“‘Oh that, without a lingering groan,I may the welcome word receive.My body with my charge lay down,And cease at once to work and live.’”The anticipation of death itself by both the great evangelists ended like the ending of the hymn—No anxious doubt, no guilty gloomShall daunt whom Jesus' presence cheers;My Light, my Life, my God is come,And glory in His face appears.“FOREVER WITH THE LORD.”Montgomery had the Ambrosian gift of spiritual song-writing. Whatever may be thought of his more ambitious descriptive or heroic pages of verse, and his long narrative poems, his lyrics and cabinet pieces are gems. The poetry in some exquisite stanzas of his “Grave” is a dream of peace:There is a calm for those who weep,A rest for weary mortals found;They softly lie and sweetly sleepLow in the ground.The storms that wreck the winter's skyNo more disturb their deep reposeThan summer evening's latest sighThat shuts the rose.586 /522But in the poem, “At Home in Heaven,” which we are considering—with its divine text iniThess. 4:17—the Sheffield bard rises to the heights of vision. He wrote it when he was an old man. The contemplation so absorbed him that he could not quit his theme till he had composed twenty-two quatrains. Only four or five—or at most only seven of them—are now in general use. Like his “Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire,” they have the pith of devotional thought in them, but are less subjective and analytical.Forever with the Lord!Amen, so let it be,Life from the dead is in that word;'Tis immortality.Here in the body pent,Absent from Him I roam,Yet nightly pitch my moving tentA day's march nearer home.My Father's house on high!Home of my soul, how nearAt times to faith's foreseeing eyeThy golden gates appear.I hear at morn and even,At noon and midnight hour,The choral harmonies of heavenEarth's Babel tongues o'erpower.The last line has been changed to read—Seraphic music pour,—and finally the hymnals have dropped the verse and substituted others. The new line is an587 /523improvement in melody but not in rhyme, and, besides, it robs the stanza of its leading thought—heaven and earth offsetting each other, and heavenly music drowning earthly noise—a thought that is missed even in the rich cantos of “Jerusalem the Golden.”THE TUNES.Nearly the whole school of good short metre tunes, from “St. Thomas” to “Boylston” have offered their notes to Montgomery's “At Home in Heaven,” but the two most commonly recognized as its property are “Mornington,” named from Lord Mornington, its author, and I.B. Woodbury's familiar harmony, “Forever with the Lord.”Garret Colley Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, and ancestor of the Duke of Wellington, was born in Dagan, Ireland, July 19, 1735. Remarkable for musical talent when a child, he became a skilled violinist, organ-player and composer in boyhood, with little aid beyond his solitary study and practice. When scarcely twenty-one, the University of Dublin conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Music, and a professorship. He excelled as a composer of glees, but wrote also tunes and anthems for the church, some of which are still extant in the choir books of the Dublin Cathedral DiedMarch22, 1781.588 /524“HARK! HARK, MY SOUL!”The Methodist Reformation, while it had found no practical sympathy within the established church, left a deep sense of its reason and purpose in the minds of the more devout Episcopalians, and this feeling, instead of taking form in popular revival methods, prompted them to deeper sincerity and more spiritual fervor in their traditional rites of worship. Many of the next generation inherited this pious ecclesiasticism, and carried their loyalty to the old Christian culture to the extreme of devotion till they saw in the sacraments the highest good of the soul. It was Keble's “Christian Year” and his “Assize Sermon” that began the Tractarian movement at Oxford which brought to the front himself and such men as Henry Newman and Frederick William Faber.The hymns and sacred poems of these sacramentarian Christians would certify to their earnest piety, even if their lives were unknown.Faber's hymn “Hark, Hark My Soul,” is welcomed and loved by every Christian sect for its religious spirit and its lyric beauty.Hark! hark, my soul! angelic songs are swellingO'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore;How sweet the truth those blessed strains are tellingOf that new life where sin shall be no more.RefrainAngels of Jesus, angels of lightSinging to welcome the pilgrims of the night.589 /525Onward we go, for still we hear them singing“Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come,”And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing,The music of the gospel leads us home.Angels of Jesus.Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing,The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea,And laden souls, by thousands meekly stealing,Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to Thee.Angels of Jesus.THE TUNES.John B. Dykes and Henry Smart—both masters of hymn-tune construction—have set this hymn to music. “Vox Angelica” in B flat, the work of the former, is a noble composition for choir or congregation, but “Pilgrim,” the other's interpretation, though not dissimilar in movement and vocal range, has, perhaps, the more sympathetic melody. It is, at least, the favorite in many localities. Some books print the two on adjacent pages as optionals.Another much-loved hymn of Faber's is—O Paradise, O Paradise!Who doth not crave for rest?Who would not see the happy landWhere they that loved are blest?RefrainWhere loyal hearts and trueStand ever in the light,All rapture through and throughIn God's most holy sight.O Paradise, O Paradise,The world is growing old;590 /526Who would not be at rest and freeWhere love is never cold.Where loyal hearts and true.O Paradise, O Paradise,I greatly long to seeThe special place my dearest Lord,In love prepares for me.Where loyal hearts and true.This aspiration, from the ardent soul of the poet has been interpreted in song by the same two musicians, and by Joseph Barnby—all with the title “Paradise.” Their similarity of style and near equality of merit have compelled compilers to print at least two of them side by side for the singers' choice. A certain pathos in the strains of Barnby's composition gives it a peculiar charm to many, and in America it is probably the oftenest sung to the words.Dr. David Breed, speaking of Faber's “unusual” imagination, says, “He got more out of language than any other poet of the English tongue, and used words—even simple words—so that they rendered him a service which no other poet ever secured from them.” The above hymns are characteristic to a degree, but the telling simplicity of his style—almost quaint at times—is more marked in “There's a Wideness in God's Mercy,” given onp. 234.591 /opp 526Horatius BonarHoratius Bonar, D.D.Hymnal593 /527“BEYOND THE SMILING AND THE WEEPING.”This song of hope—one of the most strangely tuneful and rune-like of Dr. Bonar's hymn-poems—is less frequently sung owing to the peculiarity of its stanza form. But it scarcely needs a staff of notes—Beyond the smiling and the weepingI shall be soon;Beyond the waking and the sleeping,Beyond the sowing and the reapingI shall be soon.RefrainLove, rest and home!Sweet hope!Lord, tarry not, but come.