in hisHandbuchlinof 1586, but does not contain this stanza. The first line is, “The awful Day will surely come,” (Es ist100 /72gewisslich an der Zeit). Nevertheless through the more than two hundred years that the hymn has been translated and re-translated, and gone through inevitable revisions, some vital identity in the spirit and tone of the one seven-line stanza has steadily connected it with Ringwaldt's name. Apparently it is the single survivor of a great lost hymn—edited and altered out of recognition. But its power evidently inspired the added verses, as we have them. Dr. Collyer found it, and, regretting that it was too short to sing in public service, composed stanzas 2d, 3d and 4th. It is likely that Collyer first met with it inPsalms and Hymns for Public and Private Devotion, Sheffield 1802, where it appeared anonymously. So far as known this was its first publication in English. Ringwaldt's stanza and two of Collyer's are here given:Great God, what do I see and hear!The end of things created!The Judge of mankind doth appearOn clouds of glory seated.The trumpet sounds, the graves restoreThe dead which they contained before;Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.The dead in Christ shall first ariseAt the last trumpet sounding,Caught up to meet Him in the skies,With joy their Lord surrounding.No gloomy fears their souls dismayHis presence sheds eternal dayOn those prepared to meet Him.101 /73Far over space to distant spheresThe lightnings are prevailingTh' ungodly rise, and all their tearsAnd sighs are unavailing.The day of grace is past and gone;They shake before the Judge's ThroneAll unprepared to meet Him.BartholomewRingwaldt, pastor of the Lutheran Church of Longfeld, Prussia, was born in 1531, and died in 1599. His hymns appear in a collection entitledHymns for the Sundays and Festivals of the Whole Year.Rev. William Bengo Collyer D.D., was born at Blackheath near London, April 14, 1782, educated at Homerton College and settled over a Congregational Church in Peckham. In 1812 he published a book of hymns, and in 1837 aService Bookto which he contributed eighty-nine hymns. He died Jan, 9, 1854.THE TUNE.Probably it was the customary singing of Ringwaldt's hymn (in Germany) to Luther's tune that gave it for some time the designation of “Luther's Hymn,” the title by which the music is still known—an air either composed or adapted by Luther, and rendered perhaps unisonously or with extempore chords. It was not until early in the last century that Vincent Novello wrote to it the noble arrangement now in use. It is a strong, even-time harmony with lofty tenor range, and very102 /74impressive with full choir and organ or the vocal volume of a congregation. InCheetham's Psalmodyis it written with a trumpet obligato.Vincent Novello, born in London, Sept. 6, 1781, the intimate friend of Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Hunt and Hazlitt, was a professor of music who attained great eminence as an organist and composer of hymn-tunes and sacred pieces. He was the founder of the publishing house of Novello and Ewer, and father of a famous musical family. Died at Nice, Aug. 9, 1861.ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.“O Deus, Ego Amo Te.”Francis Xavier, the celebrated Jesuit missionary, called “The Apostle of the Indies,” was a Spaniard, born in 1506. While a student in Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, and joined him in the formation of the new “Society for the Propagation of the Faith.” He was sent out on a mission to the East Indies and Japan, and gave himself to the work with a martyr's devotion. The stations he established in Japan were maintained more than a hundred years. He died in China, Dec. 1552.His hymn, some time out of use, is being revived in later singing-books as expressive of the purest and highest Christian sentiment:O Deus, ego amo Te.Nec amo Te, ut salves me,Aut quia non amantes TeÆterno punis igne.103 /75My God, I love Thee—not becauseI hope for heaven thereby;Nor yet because who love Thee notMust burn eternally.After recounting Christ's vicarious sufferings as the chief claim to His disciples' unselfish love, the hymn continues,—Cur igitur non amem Te,O Jesu amantissime!Non, ut in cœlo salves me,Aut in æternum damnes me.Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,Should I not love Thee well?Not for the sake of winning heaven,Nor of escaping hell;Not with the hope of gaining aught,Nor seeking a reward,But as Thyself hast lovéd me,Oh, ever-loving Lord!E'en so I love Thee, and will love,And in Thy praise will sing;Solely because Thou art my GodAnd my eternal King.The translation is by Rev. Edward Caswall, 1814–1878, a priest in the Church of Rome. Besides his translations, he published theLyra Catholica, theMasque of Mary, and several other poetical works. (Page 101.)THE TUNE.“St. Bernard”—apparently so named because originally composed to Caswall's translation of104 /76one of Bernard of Clairvaux's hymns—is by John Richardson, born in Preston, Eng., Dec. 4, 1817, and died there April 13, 1879. He was an organist in Liverpool, and noted as a composer of glees, but was the author of several sacred tunes.SIR WALTER RALEIGH.“Give Me My Scallop-Shell of Quiet.”Few of the hymns of the Elizabethan era survive, though the Ambrosian Midnight Hymn, “Hark, 'tis the Midnight Cry,” and the hymns of St. Bernard and Bernard of Cluny, are still tones in the church, and the religious poetry of Sir Walter Raleigh comes down to us associated with the history of his brilliant, though tragic career. The following poem has some fine lines in the quaint English style of the period, and was composed by Sir Walter during his first imprisonment:Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,My staff of faith to walk upon,My scrip of joy—immortal diet—My bottle of salvation,My gown of glory, hope's true gage—And thus I take my pilgrimage.Blood must be my body's balmer,While my soul, like faithful palmer,Travelleth toward the land of heaven;Other balm will not be given.Over the silver mountainsWhere spring the nectar fountains,105 /77There will I kiss the bowl of bliss,And drink my everlasting fill,Upon every milken hill;My soul will be a-dry before,But after that will thirst no more.The musings of the unfortunate but high-souled nobleman in expectation of ignominious death are interesting and pathetic, but they have no claim to a tune, even if they were less rugged and unmetrical. But the poem stands notable among the pious witnesses.MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.“O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te.”This last passionate prayer of the unhappy Mary Stuart just before her execution—in a language which perhaps flowed from her pen more easily than even her English or French—is another witness of supplicating faith that struggles out of darkness with a song. In her extremity the devoted Catholic forgets her petitions to the Virgin, and comes to Christ:O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te;O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!In dura catena, in misera poenaDesidero Te!Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendoAdoro, imploro ut liberes me!My Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee;O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free:In rigorous chains, in piteous pains,106 /78I am longing for Thee!In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling,I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!One would, at first thought, judge this simple but eloquent cry worthy of an appropriate tone-expression—to be sung by prison evangelists like the Volunteers of America, to convicts in the jails and penitentiaries. But its special errand and burden are voiced so literally that hardened hearers would probably misapply it—however sincerely the petitioner herself meant to invoke spiritual rather than temporal deliverance. The hymn, if we may call it so, istooliteral. Possibly at some time or other it may have been set to music but not for ordinary choir service.SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.The sands of time are sinking,* * * * * *But, glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's Land.This hymn is biographical, but not autobiographical. Like the discourses in Herodotus and Plutarch, it is the voice of the dead speaking through the sympathetic genius of the living after long generations. The strong, stern Calvinist of 1636 in Aberdeen was not a poet, but he bequeathed his spirit and life to the verse of a poet of 1845 in Melrose. Anne Ross Cousin read his two hundred and twenty letters written during a two107 /79years' captivity for his fidelity to the purer faith, and studied his whole history and experience till her soul took his soul's place and felt what he felt. Her poem of nineteen stanzas (152 lines) is the voice of Rutherford the Covenanter, with the prolixity of his manner and age sweetened by his triumphant piety, and that is why it belongs with theHymns of Great Witnesses. The three or four stanzas still occasionally printed and sung are only recalled to memory by the above three lines.Samuel Rutherford was born in Nisbet Parish, Scotland, in 1600. His settled ministry was at Anworth, in Galloway—1630–1651—with a break between 1636 and 1638, when Charles I. angered by his anti-prelatical writings, silenced and banished him. Shut up in Aberdeen, but allowed, like Paul in Rome, to live “in his own hired house” and write letters, he poured out his heart's love in Epistles to his Anworth flock and to the Non-conformists of Scotland. When his countrymen rose against the attempted imposition of a new holy Romish service-book on their churches, he escaped to his people, and soon after appeared in Edinburgh and signed the covenant with the assembled ministers. Thirteen years later, after Cromwell's death and the accession of Charles II. the wrath of the prelates fell on him at St. Andrews, where the Presbytery had made him rector of the college. The King's decree indicted him for treason, stripped him of all his offices, and would have forced him to108 /80the block had he not been stricken with his last sickness. When the officers came to take him he said, “I am summoned before a higher Judge and Judicatory, and I am behooved to attend them.” He died soon after, in the year 1661.The first, and a few other of the choicest stanzas of the hymn inspired by his life and death are here given:The sands of time are sinking,The dawn of heaven breaks,The summer morn I've sighed for—The fair, sweet morn—awakes.Dark, dark hath been the midnight,But dayspring is at hand;And glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.* * * * * *Oh! well it is for ever—Oh! well for evermore:My nest hung in no forestOf all this death-doomed shore;Yea, let this vain world vanish,As from the ship the strand,While glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.