* * * * * *Beyond the parting and the meetingI shall be soon;Beyond the farewell and the greeting,Beyond the pulses' fever-beatingI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!Beyond the frost-chain and the feverI shall be soon;Beyond the rock-waste and the riverBeyond the ever and the neverI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!The wild contrasts and reverses of earthly vicissitude are spoken and felt here in the sequence of words. Perpetual black-and-white through time; then the settled life and untreacherous594 /528peace of eternity. Everywhere in the song the note of heavenly hope interrupts the wail of disappointment, and the chorus returns to transport the soul from the land of emotional whirlwinds to unbroken rest.THE TUNES.Mr. Bradbury wrote an admirable tune to this hymn, though the one since composed by Mr. Stebbins has in some localities superseded it in popular favor. Skill in following the accent and unequal rhythms produces a melodious tone-poem, and completes the impression of Bonar's singular but sweet lyric of hope which suggests a chant-choral rather than a regular polyphonic harmony. W.A. Tarbutton and the young composer, Karl Harrington, have set the hymn to music, but the success of their work awaits the public test.“WE SHALL MEET BEYOND THE RIVER.”The words were written by Rev. John Atkinson, D.D., in January, 1867, soon after the death of his mother. He had been engaged in revival work and one night in his study, “that song, in substance, seemed,” he says, “to sing itself into my heart.” He said to himself, “I would better write it down, or I shall lose it.”“There,” he adds, “in the silence of my study, and not far from midnight, I wrote the hymn.”595 /529We shall meet beyond the riverBy and by, by and by;And the darkness will be overBy and by, by and by.With the toilsome journey done,And the glorious battle won.We shall shine forth as the sunBy and by, by and by.The Rev. John Atkinson was born in Deerfield, N.J. Sept. 6, 1835. A clergyman of the Methodist denomination, he is well-known as one of its writers. TheCentennial History of American Methodismis his work, and besides the above hymn, he has written and publishedThe Garden of Sorrows, andThe Living Way. He died Dec. 8, 1897.The tune to “We Shall Meet,” by Hubert P. Main, composed in 1867, exactly translates the emotional hymn into music. S.J. Vail also wrote music to the words. The hymn, originally six eight-line stanzas, was condensed at his request to its present length and form by Fanny Crosby.“ONE SWEETLY SOLEMN THOUGHT.”Phebe Cary, the author of this happy poem, was the younger of the two Cary sisters, Alice and Phebe, names pleasantly remembered in American literature. The praise of one reflects the praise of the other when we are told that Phebe possessed a loving and trustful soul, and her life was an honor to true womanhood and a blessing to the poor. She had to struggle with hardship and poverty in her596 /530early years: “I have cried in the street because I was poor,” she said in her prosperous years, “and the poor always seem nearer to me than the rich.”When reputation came to her as a writer, she removed from her little country home near Cincinnati, O., where she was born, in 1824, and settled in New York City with her sister. She died at Newport, N.Y., July 31, 1871, and her hymn was sung at her funeral. Her remains rest in Greenwood Cemetery.“One Sweetly Solemn Thought,” was written in 1852, during a visit to one of her friends. She wrote (to her friend's inquiry) years afterwards that it first saw the light “in your own house ... in the little back third-story bedroom, one Sunday after coming from church.” It was a heart experience noted down without literary care or artistic effort, and in its original form was in too irregular measure to be sung. She set little value upon it as a poem, but when shown hesitatingly to inquiring compilers, its intrinsic worth was seen, and various revisions of it were made. The following is one of the best versions—stanzas one, two and three:—One sweetly solemn thoughtComes to me o'er and o'er,I am nearer home to-day,Than I ever have been before.Nearer my Father's house,Where the many mansions be,Nearer the great white throne,Nearer the crystal sea.597 /531Nearer the bound of life,Where we lay our burdens down,Nearer leaving the crossNearer gaining the crown.THE TUNE.The old revival tune of “Dunbar,” with its chorus, “There'll be no more sorrow there,” has been sung to the hymn, but the tone-lyric of Philip Phillips, “Nearer Home,” has made the words its own, and the public are more familiar with it than with any other. It was this air that a young man in a drinking house in Macao, near Hong-Kong, began humming thoughtlessly while his companion was shuffling the cards for a new game. Both were Americans, the man with the cards more than twenty years the elder. Noticing the tune, he threw down the pack. Every word of the hymn had come back to him with the echo of the music.“Harry, where did you learn that hymn?”“What hymn?”“Why the one you have been singing.”The young man said he did not know what he had been singing. But when the older one repeated some of the lines, he said they were learned in the Sunday-school.“Come, Harry,” said the older one, “here's what I've won from you. As for me, as God sees me, I have played my last game, and drank my last bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry for it. Give me your hand, my boy, and say that,598 /532for old America's sake, if for no other, you will quit this infernal business.”Col. Russel H. Conwell, of Boston, (now Rev. Dr. Conwell of Philadelphia) who was then visiting China, and was an eye-witness of the scene, says that the reformation was a permanent one for both.“I WILL SING YOU A SONG OF THAT BEAUTIFUL LAND.”One day, in the year 1865, Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates received a letter from Philip Phillips noting the passage in thePilgrim's Progresswhich describes the joyful music of heaven when Christian and Hopeful enter on its shining shore beyond the river of death, and asking her to write a hymn in the spirit of the extract, as one of the numbers in hisSinging Pilgrim. Mrs. Gates complied—and the sequel of the hymn she wrote is part of the modern song-history of the church. Mr. Phillips has related how, when he received it, he sat down with his little boy on his knee, read again the passage in Bunyan, then the poem again, and, turning to his organ, pencil in hand, pricked the notes of the melody. “The ‘Home of the Soul,’” he says, “seems to have had God's blessing from the beginning, and has been a comfort to many a bereaved soul. Like many loved hymns, it has had a peculiar history, for its simple melody has flowed from the lips of High Churchmen, and has599 /533sought to make itself heard above the din of Salvation Army cymbals and drums. It has been sung in prisons and in jailyards, while the poor convict was waiting to be launched into eternity, and on hundreds of funeral occasions. One man writes me that he has led the singing of it at one hundred and twenty funerals. It was sung at my dear boy's funeral, who sat on my knee when I wrote it. It is my prayer that God may continue its solace and comfort. I have books containing the song now printed in seven different languages.”A writer in theGolden Rule(now theChristian Endeavor World) calls attention to an incident on a night railroad train narrated in the late Benjamin F. Taylor'sWorld on Wheels, in which “this hymn appears as a sort of Traveller's Psalm.” Among the motley collection of passengers, some talkative, some sleepy, some homesick and cross, all tired, sat two plain women who, “would make capital country aunts.... If they were mothers at all they were good ones.” Suddenly in a dull silence, near twelve o'clock, a voice, sweet and flexible, struck up a tune. The singer was one of those women. “She sang on, one after another the good Methodist and Baptist melodies of long ago,” and the growing interest of the passengers became chained attention when she began—“I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,The far-away home of the soul,Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand,While the years of eternity roll.600 /534O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,Its bright jasper walls I can see;Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenesBetween the fair city and me.”