* * * * * *The little birds of Anworth—I used to count them blest;Now beside happier altarsI go to build my nest;O'er these there broods no silenceNo graves around them stand;For glory deathless dwellethIn Immanuel's land.109 /81I have borne scorn and hatred,I have borne wrong and shame,Earth's proud ones have reproached meFor Christ's thrice blesséd name.Where God's seals set the fairest,They've stamped their foulest brand;But judgment shines like noondayIn Immanuel's land.They've summoned me before them,But there I may not come;My Lord says, “Come up hither;”My Lord says, “Welcome home;”My King at His white throneMy presence doth command,Where glory, glory dwelleth,In Immanuel's land.A reminiscence of St. Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy (chap. 4) comes with the last two stanzas.THE TUNE.The tender and appropriate choral in B flat, named “Rutherford” was composed by D'Urhan, a French musician, probably a hundred years ago. It was doubtless named by those who long afterwards fitted it to the words, and knew whose spiritual proxy the lady stood who indited the hymn. It is reprinted in Peloubet'sSelect Songs, and in theCoronation Hymnal. Naturally in the days of the hymn's more frequent use people became accustomed to calling “The sands of time are sinking,” “Rutherford's Hymn.” Rutherford's own110 /82words certainly furnished the memorable refrain with its immortal glow and gladness. One of his joyful exclamations as he lay dying of his lingering disease was, “Glory shineth in Immanuel's Land!”Chretien (Christian) Urhan, or D'Urhan, was born at Montjoie, France, about 1788, and died, in Paris, 1845. He was a noted violin-player, and composer, also, of vocal and instrumental music.Mrs. Anne Ross (Cundell) Cousin, daughter of David Ross Cundell, M.D., and widow of Rev. William Cousin of the Free church of Scotland, was born in Melrose (?), 1824. She wrote many poems, most of which are beautiful meditations rather than lyrics suitable for public song. Her “Rutherford Hymn” was first published in theChristian Treasury, 1857.GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.“Verzage Nicht Du Hauflein Klein.”The historian tells us that before the battle of Lutzen, during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), King Gustavus of Sweden, in the thick fog of an autumn morning, with the Bohemian and Austrian armies of Emperor Ferdinand in front of him, knelt before his troops, and his whole army knelt with him in prayer. Then ten thousand voices and the whole concert of regimental bands burst forth in this brave song:Fear not, O little flock, the foeWho madly seeks your overthrow,111 /83Dread not his rage and power:What though your courage sometimes faints,His seeming triumph o'er God's saintsLasts but a little hour.Be of good cheer, your cause belongsTo Him who can avenge your wrongs;Leave it to Him, our Lord:Though hidden yet from all our eyes,He sees the Gideon who shall riseTo save us and His word.As true as God's own word is true,Nor earth nor hell with all their crew,Against us shall prevail:A jest and by-word they are grown;God is with us, we are His own,Our victory cannot fail.Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer!Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare,Fight for us once again:So shall Thy saints and martyrs raiseA mighty chorus to Thy praise,World without end. Amen.The army of Gustavus moved forward to victory as the fog lifted; but at the moment of triumph a riderless horse came galloping back to the camp. It was the horse of the martyred King.The battle song just quoted—next to Luther's “Ein feste Burg” the most famous German hymn—has always since that day been called “Gustavus Adolphus' Hymn”; and the mingled sorrow and joy of the event at Lutzen named it also “King Gustavus' Swan Song.” Gustavus Adolphus did112 /84not write hymns. He could sing them, and he could make them historic—and it was this connection that identified him with the famous battle song. Its author was the Rev. Johan Michael Altenburg, a Lutheran clergyman, who composed apparently both hymn and tune on receiving news of the king's victory at Leipsic a year before.Gustavus Adolphus was born in 1594. His death on the battlefield occurred Nov. 5, 1632—when he was in the prime of his manhood. He was one of the greatest military commanders in history, besides being a great ruler and administrator, and a devout Christian. He was, during the Thirty Years' War (until his untimely death), the leading champion of Protestantism in Europe.The English translator of the battle song was Miss Catherine Winkworth, born in London, Sept. 13, 1827. She was an industrious and successful translator of German hymns, contributing many results of her work to two English editions of theLyra Germania, to theChurch Book of England, and toChristian Singers of Germany. She died in 1878.The tune of “Ravendale” by Walter Stokes (born 1847) is the best modern rendering of the celebrated hymn.PAUL GERHARDT.“Befiehl Du Deine Wege.”Paul Gerhardt was one of those minstrels of experience who are—113 /85“Cradled into poetry by wrong,And learn in suffering what they teach in song.”He was a graduate of that school when he wrote his “Hymn of Trust:”Commit thou all thy griefsAnd ways into His hands;To His sure trust and tender careWho earth and heaven commands.Thou on the Lord rely,So, safe, shalt thou go on;Fix on His work thy steadfast eye,So shall thy work be done.* * * * * *Give to the winds thy fears;Hope, and be undismayed;God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,He shall lift up thy head.Through waves and clouds and stormsHe gently clears thy way;Wait thou His time, so shall this nightSoon end in joyous day.Gerhardt was born at Grafenheinchen, Saxony, 1606. Through the first and best years of manhood's strength (during the ThirtyYears'War), a wandering preacher tossed from place to place, he was without a parish and without a home.After the peace of Westphalia he settled in the little village of Mittenwalde. He was then forty-four years old. Four years later he married and removed to a Berlin church. During his residence there he buried his wife, and four of his children,114 /86was deposed from the ministry because his Lutheran doctrines offended the Elector Frederick, and finally retired as a simple arch-deacon to a small parish in Lubben, where he preached, toiled, and suffered amid a rough and uncongenial people till he died, Jan. 16, 1676.Few men have ever lived whose case more needed a “Hymn of Trust”—and fewer still could have written it themselves. Through all those trial years he was pouring forth his soul in devout verses, making in all no less than a hundred and twenty-five hymns—every one of them a comfort to others as well as to himself.He became a favorite, and for a timethefavorite, hymn-writer of all the German-speaking people. Among these tones of calm faith and joy we recognize today (in the English tongue),—Since Jesus is my Friend,Thee, O Immanuel, we praise,All my heart this night rejoices,How shall I meet Thee,—and the English translation of his “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” turned into German by himself from St. Bernard Clairvaux's “Salve caput cruentatum,” and made dear to us in Rev. James Alexander's beautiful lines—O sacred head now wounded,With grief and shame weighed down,Now scornfully surroundedWith thorns, Thine only crown.115 /87THE TUNE.A plain-song by Alexander Reinagle is used by some congregations, but is not remarkably expressive. Reinagle, Alexander Robert, (1799–1877) of Kidlington, Eng., was organist to the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford.The great “Hymn of Trust” could have found no more sympathetic interpreter than the musician of Gerhardt's own land and language, Schumann, the gentle genius of Zwickau. It bears the name “Schumann,” appropriately enough, and its elocution makes a volume of each quatrain, notably the one—Who points the clouds their course,Whom wind and seas obey;He shall direct thy wandering feet,He shall prepare thy way.Robert Schumann, Ph.D., was born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810. He was a music director and conservatory teacher, and the master-mind of the pre-Wagnerian period. His compositions became popular, having a character of their own, combining the intellectual and beautiful in art. He published in Leipsic a journal promotive of his school of music, and founded a choral society in Dresden. Happy in the coöperation of his wife, herself a skilled musician, he extended his work to Vienna and the Netherlands; but his zeal wore him out, and he died at the age of forty-six, universally lamented as “the eminent man who had done so much for the happiness of others.”116 /88Gerhardt's Hymn (ten quatrains) is rarely printed entire, and where six are printed only four are usually sung. Different collections choose portions according to the compiler's taste, the stanza beginning—Give to the winds thy fears,—being with some a favorite first verse.The translation of the hymn from the German is John Wesley's.Purely legendary is the beautiful story of the composition of the hymn, “Commit thou all thy griefs”; how, after his exile from Berlin, traveling on foot with his weeping wife, Gerhardt stopped at a wayside inn and wrote the lines while he rested; and how a messenger from Duke Christian found him there, and offered him a home in Meresburg. But the most ordinary imagination can fill in the possible incidents in a life of vicissitudes such as Gerhardt's was.LADY HUNTINGDON.