“The car was a wakeful hush long before she had ended; it was as if a beautiful spirit were floating through the air. None that heard will ever forget. Philip Phillips can never bring that ‘home of the soul’ any nearer to anybody. And never, I think, was quite so sweet a voice lifted in a storm of a November night on the rolling plains of Iowa.”In an autograph copy of her hymn, sent to the editor, Mrs. Gates changes “harps” to “palms.” Is it an improvement? “Palms” is a word of two meanings.O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land,So free from all sorrow and pain,With songs on our lips and with harps in our handsTo meet one another again.“THERE'S A LAND THAT IS FAIRER THAN DAY.”This belongs rather with “Christian Ballads” than with genuine hymns, but the song has had and still has an uplifting mission among the lowly whom literary perfection and musical nicety could not touch—and the first two lines, at least, are good hymn-writing. Few of the best sacred lyrics have been sung with purer sentiment and more affectionate fervor than “The Sweet By-and-By.” To any company keyed to sympathy by time, place,601 /535and condition, the feeling of the song brings unshed tears.As nearly as can be ascertained it was in the year 1867 that a man about forty-eight years old, named Webster, entered the office of Dr. Bennett in Elkhorn. Wis., wearing a melancholy look, and was rallied good-naturedly by the doctor for being so blue—Webster and Bennett were friends, and the doctor was familiar with the other's frequent fits of gloom.The two men had been working in a sort of partnership, Webster being a musician and Bennett a ready verse-writer, and together they had created and published a number of sheet-music songs. When Webster was in a fit of melancholy, it was the doctor's habit to give him a “dose” of new verses and cure him by putting him to work. Today the treatment turned out to be historic.“What's the matter now,” was the doctor's greeting when his “patient” came with the tell-tale face.“O, nothing,” said Webster. “It'll be all right by and by.”“Why not make a song of the sweet by and by?” rejoined the doctor, cheerfully.“I don't know,” said Webster, after thinking a second or two. “If you'll make the words, I'll write the music.”The doctor went to his desk, and in a short time produced three stanzas and a chorus to which his friend soon set the notes of a lilting air, brightening up with enthusiasm as he wrote. Seizing his602 /536violin, which he had with him, he played the melody, and in a few minutes more he had filled in the counterpoint and made a complete hymn-tune. By that time two other friends, who could sing, had come in and the quartette tested the music on the spot. Here different accounts divide widely as to the immediate sequel of the new-born song.A Western paper in telling its story a year or two ago, stated that Webster took the “Sweet By and By” (in sheet-music form), with a batch of other pieces, to Chicago, and that it was the only song of the lot that Root and Cady would not buy; and finally, after he had tried in vain to sell it, Lyon and Healy took it “out of pity,” and paid him twenty dollars. They sold eight or ten copies (the story continued) and stowed it away with dead goods, and it was not till apparently a long time after, when a Sunday-school hymn-book reprinted it, and began to sell rapidly on its account, that the “Sweet By and By” started on its career round the world.This seems circumstantial enough, and the author of the hymn in his own story of it might have chosen to omit some early particulars, but, untrustworthy as the chronology of mere memory is, he would hardly record immediate popularity of a song that lay in obscurity for years. Dr. Bennett's words are, “I think it was used in public shortly after [its production], for within two weeks children on the street were singing it.”603 /537The explanation may be partly the different method and order of the statements, partly lapses of memory (after thirty years) and partly in collateral facts. The Sunday-school hymn-book was evidentlyThe Signet Ring, which Bennett and Webster were at work upon and into which first went the “Sweet By and By”—whatever efforts may have been made to dispose of it elsewhere or whatever copyright arrangement could have warranted Mr. Healy in purchasing a song already printed. TheSignet Ringdid not begin to profit by the song until the next year, after a copy of it appeared in the publishers' circulars, and started a demand; so that theimmediatepopularity implied in Doctor Bennett's account was limited to the children of Elkhorn village.The piece had its run, but with no exceptional result as to its hold on the public, until in 1873 Ira D. Sankey took it up as one of his working hymns. Modified from its first form in the “Signet Ring” with pianoforte accompaniment and chorus, it appeared that year inWinnowed Hymnsas arranged by Hubert P. Main, and it has so been sung ever since.Sanford Filmore Bennett, born in 1836, appears to have been a native of the West, or, at least, removed there when a young man. In 1861 he settled in Elkhorn to practice his profession. Died Oct., 1898.Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in Manchester, N.H. March 22, 1819. He was an active604 /538member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and various other musical associations. Removed to Madison, Ind. 1851, Racine, Wis. 1856, and Elkhorn, Wis., 1857, where he died Jan. 18, 1875. HisSignet Ringwas published in 1868.There's a land that is fairer than day,And by faith I can see it afarFor the Father waits over the wayTo prepare us a dwelling-place there.ChorusIn the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shore.We shall sing on that beautiful shoreThe melodious songs of the blest,And our spirits shall sorrow no more,Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.In the sweet by and by, etc.“SUNSET AND EVENING STAR.”Was it only a poet's imagination that made Alfred Tennyson approach perhaps nearest of all great Protestants to a sense of the real “Presence,” every time he took the Holy Communion at the altar? Whatever the feeling was, it characterized all his maturer life, so far as its spiritual side was known. His remark to a niece expressed it, while walking with her one day on the seashore, “God is with us now, on this down, just as truly as Jesus was with his twodiscipleson the way to Emmaus.”Such a man's faith would make no room for dying terrors.605 /539Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me,And may there be no moaning of the barWhen I put out to sea,But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home.Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark,And may there be no sadness of farewellWhen I embark.For though from out our bourne of time and placeThe flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to faceWhen I have crossed the bar.Tennyson lived three years after penning this sublime prayer. But it was his swan-song. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, Aug. 63 1809, dying at Farringford, Oct. 6, 1892, he filled out the measure of a good old age. And his prayer was answered, for his death was serene and dreadless. His unseen Pilot guided him gently “across the bar”—and thenhe saw Him.THE TUNE.Joseph Barnby's “Crossing the Bar” has supplied a noble choral to this poem. It will go far to make it an accepted tone in church worship, among the more lyrical strains of verse that sing hope and euthanasia.606 /540“SAFE IN THE ARMS OF JESUS.”If Tennyson had the mistaken feeling (as Dr. Benson intimates) “that hymns were expected to be commonplace,” it was owing both to his mental breeding and his mental stature. Genius in a colossal frame cannot otherwise than walk in strides. What is technically a hymn he never wrote, but it is significant that as he neared the Shoreless Sea, and looked into the Infinite, his sense of the Divine presence instilled something of the hymn spirit into his last verses.Between Alfred Tennyson singing trustfully of his Pilot and Fanny Crosby singing “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” is only the width of the choir. The organ tone and the flute-note breathe the same song. The stately poem and the sweet one, the masculine and the feminine, both have wings, but while the one is lifted in anthem and solemn chant in the great sanctuaries, the other is echoing Isaiah's tender text*in prayer meeting and Sunday-school and murmuring it at the humble firesides like a mother's lullaby.* Isa. 40:11.Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe on His gentle breast,There by His love o'ershadedSweetly my soul shall rest.Hark! 'tis the voice of angelsBorne in a song to meOver the fields of glory,Over the jasper sea.RefrainSafe in the arms of Jesus (1st four lines rep.).Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe from corroding care,Safe from the world's temptations,Sin cannot harm me there.Free from the blight of sorrow,Free from my doubts and fears,Only a few more trials,Only a few more tears.Safe in the arms of Jesus.Jesus, my heart's dear refugeJesus has died for me;Firm on the Rock of AgesEver my trust shall be,Here let me with patience,Wait till the night is o'er,Wait till I see the morningBreak on the Golden Shore.Safe in the arms of Jesus.—Composed 1868.THE TUNE.Those who have characterized theGospel Hymnsas “sensational” have always been obliged to except this modest lyric of Christian peace and its sweet and natural musical supplement by Dr. W.H. Doane. No hurried and high-pitched chorus disturbs the quiet beauty of the hymn, a simpleda capobeing its only refrain. “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” sang itself into public favor with the pulses of hymn and tune beating together.609 /543INDEX OF NAMES.
“‘Oh that, without a lingering groan,I may the welcome word receive.My body with my charge lay down,And cease at once to work and live.’”
“‘Oh that, without a lingering groan,I may the welcome word receive.My body with my charge lay down,And cease at once to work and live.’”
“‘Oh that, without a lingering groan,
I may the welcome word receive.
My body with my charge lay down,
And cease at once to work and live.’”
The anticipation of death itself by both the great evangelists ended like the ending of the hymn—
No anxious doubt, no guilty gloomShall daunt whom Jesus' presence cheers;My Light, my Life, my God is come,And glory in His face appears.
No anxious doubt, no guilty gloomShall daunt whom Jesus' presence cheers;My Light, my Life, my God is come,And glory in His face appears.
No anxious doubt, no guilty gloom
Shall daunt whom Jesus' presence cheers;
My Light, my Life, my God is come,
And glory in His face appears.
Montgomery had the Ambrosian gift of spiritual song-writing. Whatever may be thought of his more ambitious descriptive or heroic pages of verse, and his long narrative poems, his lyrics and cabinet pieces are gems. The poetry in some exquisite stanzas of his “Grave” is a dream of peace:
There is a calm for those who weep,A rest for weary mortals found;They softly lie and sweetly sleepLow in the ground.The storms that wreck the winter's skyNo more disturb their deep reposeThan summer evening's latest sighThat shuts the rose.
There is a calm for those who weep,A rest for weary mortals found;They softly lie and sweetly sleepLow in the ground.
There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary mortals found;
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.
The storms that wreck the winter's skyNo more disturb their deep reposeThan summer evening's latest sighThat shuts the rose.
The storms that wreck the winter's sky
No more disturb their deep repose
Than summer evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose.
But in the poem, “At Home in Heaven,” which we are considering—with its divine text iniThess. 4:17—the Sheffield bard rises to the heights of vision. He wrote it when he was an old man. The contemplation so absorbed him that he could not quit his theme till he had composed twenty-two quatrains. Only four or five—or at most only seven of them—are now in general use. Like his “Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire,” they have the pith of devotional thought in them, but are less subjective and analytical.
Forever with the Lord!Amen, so let it be,Life from the dead is in that word;'Tis immortality.Here in the body pent,Absent from Him I roam,Yet nightly pitch my moving tentA day's march nearer home.My Father's house on high!Home of my soul, how nearAt times to faith's foreseeing eyeThy golden gates appear.I hear at morn and even,At noon and midnight hour,The choral harmonies of heavenEarth's Babel tongues o'erpower.
Forever with the Lord!Amen, so let it be,Life from the dead is in that word;'Tis immortality.
Forever with the Lord!
Amen, so let it be,
Life from the dead is in that word;
'Tis immortality.
Here in the body pent,Absent from Him I roam,Yet nightly pitch my moving tentA day's march nearer home.
Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home.
My Father's house on high!Home of my soul, how nearAt times to faith's foreseeing eyeThy golden gates appear.
My Father's house on high!
Home of my soul, how near
At times to faith's foreseeing eye
Thy golden gates appear.
I hear at morn and even,At noon and midnight hour,The choral harmonies of heavenEarth's Babel tongues o'erpower.
I hear at morn and even,
At noon and midnight hour,
The choral harmonies of heaven
Earth's Babel tongues o'erpower.
The last line has been changed to read—
Seraphic music pour,
Seraphic music pour,
Seraphic music pour,
—and finally the hymnals have dropped the verse and substituted others. The new line is an587 /523improvement in melody but not in rhyme, and, besides, it robs the stanza of its leading thought—heaven and earth offsetting each other, and heavenly music drowning earthly noise—a thought that is missed even in the rich cantos of “Jerusalem the Golden.”
Nearly the whole school of good short metre tunes, from “St. Thomas” to “Boylston” have offered their notes to Montgomery's “At Home in Heaven,” but the two most commonly recognized as its property are “Mornington,” named from Lord Mornington, its author, and I.B. Woodbury's familiar harmony, “Forever with the Lord.”