“When Thou My Righteous Judge Shalt Come.”Selina Shirley, Countess of Huntingdon, born 1707, died 1791, is familiarly known as the titled friend and patroness of Whitefield and his fellow-preachers. She early consecrated herself to God, and in the great spiritual awakening under Whitefield and the Wesleys she was a punctual and sympathetic helper. Uniting with the Calvinistic Methodists, she nevertheless stood aloof from none117 /89who preached a personal Christ, and whose watchwords were the salvation of souls and the purification of the Church. For more than fifty years she devoted her wealth to benevolence and spiritual ministries, and died at the age of eighty-four. “I have done my work,” was her last testimony. “I have nothing to do but to go to my Father.”123 /opp 94Lady HuntingdonS. HuntingdonHymnalAt various times Lady Huntingdon expressed her religious experience in verse, and the manful vigor of her school of faith recalls the unbending confidence of Job, for she was not a stranger to affliction.God's furnace doth in Zion stand,But Zion's God sits by,As the refiner views his gold,With an observant eye.His thoughts are high, His love is wise,His wounds a cure intend;And, though He does not always smile,He loves unto the end.Her great hymn, that keeps her memory green, has the old-fashioned flavor. “Massa made God BIG!” was the comment on Dr. Bellany made by his old negro servant after that noted minister's death. In Puritan piety the sternest self-depreciation qualified every thought of the creature, while every allusion to the Creator was a magnificat. Lady Huntingdon's hymn has no flattering phrases for the human subject. “Worthless worm,” and “vilest of them all” indicate the true Pauline or Oriental prostration of self before a superior118 /90being; but there is grandeur in the metre, the awful reverence, and the scene of judgment in the stanzas—always remembering the mighty choral that has so long given the lyric its voice in the church, and is ancillary to its fame:When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt comeTo take Thy ransomed people home,Shall I among them stand?Shall such a worthless worm as I,Who sometimes am afraid to die,Be found at Thy right hand?I love to meet Thy people now,Before Thy feet with them to bow,Though vilest of them all;But can I bear the piercing thought,What if my name should be left out,When Thou for them shalt call?O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace:Be Thou my only hiding place,In this th' accepted day;Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear,To still my unbelieving fear,Nor let me fall, I pray.Among Thy saints let me be found,Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound,To see Thy smiling face;Then loudest of the throng I'll sing,While heaven's resounding arches ringWith shouts of sovereign grace.THE TUNE.The tune of “Meribah,” in which this hymn has been sung for the last sixty or more years, is one of119 /91Dr. Lowell Mason's masterpieces. An earlier German harmony attributed to Heinrich Isaac and named “Innsbruck” has in some few cases claimed association with the words, though composed two hundred years before Lady Huntingdon was born. It is strong and solemn, but its cold psalm-tune movement does not utter the deep emotion of the author's lines. “Meribah” was inspired by the hymn itself, and there is nothing invidious in saying it illustrates the fact, memorable in all hymnology, of the natural obligation of a hymn to its tune.Apropos of both, it is related that Mason was once presiding at choir service in a certain church where the minister gave out “When thou my righteous Judge shalt come” and by mistake directed the singers to “omit the second stanza.” Mason sat at the organ, and while playing the last strain, “Be found at thy right hand,” glanced ahead in the hymnbook and turned with a start just in time to command, “Sing thenextverse!” The choir did so, and “O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace!” was saved from being a horrible prayer to be kept out of heaven.ZINZENDORF.“Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness.”Nicolaus Ludwig, Count Von Zinzendorf, was born at Dresden, May 26, 1700, and educated at Halle and Wittenberg. From his youth he evinced120 /92marked seriousness of mind, and deep religious sensibilities, and this character appeared in his sympathy with the persecuted Moravians, to whom he gave domicile and domain on his large estate. For eleven years he was Councillor to the Elector of Saxony, but subsequently, uniting with the Brethren's Church, he founded the settlement of Herrnhut, the first home and refuge of the reorganized sect, and became a Moravian minister and bishop.Zinzendorf was a man of high culture, as well as profound and sincere piety and in his hymns (of which he wrote more than two thousand) he preached Christ as eloquently as with his voice. The real birth-moment of his religious life is said to have been simultaneous with his study of the “Ecce Homo” in the Dusseldorf Gallery, a wonderful painting of Jesus crowned with thorns. Visiting the gallery one day when a young man, he gazed on the sacred face and read the legend superscribed, “All this I have done for thee; What doest thou for me?” Ever afterwards his motto was “I have but one passion, and that is He, and only He”—a version of Paul's “For me to live is Christ.”Jesus, Thy blood and righteousnessMy beauty are, my glorious dress:'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,With joy shall I lift up my head.Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,For who aught to my charge shall lay?121 /93Fully absolved through these I am—From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.Lord, I believe were sinners moreThan sands upon the ocean shore,Thou hast for all a ransom paid,For all a full atonement made.Nearly all the hymns of the great Moravian are now out of general use, having accomplished their mission, like the forgotten ones of Gerhardt, and been superseded by others. More sung in Europe, probably, now than any of the survivors is, “Jesus, geh voran,” (“Jesus, lead on,”) which has been translated into English by Jane Borthwick*(1854). Two others, both translated by John Wesley, are with us, the one above quoted, and “Glory to God, whose witness train.” “Jesus, Thy blood,” which is the best known, frequently appears with the alteration—Jesus, Thyrobeof righteousnessMy beautyis, my glorious dress.* Born in Edinburgh 1813.THE TUNE.“Malvern,” and “Uxbridge” a pure Gregorian, both by Lowell Mason, are common expressions of the hymn—the latter, perhaps, generally preferred, being less plaintive and speaking with a surer and more restful emphasis.122 /94ROBERT SEAGRAVE.“Rise, My Soul, and Stretch Thy Wings.”This hymn was written early in the 18th century, by the Rev. Robert Seagrave, born at Twyford, Leicestershire, Eng., Nov. 22, 1693. Educated at Cambridge, he took holy orders in the Established Church, but espoused the cause of the great evangelistic movement, and became a hearty co-worker with the Wesleys. Judging by the lyric fire he could evidently put into his verses, one involuntarily asks if he would not have written more, and been in fact the song-leader of the spiritual reformation if there had been no Charles Wesley. There is not a hymn of Wesley's in use on the same subject equal to the one immortal hymn of Seagrave, and the only other near its time that approaches it in vigor and appealing power is Doddridge's “Awake my soul, stretch every nerve.”But Providence gave Wesley the harp and appointed to the elder poet a branch of possibly equal usefulness, where he was kept too busy to enter the singers' ranks.For eleven years he was the Sunday-evening lecturer at Lorimer's Hall, London, and often preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle. His hymn is one of the most soul-stirring in the English language:Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings;Thy better portion trace;125 /95Rise from transitory thingsToward Heaven, thy native place;Sun and moon and stars decay,Time shall soon this earth remove;Rise, my soul and haste awayTo seats prepared above.Rivers to the ocean run,Nor stay in all their course;Fire ascending seeks the sun;Both speed them to their source:So a soul that's born of GodPants to view His glorious face,Upward tends to His abodeTo rest in His embrace.* * * * * *Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn,Press onward to the prize;Soon your Saviour will returnTriumphant in the skies.Yet a season, and you knowHappy entrance will be given;All our sorrows left below,And earth exchanged for heaven.This hymn must have found its predestinated organ when it found—THE TUNE.“Amsterdam,” the work of James Nares, had its birth and baptism soon after the work of Seagrave; and they have been breath and bugle to the church of God ever since they became one song. InThe Great Musicians, edited by Francis Huffer, is found this account of James Nares:126 /96“He was born at Hanwell, Middlesex, in 1715; was admitted chorister at the Chapel Royal, under Bernard Gates, and when he was able to play the organ was appointed deputy for Pigott, of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and became organist at York Minster in 1734. He succeeded Greene as organist and composer to the Chapel Royal in 1756, and in the same year was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge. He was appointed master of the children of the Chapel Royal in 1757, on the death of Gates. This post he resigned in 1780, and he died in 1783, (February 10,) and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.“He had the reputation of being an excellent trainer of boy's voices, many of his anthems having been written to exhibit the accomplishments of his young pupils. The degree of excellence the boys attained was not won in those days without the infliction of much corporal punishment.”Judging from the high pulse and action in the music of “Amsterdam,” one would guess the energy of the man who made boy choirs—and made good ones. In the old time the rule was, “Birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing"; and the rule was sometimes enforced with the master's time-stick.A tune entitled “Excelsius,” written a hundred years later by John Henry Cornell, so nearly resembles “Amsterdam” as to suggest an intention to amend it. It changes the modal note from G127 /97to A, but while it marches at the same pace it lacks the jubilant modulations and the choral glory of the 18th-century piece.SIR JOHN BOWRING.“In the Cross of Christ I Glory.”In this hymn we see, sitting humbly at the feet of the great author of our religion, a man who impressed himself perhaps more than any other save Napoleon Bonaparte upon his own generation, and who was the wonder of Europe for his immense attainments and the versatility of his powers. Statesman, philanthropist, biographer, publicist, linguist, historian, financier, naturalist, poet, political economist—there is hardly a branch of knowledge or a field of research from which he did not enrich himself and others, or a human condition that he did not study and influence.Sir John Bowring was born in 1792. When a youth he was Jeremy Bentham's political pupil, but gained his first fame by his vast knowledge of European literature, becoming acquainted with no less than thirteen*continental languages and dialects. He served in consular appointments at seven different capitals, carried important reform measures in Parliament, was Minister Plenipotentiary to China and Governor of Hong Kong, and concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, where every previous commissioner had failed. But in128 /98all his crowded years the pen of this tireless and successful man was busy. Besides his political, economic and religious essays, which made him a member of nearly every learned society in Europe, his translations were countless, and poems and hymns of his own composing found their way to the public, among them the tender spiritual song,—