Garret Colley Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, and ancestor of the Duke of Wellington, was born in Dagan, Ireland, July 19, 1735. Remarkable for musical talent when a child, he became a skilled violinist, organ-player and composer in boyhood, with little aid beyond his solitary study and practice. When scarcely twenty-one, the University of Dublin conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Music, and a professorship. He excelled as a composer of glees, but wrote also tunes and anthems for the church, some of which are still extant in the choir books of the Dublin Cathedral DiedMarch22, 1781.
The Methodist Reformation, while it had found no practical sympathy within the established church, left a deep sense of its reason and purpose in the minds of the more devout Episcopalians, and this feeling, instead of taking form in popular revival methods, prompted them to deeper sincerity and more spiritual fervor in their traditional rites of worship. Many of the next generation inherited this pious ecclesiasticism, and carried their loyalty to the old Christian culture to the extreme of devotion till they saw in the sacraments the highest good of the soul. It was Keble's “Christian Year” and his “Assize Sermon” that began the Tractarian movement at Oxford which brought to the front himself and such men as Henry Newman and Frederick William Faber.
The hymns and sacred poems of these sacramentarian Christians would certify to their earnest piety, even if their lives were unknown.
Faber's hymn “Hark, Hark My Soul,” is welcomed and loved by every Christian sect for its religious spirit and its lyric beauty.
Hark! hark, my soul! angelic songs are swellingO'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore;How sweet the truth those blessed strains are tellingOf that new life where sin shall be no more.RefrainAngels of Jesus, angels of lightSinging to welcome the pilgrims of the night.589 /525Onward we go, for still we hear them singing“Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come,”And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing,The music of the gospel leads us home.Angels of Jesus.Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing,The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea,And laden souls, by thousands meekly stealing,Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to Thee.Angels of Jesus.
Hark! hark, my soul! angelic songs are swellingO'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore;How sweet the truth those blessed strains are tellingOf that new life where sin shall be no more.
Hark! hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling
O'er earth's green fields and ocean's wave-beat shore;
How sweet the truth those blessed strains are telling
Of that new life where sin shall be no more.
RefrainAngels of Jesus, angels of lightSinging to welcome the pilgrims of the night.
Refrain
Angels of Jesus, angels of light
Singing to welcome the pilgrims of the night.
Onward we go, for still we hear them singing“Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come,”And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing,The music of the gospel leads us home.Angels of Jesus.
Onward we go, for still we hear them singing
“Come, weary souls, for Jesus bids you come,”
And through the dark, its echoes sweetly ringing,
The music of the gospel leads us home.
Angels of Jesus.
Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing,The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea,And laden souls, by thousands meekly stealing,Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to Thee.Angels of Jesus.
Far, far away, like bells at evening pealing,
The voice of Jesus sounds o'er land and sea,
And laden souls, by thousands meekly stealing,
Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to Thee.
Angels of Jesus.
John B. Dykes and Henry Smart—both masters of hymn-tune construction—have set this hymn to music. “Vox Angelica” in B flat, the work of the former, is a noble composition for choir or congregation, but “Pilgrim,” the other's interpretation, though not dissimilar in movement and vocal range, has, perhaps, the more sympathetic melody. It is, at least, the favorite in many localities. Some books print the two on adjacent pages as optionals.
Another much-loved hymn of Faber's is—
O Paradise, O Paradise!Who doth not crave for rest?Who would not see the happy landWhere they that loved are blest?RefrainWhere loyal hearts and trueStand ever in the light,All rapture through and throughIn God's most holy sight.O Paradise, O Paradise,The world is growing old;590 /526Who would not be at rest and freeWhere love is never cold.Where loyal hearts and true.O Paradise, O Paradise,I greatly long to seeThe special place my dearest Lord,In love prepares for me.Where loyal hearts and true.
O Paradise, O Paradise!Who doth not crave for rest?Who would not see the happy landWhere they that loved are blest?
O Paradise, O Paradise!
Who doth not crave for rest?
Who would not see the happy land
Where they that loved are blest?
RefrainWhere loyal hearts and trueStand ever in the light,All rapture through and throughIn God's most holy sight.
Refrain
Where loyal hearts and true
Stand ever in the light,
All rapture through and through
In God's most holy sight.
O Paradise, O Paradise,The world is growing old;590 /526Who would not be at rest and freeWhere love is never cold.
O Paradise, O Paradise,
The world is growing old;
Who would not be at rest and free
Where love is never cold.
Where loyal hearts and true.
Where loyal hearts and true.
O Paradise, O Paradise,I greatly long to seeThe special place my dearest Lord,In love prepares for me.
O Paradise, O Paradise,
I greatly long to see
The special place my dearest Lord,
In love prepares for me.
Where loyal hearts and true.
Where loyal hearts and true.
This aspiration, from the ardent soul of the poet has been interpreted in song by the same two musicians, and by Joseph Barnby—all with the title “Paradise.” Their similarity of style and near equality of merit have compelled compilers to print at least two of them side by side for the singers' choice. A certain pathos in the strains of Barnby's composition gives it a peculiar charm to many, and in America it is probably the oftenest sung to the words.
Dr. David Breed, speaking of Faber's “unusual” imagination, says, “He got more out of language than any other poet of the English tongue, and used words—even simple words—so that they rendered him a service which no other poet ever secured from them.” The above hymns are characteristic to a degree, but the telling simplicity of his style—almost quaint at times—is more marked in “There's a Wideness in God's Mercy,” given onp. 234.
Horatius BonarHoratius Bonar, D.D.Hymnal
This song of hope—one of the most strangely tuneful and rune-like of Dr. Bonar's hymn-poems—is less frequently sung owing to the peculiarity of its stanza form. But it scarcely needs a staff of notes—
Beyond the smiling and the weepingI shall be soon;Beyond the waking and the sleeping,Beyond the sowing and the reapingI shall be soon.RefrainLove, rest and home!Sweet hope!Lord, tarry not, but come.* * * * * *Beyond the parting and the meetingI shall be soon;Beyond the farewell and the greeting,Beyond the pulses' fever-beatingI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!Beyond the frost-chain and the feverI shall be soon;Beyond the rock-waste and the riverBeyond the ever and the neverI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!
Beyond the smiling and the weepingI shall be soon;Beyond the waking and the sleeping,Beyond the sowing and the reapingI shall be soon.
Beyond the smiling and the weeping
I shall be soon;
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
Beyond the sowing and the reaping
I shall be soon.