“In poverty, retirement, and with God.”

Of all that is best in inward spiritual life, much can be learned from this inspired Dutchman. He wrote no hymns, but in his old age he composed a poem on “Heaven's Joys,” which is sometimes called “Thomas à Kempis' Hymn”:

High the angel choirs are raisingHeart and voice in harmony;The Creator King still praisingWhom in beauty there they see.Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing,Trumpets' notes of triumph pealing,Radiant wings and white stoles gleamingUp the steps of glory streaming;Where the heavenly bells are ringing;“Holy! holy! holy!” singingTo the mighty Trinity!“Holy! holy! holy!” crying,For all earthly care and sighingIn that city cease to be!

High the angel choirs are raisingHeart and voice in harmony;The Creator King still praisingWhom in beauty there they see.

High the angel choirs are raising

Heart and voice in harmony;

The Creator King still praising

Whom in beauty there they see.

Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing,Trumpets' notes of triumph pealing,Radiant wings and white stoles gleamingUp the steps of glory streaming;Where the heavenly bells are ringing;“Holy! holy! holy!” singingTo the mighty Trinity!“Holy! holy! holy!” crying,For all earthly care and sighingIn that city cease to be!

Sweetest strains from soft harps stealing,

Trumpets' notes of triumph pealing,

Radiant wings and white stoles gleaming

Up the steps of glory streaming;

Where the heavenly bells are ringing;

“Holy! holy! holy!” singing

To the mighty Trinity!

“Holy! holy! holy!” crying,

For all earthly care and sighing

In that city cease to be!

These lines are not in the hymnals of today—and whether they ever found their way into choral use in ancient times we are not told. Worse poetry has been sung—and more un-hymnlike. Some future composer will make a tune to the words of a Christian who stood almost in sight of his hundredth year—and of the eternal home he writes about.

Martin LutherDr. Martin LutherHymnal

Of Martin Luther Coleridge said, “He did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as he did by his translation of the Bible.” The remark is so true that it has become a commonplace.

The above line—which may be seen inscribed on Luther's tomb atWittenberg—is the opening sentence and key-note of the Reformer's grandest hymn. The forty-sixth Psalm inspired it, and it is in harmony with sublime historical periods from its very nature, boldness, and sublimity. It was written, according to Welles, in the memorable year when the evangelical princes delivered their protest at the Diet of Spires, from which the word and the meaning of the word “Protestant” is derived. “Luther used often to sing it in 1530, while the Diet of Augsburg was sitting. It soon became the favorite psalm with the people. It was one of the watchwords of the Reformation, cheering armies to conflict, and sustaining believers in the hours of fiery trial.”

“After Luther's death, Melancthon, his affectionate coadjutor, being one day at Weimar with his banished friends, Jonas and Creuziger, heard a little maid singing this psalm in the street, and said, ‘Sing on, my little girl, you little know whom you comfort:’”

A mighty fortress is our God,A bulwark never failing;98 /70Our helper He, amid the floodOf mortal ills prevailing.For still our ancient foeDoth seek to work us woe;His craft and power are great,And, armed with cruel hate,On earth is not his equal.* * * * * *The Prince of Darkness grim—We tremble not for him:His rage we can endure,For lo! his doom is sure,One little word shall fell him.That word above all earthly powers—No thanks to them—abideth;The Spirit and the gifts are ours,Through Him who with us sideth.Let goods and kindred go,This mortal life also;The body they may kill,God's truth abideth still,His kingdom is for ever.

A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He, amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

For still our ancient foe

Doth seek to work us woe;

His craft and power are great,

And, armed with cruel hate,

On earth is not his equal.

* * * * * *

The Prince of Darkness grim—We tremble not for him:His rage we can endure,For lo! his doom is sure,One little word shall fell him.

The Prince of Darkness grim—

We tremble not for him:

His rage we can endure,

For lo! his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers—No thanks to them—abideth;The Spirit and the gifts are ours,Through Him who with us sideth.Let goods and kindred go,This mortal life also;The body they may kill,God's truth abideth still,His kingdom is for ever.

That word above all earthly powers—

No thanks to them—abideth;

The Spirit and the gifts are ours,

Through Him who with us sideth.

Let goods and kindred go,

This mortal life also;

The body they may kill,

God's truth abideth still,

His kingdom is for ever.

Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, in Saxony, Nov. 10, 1483. He was educated at the University of Erfurth, and became an Augustinian monk and Professor of Philosophy and Divinity in the University of Wittenberg. In 1517 he composed and placarded his ninety-five Theses condemning certain practices of the Romish Church and three years later the Pope published a bull excommunicating him, which he burnt openly before a sympathetic multitude in Wittenberg. His life was a stormy one, and he was more than once in99 /71mortal danger by reason of his antagonism to the papal authority, but he found powerful patrons, and lived to see the Reformation an organized fact. He died in his birthplace, Eisleben, Feb. 18th, 1546.

The translation of the “Ein feste burg,” given above, in part, is by Rev. Frederick Henry Hedge, D.D., born in Cambridge, March 1805, a graduate of Harvard, and formerly minister of the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Me. Died, 1890.

Luther wrote thirty-six hymns, to some of which he fitted his own music, for he was a musician and singer as well as an eloquent preacher. The tune in which “Ein feste Burg” is sung in the hymnals, was composed by himself. The hymn has also a noble rendering in the music of Sebastian Bach, 8-4 time, found inHymns Ancient and Modern.

The history of this hymn is somewhat indefinite, though common consent now attributes to Ringwaldt the stanza beginning with the above line. The imitation of the “Dies Irae” in German which was first in use was printed in Jacob Klug's “Gesangbuch” in 1535. Ringwaldt's hymn of the Last Day, also inspired from the ancient Latin original, appears in hisHandbuchlinof 1586, but does not contain this stanza. The first line is, “The awful Day will surely come,” (Es ist100 /72gewisslich an der Zeit). Nevertheless through the more than two hundred years that the hymn has been translated and re-translated, and gone through inevitable revisions, some vital identity in the spirit and tone of the one seven-line stanza has steadily connected it with Ringwaldt's name. Apparently it is the single survivor of a great lost hymn—edited and altered out of recognition. But its power evidently inspired the added verses, as we have them. Dr. Collyer found it, and, regretting that it was too short to sing in public service, composed stanzas 2d, 3d and 4th. It is likely that Collyer first met with it inPsalms and Hymns for Public and Private Devotion, Sheffield 1802, where it appeared anonymously. So far as known this was its first publication in English. Ringwaldt's stanza and two of Collyer's are here given:

Great God, what do I see and hear!The end of things created!The Judge of mankind doth appearOn clouds of glory seated.The trumpet sounds, the graves restoreThe dead which they contained before;Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.The dead in Christ shall first ariseAt the last trumpet sounding,Caught up to meet Him in the skies,With joy their Lord surrounding.No gloomy fears their souls dismayHis presence sheds eternal dayOn those prepared to meet Him.101 /73Far over space to distant spheresThe lightnings are prevailingTh' ungodly rise, and all their tearsAnd sighs are unavailing.The day of grace is past and gone;They shake before the Judge's ThroneAll unprepared to meet Him.

Great God, what do I see and hear!

The end of things created!

The Judge of mankind doth appear

On clouds of glory seated.

The trumpet sounds, the graves restore

The dead which they contained before;

Prepare, my soul, to meet Him.

The dead in Christ shall first ariseAt the last trumpet sounding,Caught up to meet Him in the skies,With joy their Lord surrounding.No gloomy fears their souls dismayHis presence sheds eternal dayOn those prepared to meet Him.

The dead in Christ shall first arise

At the last trumpet sounding,

Caught up to meet Him in the skies,

With joy their Lord surrounding.

No gloomy fears their souls dismay

His presence sheds eternal day

On those prepared to meet Him.

101 /73Far over space to distant spheresThe lightnings are prevailingTh' ungodly rise, and all their tearsAnd sighs are unavailing.The day of grace is past and gone;They shake before the Judge's ThroneAll unprepared to meet Him.

Far over space to distant spheres

The lightnings are prevailing

Th' ungodly rise, and all their tears

And sighs are unavailing.

The day of grace is past and gone;

They shake before the Judge's Throne

All unprepared to meet Him.

BartholomewRingwaldt, pastor of the Lutheran Church of Longfeld, Prussia, was born in 1531, and died in 1599. His hymns appear in a collection entitledHymns for the Sundays and Festivals of the Whole Year.