RefrainLove, rest and home!Sweet hope!Lord, tarry not, but come.
Refrain
Love, rest and home!
Sweet hope!
Lord, tarry not, but come.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
Beyond the parting and the meetingI shall be soon;Beyond the farewell and the greeting,Beyond the pulses' fever-beatingI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!
Beyond the parting and the meeting
I shall be soon;
Beyond the farewell and the greeting,
Beyond the pulses' fever-beating
I shall be soon.
Love, rest and home!
Beyond the frost-chain and the feverI shall be soon;Beyond the rock-waste and the riverBeyond the ever and the neverI shall be soon.Love, rest and home!
Beyond the frost-chain and the fever
I shall be soon;
Beyond the rock-waste and the river
Beyond the ever and the never
I shall be soon.
Love, rest and home!
The wild contrasts and reverses of earthly vicissitude are spoken and felt here in the sequence of words. Perpetual black-and-white through time; then the settled life and untreacherous594 /528peace of eternity. Everywhere in the song the note of heavenly hope interrupts the wail of disappointment, and the chorus returns to transport the soul from the land of emotional whirlwinds to unbroken rest.
Mr. Bradbury wrote an admirable tune to this hymn, though the one since composed by Mr. Stebbins has in some localities superseded it in popular favor. Skill in following the accent and unequal rhythms produces a melodious tone-poem, and completes the impression of Bonar's singular but sweet lyric of hope which suggests a chant-choral rather than a regular polyphonic harmony. W.A. Tarbutton and the young composer, Karl Harrington, have set the hymn to music, but the success of their work awaits the public test.
The words were written by Rev. John Atkinson, D.D., in January, 1867, soon after the death of his mother. He had been engaged in revival work and one night in his study, “that song, in substance, seemed,” he says, “to sing itself into my heart.” He said to himself, “I would better write it down, or I shall lose it.”
“There,” he adds, “in the silence of my study, and not far from midnight, I wrote the hymn.”
We shall meet beyond the riverBy and by, by and by;And the darkness will be overBy and by, by and by.With the toilsome journey done,And the glorious battle won.We shall shine forth as the sunBy and by, by and by.
We shall meet beyond the riverBy and by, by and by;And the darkness will be overBy and by, by and by.
We shall meet beyond the river
By and by, by and by;
And the darkness will be over
By and by, by and by.
With the toilsome journey done,And the glorious battle won.We shall shine forth as the sunBy and by, by and by.
With the toilsome journey done,
And the glorious battle won.
We shall shine forth as the sun
By and by, by and by.
The Rev. John Atkinson was born in Deerfield, N.J. Sept. 6, 1835. A clergyman of the Methodist denomination, he is well-known as one of its writers. TheCentennial History of American Methodismis his work, and besides the above hymn, he has written and publishedThe Garden of Sorrows, andThe Living Way. He died Dec. 8, 1897.
The tune to “We Shall Meet,” by Hubert P. Main, composed in 1867, exactly translates the emotional hymn into music. S.J. Vail also wrote music to the words. The hymn, originally six eight-line stanzas, was condensed at his request to its present length and form by Fanny Crosby.
Phebe Cary, the author of this happy poem, was the younger of the two Cary sisters, Alice and Phebe, names pleasantly remembered in American literature. The praise of one reflects the praise of the other when we are told that Phebe possessed a loving and trustful soul, and her life was an honor to true womanhood and a blessing to the poor. She had to struggle with hardship and poverty in her596 /530early years: “I have cried in the street because I was poor,” she said in her prosperous years, “and the poor always seem nearer to me than the rich.”
When reputation came to her as a writer, she removed from her little country home near Cincinnati, O., where she was born, in 1824, and settled in New York City with her sister. She died at Newport, N.Y., July 31, 1871, and her hymn was sung at her funeral. Her remains rest in Greenwood Cemetery.
“One Sweetly Solemn Thought,” was written in 1852, during a visit to one of her friends. She wrote (to her friend's inquiry) years afterwards that it first saw the light “in your own house ... in the little back third-story bedroom, one Sunday after coming from church.” It was a heart experience noted down without literary care or artistic effort, and in its original form was in too irregular measure to be sung. She set little value upon it as a poem, but when shown hesitatingly to inquiring compilers, its intrinsic worth was seen, and various revisions of it were made. The following is one of the best versions—stanzas one, two and three:—
One sweetly solemn thoughtComes to me o'er and o'er,I am nearer home to-day,Than I ever have been before.Nearer my Father's house,Where the many mansions be,Nearer the great white throne,Nearer the crystal sea.597 /531Nearer the bound of life,Where we lay our burdens down,Nearer leaving the crossNearer gaining the crown.
One sweetly solemn thoughtComes to me o'er and o'er,I am nearer home to-day,Than I ever have been before.
One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er,
I am nearer home to-day,
Than I ever have been before.
Nearer my Father's house,Where the many mansions be,Nearer the great white throne,Nearer the crystal sea.
Nearer my Father's house,
Where the many mansions be,
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea.
Nearer the bound of life,Where we lay our burdens down,Nearer leaving the crossNearer gaining the crown.
Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down,
Nearer leaving the cross
Nearer gaining the crown.
The old revival tune of “Dunbar,” with its chorus, “There'll be no more sorrow there,” has been sung to the hymn, but the tone-lyric of Philip Phillips, “Nearer Home,” has made the words its own, and the public are more familiar with it than with any other. It was this air that a young man in a drinking house in Macao, near Hong-Kong, began humming thoughtlessly while his companion was shuffling the cards for a new game. Both were Americans, the man with the cards more than twenty years the elder. Noticing the tune, he threw down the pack. Every word of the hymn had come back to him with the echo of the music.
“Harry, where did you learn that hymn?”
“What hymn?”
“Why the one you have been singing.”
The young man said he did not know what he had been singing. But when the older one repeated some of the lines, he said they were learned in the Sunday-school.
“Come, Harry,” said the older one, “here's what I've won from you. As for me, as God sees me, I have played my last game, and drank my last bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry for it. Give me your hand, my boy, and say that,598 /532for old America's sake, if for no other, you will quit this infernal business.”
Col. Russel H. Conwell, of Boston, (now Rev. Dr. Conwell of Philadelphia) who was then visiting China, and was an eye-witness of the scene, says that the reformation was a permanent one for both.
One day, in the year 1865, Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates received a letter from Philip Phillips noting the passage in thePilgrim's Progresswhich describes the joyful music of heaven when Christian and Hopeful enter on its shining shore beyond the river of death, and asking her to write a hymn in the spirit of the extract, as one of the numbers in hisSinging Pilgrim. Mrs. Gates complied—and the sequel of the hymn she wrote is part of the modern song-history of the church. Mr. Phillips has related how, when he received it, he sat down with his little boy on his knee, read again the passage in Bunyan, then the poem again, and, turning to his organ, pencil in hand, pricked the notes of the melody. “The ‘Home of the Soul,’” he says, “seems to have had God's blessing from the beginning, and has been a comfort to many a bereaved soul. Like many loved hymns, it has had a peculiar history, for its simple melody has flowed from the lips of High Churchmen, and has599 /533sought to make itself heard above the din of Salvation Army cymbals and drums. It has been sung in prisons and in jailyards, while the poor convict was waiting to be launched into eternity, and on hundreds of funeral occasions. One man writes me that he has led the singing of it at one hundred and twenty funerals. It was sung at my dear boy's funeral, who sat on my knee when I wrote it. It is my prayer that God may continue its solace and comfort. I have books containing the song now printed in seven different languages.”
A writer in theGolden Rule(now theChristian Endeavor World) calls attention to an incident on a night railroad train narrated in the late Benjamin F. Taylor'sWorld on Wheels, in which “this hymn appears as a sort of Traveller's Psalm.” Among the motley collection of passengers, some talkative, some sleepy, some homesick and cross, all tired, sat two plain women who, “would make capital country aunts.... If they were mothers at all they were good ones.” Suddenly in a dull silence, near twelve o'clock, a voice, sweet and flexible, struck up a tune. The singer was one of those women. “She sang on, one after another the good Methodist and Baptist melodies of long ago,” and the growing interest of the passengers became chained attention when she began—
“I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,The far-away home of the soul,Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand,While the years of eternity roll.600 /534O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,Its bright jasper walls I can see;Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenesBetween the fair city and me.”
“I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,The far-away home of the soul,Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand,While the years of eternity roll.
“I will sing you a song of that beautiful land,
The far-away home of the soul,
Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand,
While the years of eternity roll.
O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,Its bright jasper walls I can see;Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenesBetween the fair city and me.”
O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams,
Its bright jasper walls I can see;
Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenes
Between the fair city and me.”
“The car was a wakeful hush long before she had ended; it was as if a beautiful spirit were floating through the air. None that heard will ever forget. Philip Phillips can never bring that ‘home of the soul’ any nearer to anybody. And never, I think, was quite so sweet a voice lifted in a storm of a November night on the rolling plains of Iowa.”
In an autograph copy of her hymn, sent to the editor, Mrs. Gates changes “harps” to “palms.” Is it an improvement? “Palms” is a word of two meanings.
O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land,So free from all sorrow and pain,With songs on our lips and with harps in our handsTo meet one another again.
O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land,So free from all sorrow and pain,With songs on our lips and with harps in our handsTo meet one another again.
O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land,
So free from all sorrow and pain,
With songs on our lips and with harps in our hands
To meet one another again.
This belongs rather with “Christian Ballads” than with genuine hymns, but the song has had and still has an uplifting mission among the lowly whom literary perfection and musical nicety could not touch—and the first two lines, at least, are good hymn-writing. Few of the best sacred lyrics have been sung with purer sentiment and more affectionate fervor than “The Sweet By-and-By.” To any company keyed to sympathy by time, place,601 /535and condition, the feeling of the song brings unshed tears.
As nearly as can be ascertained it was in the year 1867 that a man about forty-eight years old, named Webster, entered the office of Dr. Bennett in Elkhorn. Wis., wearing a melancholy look, and was rallied good-naturedly by the doctor for being so blue—Webster and Bennett were friends, and the doctor was familiar with the other's frequent fits of gloom.
The two men had been working in a sort of partnership, Webster being a musician and Bennett a ready verse-writer, and together they had created and published a number of sheet-music songs. When Webster was in a fit of melancholy, it was the doctor's habit to give him a “dose” of new verses and cure him by putting him to work. Today the treatment turned out to be historic.
“What's the matter now,” was the doctor's greeting when his “patient” came with the tell-tale face.
“O, nothing,” said Webster. “It'll be all right by and by.”
“Why not make a song of the sweet by and by?” rejoined the doctor, cheerfully.
“I don't know,” said Webster, after thinking a second or two. “If you'll make the words, I'll write the music.”
The doctor went to his desk, and in a short time produced three stanzas and a chorus to which his friend soon set the notes of a lilting air, brightening up with enthusiasm as he wrote. Seizing his602 /536violin, which he had with him, he played the melody, and in a few minutes more he had filled in the counterpoint and made a complete hymn-tune. By that time two other friends, who could sing, had come in and the quartette tested the music on the spot. Here different accounts divide widely as to the immediate sequel of the new-born song.
A Western paper in telling its story a year or two ago, stated that Webster took the “Sweet By and By” (in sheet-music form), with a batch of other pieces, to Chicago, and that it was the only song of the lot that Root and Cady would not buy; and finally, after he had tried in vain to sell it, Lyon and Healy took it “out of pity,” and paid him twenty dollars. They sold eight or ten copies (the story continued) and stowed it away with dead goods, and it was not till apparently a long time after, when a Sunday-school hymn-book reprinted it, and began to sell rapidly on its account, that the “Sweet By and By” started on its career round the world.
This seems circumstantial enough, and the author of the hymn in his own story of it might have chosen to omit some early particulars, but, untrustworthy as the chronology of mere memory is, he would hardly record immediate popularity of a song that lay in obscurity for years. Dr. Bennett's words are, “I think it was used in public shortly after [its production], for within two weeks children on the street were singing it.”
The explanation may be partly the different method and order of the statements, partly lapses of memory (after thirty years) and partly in collateral facts. The Sunday-school hymn-book was evidentlyThe Signet Ring, which Bennett and Webster were at work upon and into which first went the “Sweet By and By”—whatever efforts may have been made to dispose of it elsewhere or whatever copyright arrangement could have warranted Mr. Healy in purchasing a song already printed. TheSignet Ringdid not begin to profit by the song until the next year, after a copy of it appeared in the publishers' circulars, and started a demand; so that theimmediatepopularity implied in Doctor Bennett's account was limited to the children of Elkhorn village.