Rev. William Bengo Collyer D.D., was born at Blackheath near London, April 14, 1782, educated at Homerton College and settled over a Congregational Church in Peckham. In 1812 he published a book of hymns, and in 1837 aService Bookto which he contributed eighty-nine hymns. He died Jan, 9, 1854.

Probably it was the customary singing of Ringwaldt's hymn (in Germany) to Luther's tune that gave it for some time the designation of “Luther's Hymn,” the title by which the music is still known—an air either composed or adapted by Luther, and rendered perhaps unisonously or with extempore chords. It was not until early in the last century that Vincent Novello wrote to it the noble arrangement now in use. It is a strong, even-time harmony with lofty tenor range, and very102 /74impressive with full choir and organ or the vocal volume of a congregation. InCheetham's Psalmodyis it written with a trumpet obligato.

Vincent Novello, born in London, Sept. 6, 1781, the intimate friend of Lamb, Shelley, Keats, Hunt and Hazlitt, was a professor of music who attained great eminence as an organist and composer of hymn-tunes and sacred pieces. He was the founder of the publishing house of Novello and Ewer, and father of a famous musical family. Died at Nice, Aug. 9, 1861.

Francis Xavier, the celebrated Jesuit missionary, called “The Apostle of the Indies,” was a Spaniard, born in 1506. While a student in Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, and joined him in the formation of the new “Society for the Propagation of the Faith.” He was sent out on a mission to the East Indies and Japan, and gave himself to the work with a martyr's devotion. The stations he established in Japan were maintained more than a hundred years. He died in China, Dec. 1552.

His hymn, some time out of use, is being revived in later singing-books as expressive of the purest and highest Christian sentiment:

O Deus, ego amo Te.Nec amo Te, ut salves me,Aut quia non amantes TeÆterno punis igne.103 /75My God, I love Thee—not becauseI hope for heaven thereby;Nor yet because who love Thee notMust burn eternally.

O Deus, ego amo Te.Nec amo Te, ut salves me,Aut quia non amantes TeÆterno punis igne.

O Deus, ego amo Te.

Nec amo Te, ut salves me,

Aut quia non amantes Te

Æterno punis igne.

My God, I love Thee—not becauseI hope for heaven thereby;Nor yet because who love Thee notMust burn eternally.

My God, I love Thee—not because

I hope for heaven thereby;

Nor yet because who love Thee not

Must burn eternally.

After recounting Christ's vicarious sufferings as the chief claim to His disciples' unselfish love, the hymn continues,—

Cur igitur non amem Te,O Jesu amantissime!Non, ut in cœlo salves me,Aut in æternum damnes me.Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,Should I not love Thee well?Not for the sake of winning heaven,Nor of escaping hell;Not with the hope of gaining aught,Nor seeking a reward,But as Thyself hast lovéd me,Oh, ever-loving Lord!E'en so I love Thee, and will love,And in Thy praise will sing;Solely because Thou art my GodAnd my eternal King.

Cur igitur non amem Te,O Jesu amantissime!Non, ut in cœlo salves me,Aut in æternum damnes me.

Cur igitur non amem Te,

O Jesu amantissime!

Non, ut in cœlo salves me,

Aut in æternum damnes me.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,Should I not love Thee well?Not for the sake of winning heaven,Nor of escaping hell;

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,

Should I not love Thee well?

Not for the sake of winning heaven,

Nor of escaping hell;

Not with the hope of gaining aught,Nor seeking a reward,But as Thyself hast lovéd me,Oh, ever-loving Lord!

Not with the hope of gaining aught,

Nor seeking a reward,

But as Thyself hast lovéd me,

Oh, ever-loving Lord!

E'en so I love Thee, and will love,And in Thy praise will sing;Solely because Thou art my GodAnd my eternal King.

E'en so I love Thee, and will love,

And in Thy praise will sing;

Solely because Thou art my God

And my eternal King.

The translation is by Rev. Edward Caswall, 1814–1878, a priest in the Church of Rome. Besides his translations, he published theLyra Catholica, theMasque of Mary, and several other poetical works. (Page 101.)

“St. Bernard”—apparently so named because originally composed to Caswall's translation of104 /76one of Bernard of Clairvaux's hymns—is by John Richardson, born in Preston, Eng., Dec. 4, 1817, and died there April 13, 1879. He was an organist in Liverpool, and noted as a composer of glees, but was the author of several sacred tunes.

Few of the hymns of the Elizabethan era survive, though the Ambrosian Midnight Hymn, “Hark, 'tis the Midnight Cry,” and the hymns of St. Bernard and Bernard of Cluny, are still tones in the church, and the religious poetry of Sir Walter Raleigh comes down to us associated with the history of his brilliant, though tragic career. The following poem has some fine lines in the quaint English style of the period, and was composed by Sir Walter during his first imprisonment:

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,My staff of faith to walk upon,My scrip of joy—immortal diet—My bottle of salvation,My gown of glory, hope's true gage—And thus I take my pilgrimage.Blood must be my body's balmer,While my soul, like faithful palmer,Travelleth toward the land of heaven;Other balm will not be given.Over the silver mountainsWhere spring the nectar fountains,105 /77There will I kiss the bowl of bliss,And drink my everlasting fill,Upon every milken hill;My soul will be a-dry before,But after that will thirst no more.

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,My staff of faith to walk upon,My scrip of joy—immortal diet—My bottle of salvation,My gown of glory, hope's true gage—And thus I take my pilgrimage.

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy—immortal diet—

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope's true gage—

And thus I take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body's balmer,While my soul, like faithful palmer,Travelleth toward the land of heaven;Other balm will not be given.

Blood must be my body's balmer,

While my soul, like faithful palmer,

Travelleth toward the land of heaven;

Other balm will not be given.

Over the silver mountainsWhere spring the nectar fountains,105 /77There will I kiss the bowl of bliss,And drink my everlasting fill,Upon every milken hill;My soul will be a-dry before,But after that will thirst no more.

Over the silver mountains

Where spring the nectar fountains,

There will I kiss the bowl of bliss,

And drink my everlasting fill,

Upon every milken hill;

My soul will be a-dry before,

But after that will thirst no more.

The musings of the unfortunate but high-souled nobleman in expectation of ignominious death are interesting and pathetic, but they have no claim to a tune, even if they were less rugged and unmetrical. But the poem stands notable among the pious witnesses.

This last passionate prayer of the unhappy Mary Stuart just before her execution—in a language which perhaps flowed from her pen more easily than even her English or French—is another witness of supplicating faith that struggles out of darkness with a song. In her extremity the devoted Catholic forgets her petitions to the Virgin, and comes to Christ:

O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te;O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!In dura catena, in misera poenaDesidero Te!Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendoAdoro, imploro ut liberes me!My Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee;O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free:In rigorous chains, in piteous pains,106 /78I am longing for Thee!In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling,I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!

O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te;O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!In dura catena, in misera poenaDesidero Te!Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendoAdoro, imploro ut liberes me!

O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te;

O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!

In dura catena, in misera poena

Desidero Te!

Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo

Adoro, imploro ut liberes me!

My Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee;O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free:In rigorous chains, in piteous pains,106 /78I am longing for Thee!In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling,I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!

My Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee;

O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free:

In rigorous chains, in piteous pains,

I am longing for Thee!

In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling,

I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!

One would, at first thought, judge this simple but eloquent cry worthy of an appropriate tone-expression—to be sung by prison evangelists like the Volunteers of America, to convicts in the jails and penitentiaries. But its special errand and burden are voiced so literally that hardened hearers would probably misapply it—however sincerely the petitioner herself meant to invoke spiritual rather than temporal deliverance. The hymn, if we may call it so, istooliteral. Possibly at some time or other it may have been set to music but not for ordinary choir service.

The sands of time are sinking,* * * * * *But, glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's Land.

The sands of time are sinking,

* * * * * *

But, glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's Land.

But, glory, glory dwelleth

In Immanuel's Land.

This hymn is biographical, but not autobiographical. Like the discourses in Herodotus and Plutarch, it is the voice of the dead speaking through the sympathetic genius of the living after long generations. The strong, stern Calvinist of 1636 in Aberdeen was not a poet, but he bequeathed his spirit and life to the verse of a poet of 1845 in Melrose. Anne Ross Cousin read his two hundred and twenty letters written during a two107 /79years' captivity for his fidelity to the purer faith, and studied his whole history and experience till her soul took his soul's place and felt what he felt. Her poem of nineteen stanzas (152 lines) is the voice of Rutherford the Covenanter, with the prolixity of his manner and age sweetened by his triumphant piety, and that is why it belongs with theHymns of Great Witnesses. The three or four stanzas still occasionally printed and sung are only recalled to memory by the above three lines.