The piece had its run, but with no exceptional result as to its hold on the public, until in 1873 Ira D. Sankey took it up as one of his working hymns. Modified from its first form in the “Signet Ring” with pianoforte accompaniment and chorus, it appeared that year inWinnowed Hymnsas arranged by Hubert P. Main, and it has so been sung ever since.
Sanford Filmore Bennett, born in 1836, appears to have been a native of the West, or, at least, removed there when a young man. In 1861 he settled in Elkhorn to practice his profession. Died Oct., 1898.
Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in Manchester, N.H. March 22, 1819. He was an active604 /538member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and various other musical associations. Removed to Madison, Ind. 1851, Racine, Wis. 1856, and Elkhorn, Wis., 1857, where he died Jan. 18, 1875. HisSignet Ringwas published in 1868.
There's a land that is fairer than day,And by faith I can see it afarFor the Father waits over the wayTo prepare us a dwelling-place there.ChorusIn the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shore.We shall sing on that beautiful shoreThe melodious songs of the blest,And our spirits shall sorrow no more,Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.In the sweet by and by, etc.
There's a land that is fairer than day,And by faith I can see it afarFor the Father waits over the wayTo prepare us a dwelling-place there.
There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith I can see it afar
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.
ChorusIn the sweet by and byWe shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Chorus
In the sweet by and by
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.
We shall sing on that beautiful shoreThe melodious songs of the blest,And our spirits shall sorrow no more,Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.In the sweet by and by, etc.
We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blest,
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.
In the sweet by and by, etc.
Was it only a poet's imagination that made Alfred Tennyson approach perhaps nearest of all great Protestants to a sense of the real “Presence,” every time he took the Holy Communion at the altar? Whatever the feeling was, it characterized all his maturer life, so far as its spiritual side was known. His remark to a niece expressed it, while walking with her one day on the seashore, “God is with us now, on this down, just as truly as Jesus was with his twodiscipleson the way to Emmaus.”
Such a man's faith would make no room for dying terrors.
Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me,And may there be no moaning of the barWhen I put out to sea,But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home.Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark,And may there be no sadness of farewellWhen I embark.For though from out our bourne of time and placeThe flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to faceWhen I have crossed the bar.
Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me,And may there be no moaning of the barWhen I put out to sea,
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me,
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home.
But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark,And may there be no sadness of farewellWhen I embark.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark,
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark.
For though from out our bourne of time and placeThe flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to faceWhen I have crossed the bar.
For though from out our bourne of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
Tennyson lived three years after penning this sublime prayer. But it was his swan-song. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, Aug. 63 1809, dying at Farringford, Oct. 6, 1892, he filled out the measure of a good old age. And his prayer was answered, for his death was serene and dreadless. His unseen Pilot guided him gently “across the bar”—and thenhe saw Him.
Joseph Barnby's “Crossing the Bar” has supplied a noble choral to this poem. It will go far to make it an accepted tone in church worship, among the more lyrical strains of verse that sing hope and euthanasia.
If Tennyson had the mistaken feeling (as Dr. Benson intimates) “that hymns were expected to be commonplace,” it was owing both to his mental breeding and his mental stature. Genius in a colossal frame cannot otherwise than walk in strides. What is technically a hymn he never wrote, but it is significant that as he neared the Shoreless Sea, and looked into the Infinite, his sense of the Divine presence instilled something of the hymn spirit into his last verses.
Between Alfred Tennyson singing trustfully of his Pilot and Fanny Crosby singing “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” is only the width of the choir. The organ tone and the flute-note breathe the same song. The stately poem and the sweet one, the masculine and the feminine, both have wings, but while the one is lifted in anthem and solemn chant in the great sanctuaries, the other is echoing Isaiah's tender text*in prayer meeting and Sunday-school and murmuring it at the humble firesides like a mother's lullaby.
* Isa. 40:11.
* Isa. 40:11.
Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe on His gentle breast,There by His love o'ershadedSweetly my soul shall rest.Hark! 'tis the voice of angelsBorne in a song to meOver the fields of glory,Over the jasper sea.RefrainSafe in the arms of Jesus (1st four lines rep.).Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe from corroding care,Safe from the world's temptations,Sin cannot harm me there.Free from the blight of sorrow,Free from my doubts and fears,Only a few more trials,Only a few more tears.Safe in the arms of Jesus.Jesus, my heart's dear refugeJesus has died for me;Firm on the Rock of AgesEver my trust shall be,Here let me with patience,Wait till the night is o'er,Wait till I see the morningBreak on the Golden Shore.Safe in the arms of Jesus.—Composed 1868.
Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe on His gentle breast,There by His love o'ershadedSweetly my soul shall rest.Hark! 'tis the voice of angelsBorne in a song to meOver the fields of glory,Over the jasper sea.
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast,
There by His love o'ershaded
Sweetly my soul shall rest.
Hark! 'tis the voice of angels
Borne in a song to me
Over the fields of glory,
Over the jasper sea.
RefrainSafe in the arms of Jesus (1st four lines rep.).
Refrain
Safe in the arms of Jesus (1st four lines rep.).
Safe in the arms of Jesus,Safe from corroding care,Safe from the world's temptations,Sin cannot harm me there.Free from the blight of sorrow,Free from my doubts and fears,Only a few more trials,Only a few more tears.
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe from corroding care,
Safe from the world's temptations,
Sin cannot harm me there.
Free from the blight of sorrow,
Free from my doubts and fears,
Only a few more trials,
Only a few more tears.
Safe in the arms of Jesus.
Safe in the arms of Jesus.
Jesus, my heart's dear refugeJesus has died for me;Firm on the Rock of AgesEver my trust shall be,Here let me with patience,Wait till the night is o'er,Wait till I see the morningBreak on the Golden Shore.
Jesus, my heart's dear refuge
Jesus has died for me;
Firm on the Rock of Ages
Ever my trust shall be,
Here let me with patience,
Wait till the night is o'er,
Wait till I see the morning
Break on the Golden Shore.
Safe in the arms of Jesus.
Safe in the arms of Jesus.
—Composed 1868.
—Composed 1868.
Those who have characterized theGospel Hymnsas “sensational” have always been obliged to except this modest lyric of Christian peace and its sweet and natural musical supplement by Dr. W.H. Doane. No hurried and high-pitched chorus disturbs the quiet beauty of the hymn, a simpleda capobeing its only refrain. “Safe in the Arms of Jesus” sang itself into public favor with the pulses of hymn and tune beating together.