Samuel Rutherford was born in Nisbet Parish, Scotland, in 1600. His settled ministry was at Anworth, in Galloway—1630–1651—with a break between 1636 and 1638, when Charles I. angered by his anti-prelatical writings, silenced and banished him. Shut up in Aberdeen, but allowed, like Paul in Rome, to live “in his own hired house” and write letters, he poured out his heart's love in Epistles to his Anworth flock and to the Non-conformists of Scotland. When his countrymen rose against the attempted imposition of a new holy Romish service-book on their churches, he escaped to his people, and soon after appeared in Edinburgh and signed the covenant with the assembled ministers. Thirteen years later, after Cromwell's death and the accession of Charles II. the wrath of the prelates fell on him at St. Andrews, where the Presbytery had made him rector of the college. The King's decree indicted him for treason, stripped him of all his offices, and would have forced him to108 /80the block had he not been stricken with his last sickness. When the officers came to take him he said, “I am summoned before a higher Judge and Judicatory, and I am behooved to attend them.” He died soon after, in the year 1661.

The first, and a few other of the choicest stanzas of the hymn inspired by his life and death are here given:

The sands of time are sinking,The dawn of heaven breaks,The summer morn I've sighed for—The fair, sweet morn—awakes.Dark, dark hath been the midnight,But dayspring is at hand;And glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.* * * * * *Oh! well it is for ever—Oh! well for evermore:My nest hung in no forestOf all this death-doomed shore;Yea, let this vain world vanish,As from the ship the strand,While glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.* * * * * *The little birds of Anworth—I used to count them blest;Now beside happier altarsI go to build my nest;O'er these there broods no silenceNo graves around them stand;For glory deathless dwellethIn Immanuel's land.109 /81I have borne scorn and hatred,I have borne wrong and shame,Earth's proud ones have reproached meFor Christ's thrice blesséd name.Where God's seals set the fairest,They've stamped their foulest brand;But judgment shines like noondayIn Immanuel's land.They've summoned me before them,But there I may not come;My Lord says, “Come up hither;”My Lord says, “Welcome home;”My King at His white throneMy presence doth command,Where glory, glory dwelleth,In Immanuel's land.

The sands of time are sinking,

The dawn of heaven breaks,

The summer morn I've sighed for—

The fair, sweet morn—awakes.

Dark, dark hath been the midnight,

But dayspring is at hand;

And glory, glory dwelleth

In Immanuel's land.

* * * * * *

Oh! well it is for ever—Oh! well for evermore:My nest hung in no forestOf all this death-doomed shore;Yea, let this vain world vanish,As from the ship the strand,While glory, glory dwellethIn Immanuel's land.

Oh! well it is for ever—

Oh! well for evermore:

My nest hung in no forest

Of all this death-doomed shore;

Yea, let this vain world vanish,

As from the ship the strand,

While glory, glory dwelleth

In Immanuel's land.

* * * * * *

The little birds of Anworth—I used to count them blest;Now beside happier altarsI go to build my nest;O'er these there broods no silenceNo graves around them stand;For glory deathless dwellethIn Immanuel's land.

The little birds of Anworth—

I used to count them blest;

Now beside happier altars

I go to build my nest;

O'er these there broods no silence

No graves around them stand;

For glory deathless dwelleth

In Immanuel's land.

I have borne scorn and hatred,I have borne wrong and shame,Earth's proud ones have reproached meFor Christ's thrice blesséd name.Where God's seals set the fairest,They've stamped their foulest brand;But judgment shines like noondayIn Immanuel's land.

I have borne scorn and hatred,

I have borne wrong and shame,

Earth's proud ones have reproached me

For Christ's thrice blesséd name.

Where God's seals set the fairest,

They've stamped their foulest brand;

But judgment shines like noonday

In Immanuel's land.

They've summoned me before them,But there I may not come;My Lord says, “Come up hither;”My Lord says, “Welcome home;”My King at His white throneMy presence doth command,Where glory, glory dwelleth,In Immanuel's land.

They've summoned me before them,

But there I may not come;

My Lord says, “Come up hither;”

My Lord says, “Welcome home;”

My King at His white throne

My presence doth command,

Where glory, glory dwelleth,

In Immanuel's land.

A reminiscence of St. Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy (chap. 4) comes with the last two stanzas.

The tender and appropriate choral in B flat, named “Rutherford” was composed by D'Urhan, a French musician, probably a hundred years ago. It was doubtless named by those who long afterwards fitted it to the words, and knew whose spiritual proxy the lady stood who indited the hymn. It is reprinted in Peloubet'sSelect Songs, and in theCoronation Hymnal. Naturally in the days of the hymn's more frequent use people became accustomed to calling “The sands of time are sinking,” “Rutherford's Hymn.” Rutherford's own110 /82words certainly furnished the memorable refrain with its immortal glow and gladness. One of his joyful exclamations as he lay dying of his lingering disease was, “Glory shineth in Immanuel's Land!”

Chretien (Christian) Urhan, or D'Urhan, was born at Montjoie, France, about 1788, and died, in Paris, 1845. He was a noted violin-player, and composer, also, of vocal and instrumental music.

Mrs. Anne Ross (Cundell) Cousin, daughter of David Ross Cundell, M.D., and widow of Rev. William Cousin of the Free church of Scotland, was born in Melrose (?), 1824. She wrote many poems, most of which are beautiful meditations rather than lyrics suitable for public song. Her “Rutherford Hymn” was first published in theChristian Treasury, 1857.

The historian tells us that before the battle of Lutzen, during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), King Gustavus of Sweden, in the thick fog of an autumn morning, with the Bohemian and Austrian armies of Emperor Ferdinand in front of him, knelt before his troops, and his whole army knelt with him in prayer. Then ten thousand voices and the whole concert of regimental bands burst forth in this brave song:

Fear not, O little flock, the foeWho madly seeks your overthrow,111 /83Dread not his rage and power:What though your courage sometimes faints,His seeming triumph o'er God's saintsLasts but a little hour.Be of good cheer, your cause belongsTo Him who can avenge your wrongs;Leave it to Him, our Lord:Though hidden yet from all our eyes,He sees the Gideon who shall riseTo save us and His word.As true as God's own word is true,Nor earth nor hell with all their crew,Against us shall prevail:A jest and by-word they are grown;God is with us, we are His own,Our victory cannot fail.Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer!Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare,Fight for us once again:So shall Thy saints and martyrs raiseA mighty chorus to Thy praise,World without end. Amen.

Fear not, O little flock, the foe

Who madly seeks your overthrow,

Dread not his rage and power:

What though your courage sometimes faints,

His seeming triumph o'er God's saints

Lasts but a little hour.

Be of good cheer, your cause belongsTo Him who can avenge your wrongs;Leave it to Him, our Lord:Though hidden yet from all our eyes,He sees the Gideon who shall riseTo save us and His word.

Be of good cheer, your cause belongs

To Him who can avenge your wrongs;

Leave it to Him, our Lord:

Though hidden yet from all our eyes,

He sees the Gideon who shall rise

To save us and His word.

As true as God's own word is true,Nor earth nor hell with all their crew,Against us shall prevail:A jest and by-word they are grown;God is with us, we are His own,Our victory cannot fail.

As true as God's own word is true,

Nor earth nor hell with all their crew,

Against us shall prevail:

A jest and by-word they are grown;

God is with us, we are His own,

Our victory cannot fail.

Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer!Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare,Fight for us once again:So shall Thy saints and martyrs raiseA mighty chorus to Thy praise,World without end. Amen.

Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer!

Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare,

Fight for us once again:

So shall Thy saints and martyrs raise

A mighty chorus to Thy praise,

World without end. Amen.

The army of Gustavus moved forward to victory as the fog lifted; but at the moment of triumph a riderless horse came galloping back to the camp. It was the horse of the martyred King.

The battle song just quoted—next to Luther's “Ein feste Burg” the most famous German hymn—has always since that day been called “Gustavus Adolphus' Hymn”; and the mingled sorrow and joy of the event at Lutzen named it also “King Gustavus' Swan Song.” Gustavus Adolphus did112 /84not write hymns. He could sing them, and he could make them historic—and it was this connection that identified him with the famous battle song. Its author was the Rev. Johan Michael Altenburg, a Lutheran clergyman, who composed apparently both hymn and tune on receiving news of the king's victory at Leipsic a year before.

Gustavus Adolphus was born in 1594. His death on the battlefield occurred Nov. 5, 1632—when he was in the prime of his manhood. He was one of the greatest military commanders in history, besides being a great ruler and administrator, and a devout Christian. He was, during the Thirty Years' War (until his untimely death), the leading champion of Protestantism in Europe.

The English translator of the battle song was Miss Catherine Winkworth, born in London, Sept. 13, 1827. She was an industrious and successful translator of German hymns, contributing many results of her work to two English editions of theLyra Germania, to theChurch Book of England, and toChristian Singers of Germany. She died in 1878.

The tune of “Ravendale” by Walter Stokes (born 1847) is the best modern rendering of the celebrated hymn.

Paul Gerhardt was one of those minstrels of experience who are—

“Cradled into poetry by wrong,And learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

“Cradled into poetry by wrong,

And learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

He was a graduate of that school when he wrote his “Hymn of Trust:”

Commit thou all thy griefsAnd ways into His hands;To His sure trust and tender careWho earth and heaven commands.Thou on the Lord rely,So, safe, shalt thou go on;Fix on His work thy steadfast eye,So shall thy work be done.* * * * * *Give to the winds thy fears;Hope, and be undismayed;God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,He shall lift up thy head.Through waves and clouds and stormsHe gently clears thy way;Wait thou His time, so shall this nightSoon end in joyous day.

Commit thou all thy griefsAnd ways into His hands;To His sure trust and tender careWho earth and heaven commands.

Commit thou all thy griefs

And ways into His hands;

To His sure trust and tender care

Who earth and heaven commands.

Thou on the Lord rely,So, safe, shalt thou go on;Fix on His work thy steadfast eye,So shall thy work be done.

Thou on the Lord rely,

So, safe, shalt thou go on;

Fix on His work thy steadfast eye,

So shall thy work be done.

* * * * * *

Give to the winds thy fears;Hope, and be undismayed;God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,He shall lift up thy head.

Give to the winds thy fears;

Hope, and be undismayed;

God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,

He shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and stormsHe gently clears thy way;Wait thou His time, so shall this nightSoon end in joyous day.

Through waves and clouds and storms

He gently clears thy way;

Wait thou His time, so shall this night

Soon end in joyous day.

Gerhardt was born at Grafenheinchen, Saxony, 1606. Through the first and best years of manhood's strength (during the ThirtyYears'War), a wandering preacher tossed from place to place, he was without a parish and without a home.

After the peace of Westphalia he settled in the little village of Mittenwalde. He was then forty-four years old. Four years later he married and removed to a Berlin church. During his residence there he buried his wife, and four of his children,114 /86was deposed from the ministry because his Lutheran doctrines offended the Elector Frederick, and finally retired as a simple arch-deacon to a small parish in Lubben, where he preached, toiled, and suffered amid a rough and uncongenial people till he died, Jan. 16, 1676.

Few men have ever lived whose case more needed a “Hymn of Trust”—and fewer still could have written it themselves. Through all those trial years he was pouring forth his soul in devout verses, making in all no less than a hundred and twenty-five hymns—every one of them a comfort to others as well as to himself.

He became a favorite, and for a timethefavorite, hymn-writer of all the German-speaking people. Among these tones of calm faith and joy we recognize today (in the English tongue),—

Since Jesus is my Friend,Thee, O Immanuel, we praise,All my heart this night rejoices,How shall I meet Thee,

—and the English translation of his “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” turned into German by himself from St. Bernard Clairvaux's “Salve caput cruentatum,” and made dear to us in Rev. James Alexander's beautiful lines—

O sacred head now wounded,With grief and shame weighed down,Now scornfully surroundedWith thorns, Thine only crown.

O sacred head now wounded,

With grief and shame weighed down,

Now scornfully surrounded

With thorns, Thine only crown.

A plain-song by Alexander Reinagle is used by some congregations, but is not remarkably expressive. Reinagle, Alexander Robert, (1799–1877) of Kidlington, Eng., was organist to the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford.

The great “Hymn of Trust” could have found no more sympathetic interpreter than the musician of Gerhardt's own land and language, Schumann, the gentle genius of Zwickau. It bears the name “Schumann,” appropriately enough, and its elocution makes a volume of each quatrain, notably the one—

Who points the clouds their course,Whom wind and seas obey;He shall direct thy wandering feet,He shall prepare thy way.

Who points the clouds their course,

Whom wind and seas obey;

He shall direct thy wandering feet,

He shall prepare thy way.

Robert Schumann, Ph.D., was born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810. He was a music director and conservatory teacher, and the master-mind of the pre-Wagnerian period. His compositions became popular, having a character of their own, combining the intellectual and beautiful in art. He published in Leipsic a journal promotive of his school of music, and founded a choral society in Dresden. Happy in the coöperation of his wife, herself a skilled musician, he extended his work to Vienna and the Netherlands; but his zeal wore him out, and he died at the age of forty-six, universally lamented as “the eminent man who had done so much for the happiness of others.”

Gerhardt's Hymn (ten quatrains) is rarely printed entire, and where six are printed only four are usually sung. Different collections choose portions according to the compiler's taste, the stanza beginning—

Give to the winds thy fears,

—being with some a favorite first verse.

The translation of the hymn from the German is John Wesley's.

Purely legendary is the beautiful story of the composition of the hymn, “Commit thou all thy griefs”; how, after his exile from Berlin, traveling on foot with his weeping wife, Gerhardt stopped at a wayside inn and wrote the lines while he rested; and how a messenger from Duke Christian found him there, and offered him a home in Meresburg. But the most ordinary imagination can fill in the possible incidents in a life of vicissitudes such as Gerhardt's was.

Selina Shirley, Countess of Huntingdon, born 1707, died 1791, is familiarly known as the titled friend and patroness of Whitefield and his fellow-preachers. She early consecrated herself to God, and in the great spiritual awakening under Whitefield and the Wesleys she was a punctual and sympathetic helper. Uniting with the Calvinistic Methodists, she nevertheless stood aloof from none117 /89who preached a personal Christ, and whose watchwords were the salvation of souls and the purification of the Church. For more than fifty years she devoted her wealth to benevolence and spiritual ministries, and died at the age of eighty-four. “I have done my work,” was her last testimony. “I have nothing to do but to go to my Father.”

Lady HuntingdonS. HuntingdonHymnal

At various times Lady Huntingdon expressed her religious experience in verse, and the manful vigor of her school of faith recalls the unbending confidence of Job, for she was not a stranger to affliction.

God's furnace doth in Zion stand,But Zion's God sits by,As the refiner views his gold,With an observant eye.His thoughts are high, His love is wise,His wounds a cure intend;And, though He does not always smile,He loves unto the end.

God's furnace doth in Zion stand,But Zion's God sits by,As the refiner views his gold,With an observant eye.

God's furnace doth in Zion stand,

But Zion's God sits by,

As the refiner views his gold,

With an observant eye.

His thoughts are high, His love is wise,His wounds a cure intend;And, though He does not always smile,He loves unto the end.

His thoughts are high, His love is wise,

His wounds a cure intend;

And, though He does not always smile,

He loves unto the end.

Her great hymn, that keeps her memory green, has the old-fashioned flavor. “Massa made God BIG!” was the comment on Dr. Bellany made by his old negro servant after that noted minister's death. In Puritan piety the sternest self-depreciation qualified every thought of the creature, while every allusion to the Creator was a magnificat. Lady Huntingdon's hymn has no flattering phrases for the human subject. “Worthless worm,” and “vilest of them all” indicate the true Pauline or Oriental prostration of self before a superior118 /90being; but there is grandeur in the metre, the awful reverence, and the scene of judgment in the stanzas—always remembering the mighty choral that has so long given the lyric its voice in the church, and is ancillary to its fame:

When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt comeTo take Thy ransomed people home,Shall I among them stand?Shall such a worthless worm as I,Who sometimes am afraid to die,Be found at Thy right hand?I love to meet Thy people now,Before Thy feet with them to bow,Though vilest of them all;But can I bear the piercing thought,What if my name should be left out,When Thou for them shalt call?O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace:Be Thou my only hiding place,In this th' accepted day;Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear,To still my unbelieving fear,Nor let me fall, I pray.Among Thy saints let me be found,Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound,To see Thy smiling face;Then loudest of the throng I'll sing,While heaven's resounding arches ringWith shouts of sovereign grace.

When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt comeTo take Thy ransomed people home,Shall I among them stand?Shall such a worthless worm as I,Who sometimes am afraid to die,Be found at Thy right hand?

When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come

To take Thy ransomed people home,

Shall I among them stand?

Shall such a worthless worm as I,

Who sometimes am afraid to die,

Be found at Thy right hand?

I love to meet Thy people now,Before Thy feet with them to bow,Though vilest of them all;But can I bear the piercing thought,What if my name should be left out,When Thou for them shalt call?

I love to meet Thy people now,

Before Thy feet with them to bow,

Though vilest of them all;

But can I bear the piercing thought,

What if my name should be left out,

When Thou for them shalt call?

O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace:Be Thou my only hiding place,In this th' accepted day;Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear,To still my unbelieving fear,Nor let me fall, I pray.

O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace:

Be Thou my only hiding place,

In this th' accepted day;

Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear,

To still my unbelieving fear,

Nor let me fall, I pray.

Among Thy saints let me be found,Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound,To see Thy smiling face;Then loudest of the throng I'll sing,While heaven's resounding arches ringWith shouts of sovereign grace.

Among Thy saints let me be found,

Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound,

To see Thy smiling face;

Then loudest of the throng I'll sing,

While heaven's resounding arches ring

With shouts of sovereign grace.

The tune of “Meribah,” in which this hymn has been sung for the last sixty or more years, is one of119 /91Dr. Lowell Mason's masterpieces. An earlier German harmony attributed to Heinrich Isaac and named “Innsbruck” has in some few cases claimed association with the words, though composed two hundred years before Lady Huntingdon was born. It is strong and solemn, but its cold psalm-tune movement does not utter the deep emotion of the author's lines. “Meribah” was inspired by the hymn itself, and there is nothing invidious in saying it illustrates the fact, memorable in all hymnology, of the natural obligation of a hymn to its tune.

Apropos of both, it is related that Mason was once presiding at choir service in a certain church where the minister gave out “When thou my righteous Judge shalt come” and by mistake directed the singers to “omit the second stanza.” Mason sat at the organ, and while playing the last strain, “Be found at thy right hand,” glanced ahead in the hymnbook and turned with a start just in time to command, “Sing thenextverse!” The choir did so, and “O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace!” was saved from being a horrible prayer to be kept out of heaven.

Nicolaus Ludwig, Count Von Zinzendorf, was born at Dresden, May 26, 1700, and educated at Halle and Wittenberg. From his youth he evinced120 /92marked seriousness of mind, and deep religious sensibilities, and this character appeared in his sympathy with the persecuted Moravians, to whom he gave domicile and domain on his large estate. For eleven years he was Councillor to the Elector of Saxony, but subsequently, uniting with the Brethren's Church, he founded the settlement of Herrnhut, the first home and refuge of the reorganized sect, and became a Moravian minister and bishop.

Zinzendorf was a man of high culture, as well as profound and sincere piety and in his hymns (of which he wrote more than two thousand) he preached Christ as eloquently as with his voice. The real birth-moment of his religious life is said to have been simultaneous with his study of the “Ecce Homo” in the Dusseldorf Gallery, a wonderful painting of Jesus crowned with thorns. Visiting the gallery one day when a young man, he gazed on the sacred face and read the legend superscribed, “All this I have done for thee; What doest thou for me?” Ever afterwards his motto was “I have but one passion, and that is He, and only He”—a version of Paul's “For me to live is Christ.”

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousnessMy beauty are, my glorious dress:'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,With joy shall I lift up my head.Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,For who aught to my charge shall lay?121 /93Fully absolved through these I am—From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.Lord, I believe were sinners moreThan sands upon the ocean shore,Thou hast for all a ransom paid,For all a full atonement made.

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousnessMy beauty are, my glorious dress:'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,With joy shall I lift up my head.

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness

My beauty are, my glorious dress:

'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,

With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,For who aught to my charge shall lay?121 /93Fully absolved through these I am—From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,

For who aught to my charge shall lay?

Fully absolved through these I am—

From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Lord, I believe were sinners moreThan sands upon the ocean shore,Thou hast for all a ransom paid,For all a full atonement made.

Lord, I believe were sinners more

Than sands upon the ocean shore,

Thou hast for all a ransom paid,

For all a full atonement made.

Nearly all the hymns of the great Moravian are now out of general use, having accomplished their mission, like the forgotten ones of Gerhardt, and been superseded by others. More sung in Europe, probably, now than any of the survivors is, “Jesus, geh voran,” (“Jesus, lead on,”) which has been translated into English by Jane Borthwick*(1854). Two others, both translated by John Wesley, are with us, the one above quoted, and “Glory to God, whose witness train.” “Jesus, Thy blood,” which is the best known, frequently appears with the alteration—

Jesus, Thyrobeof righteousnessMy beautyis, my glorious dress.

Jesus, Thyrobeof righteousness

My beautyis, my glorious dress.

* Born in Edinburgh 1813.

“Malvern,” and “Uxbridge” a pure Gregorian, both by Lowell Mason, are common expressions of the hymn—the latter, perhaps, generally preferred, being less plaintive and speaking with a surer and more restful emphasis.

This hymn was written early in the 18th century, by the Rev. Robert Seagrave, born at Twyford, Leicestershire, Eng., Nov. 22, 1693. Educated at Cambridge, he took holy orders in the Established Church, but espoused the cause of the great evangelistic movement, and became a hearty co-worker with the Wesleys. Judging by the lyric fire he could evidently put into his verses, one involuntarily asks if he would not have written more, and been in fact the song-leader of the spiritual reformation if there had been no Charles Wesley. There is not a hymn of Wesley's in use on the same subject equal to the one immortal hymn of Seagrave, and the only other near its time that approaches it in vigor and appealing power is Doddridge's “Awake my soul, stretch every nerve.”

But Providence gave Wesley the harp and appointed to the elder poet a branch of possibly equal usefulness, where he was kept too busy to enter the singers' ranks.

For eleven years he was the Sunday-evening lecturer at Lorimer's Hall, London, and often preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle. His hymn is one of the most soul-stirring in the English language:

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings;Thy better portion trace;125 /95Rise from transitory thingsToward Heaven, thy native place;Sun and moon and stars decay,Time shall soon this earth remove;Rise, my soul and haste awayTo seats prepared above.Rivers to the ocean run,Nor stay in all their course;Fire ascending seeks the sun;Both speed them to their source:So a soul that's born of GodPants to view His glorious face,Upward tends to His abodeTo rest in His embrace.* * * * * *Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn,Press onward to the prize;Soon your Saviour will returnTriumphant in the skies.Yet a season, and you knowHappy entrance will be given;All our sorrows left below,And earth exchanged for heaven.

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings;

Thy better portion trace;

Rise from transitory things

Toward Heaven, thy native place;

Sun and moon and stars decay,

Time shall soon this earth remove;

Rise, my soul and haste away

To seats prepared above.

Rivers to the ocean run,Nor stay in all their course;Fire ascending seeks the sun;Both speed them to their source:So a soul that's born of GodPants to view His glorious face,Upward tends to His abodeTo rest in His embrace.

Rivers to the ocean run,

Nor stay in all their course;

Fire ascending seeks the sun;

Both speed them to their source:

So a soul that's born of God

Pants to view His glorious face,

Upward tends to His abode

To rest in His embrace.

* * * * * *

Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn,Press onward to the prize;Soon your Saviour will returnTriumphant in the skies.Yet a season, and you knowHappy entrance will be given;All our sorrows left below,And earth exchanged for heaven.

Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn,

Press onward to the prize;

Soon your Saviour will return

Triumphant in the skies.

Yet a season, and you know

Happy entrance will be given;

All our sorrows left below,

And earth exchanged for heaven.

This hymn must have found its predestinated organ when it found—

“Amsterdam,” the work of James Nares, had its birth and baptism soon after the work of Seagrave; and they have been breath and bugle to the church of God ever since they became one song. InThe Great Musicians, edited by Francis Huffer, is found this account of James Nares:

“He was born at Hanwell, Middlesex, in 1715; was admitted chorister at the Chapel Royal, under Bernard Gates, and when he was able to play the organ was appointed deputy for Pigott, of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and became organist at York Minster in 1734. He succeeded Greene as organist and composer to the Chapel Royal in 1756, and in the same year was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge. He was appointed master of the children of the Chapel Royal in 1757, on the death of Gates. This post he resigned in 1780, and he died in 1783, (February 10,) and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.

“He had the reputation of being an excellent trainer of boy's voices, many of his anthems having been written to exhibit the accomplishments of his young pupils. The degree of excellence the boys attained was not won in those days without the infliction of much corporal punishment.”

Judging from the high pulse and action in the music of “Amsterdam,” one would guess the energy of the man who made boy choirs—and made good ones. In the old time the rule was, “Birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing"; and the rule was sometimes enforced with the master's time-stick.

A tune entitled “Excelsius,” written a hundred years later by John Henry Cornell, so nearly resembles “Amsterdam” as to suggest an intention to amend it. It changes the modal note from G127 /97to A, but while it marches at the same pace it lacks the jubilant modulations and the choral glory of the 18th-century piece.

In this hymn we see, sitting humbly at the feet of the great author of our religion, a man who impressed himself perhaps more than any other save Napoleon Bonaparte upon his own generation, and who was the wonder of Europe for his immense attainments and the versatility of his powers. Statesman, philanthropist, biographer, publicist, linguist, historian, financier, naturalist, poet, political economist—there is hardly a branch of knowledge or a field of research from which he did not enrich himself and others, or a human condition that he did not study and influence.

Sir John Bowring was born in 1792. When a youth he was Jeremy Bentham's political pupil, but gained his first fame by his vast knowledge of European literature, becoming acquainted with no less than thirteen*continental languages and dialects. He served in consular appointments at seven different capitals, carried important reform measures in Parliament, was Minister Plenipotentiary to China and Governor of Hong Kong, and concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, where every previous commissioner had failed. But in128 /98all his crowded years the pen of this tireless and successful man was busy. Besides his political, economic and religious essays, which made him a member of nearly every learned society in Europe, his translations were countless, and poems and hymns of his own composing found their way to the public, among them the tender spiritual song,—

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