The hymn, written in 1870, was first published in 1871 in “Pure Gold”—a book that had a sale of one million two hundred thousand copies.

“O WHERE ARE THE REAPERS?”

Matt. 13:30 is the text of this lyric from the pen of Eben E. Rexford.

THE TUNE.

Eben Eugene Rexford was born in Johnsburg, N.Y., July 16, 1841, and has been a writer since he was fourteen years old. He is the author of several popular songs, as “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” “Only a Pansy Blossom” etc., and many essays and treatises on flowers, of which he is passionately fond.

“IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL.”

Horatio Gates Spafford, the writer of this hymn, was a lawyer, a native of New York state, born Oct. 30, 1828. While connected with an institution in Chicago, as professor of medical jurisprudence, he lost a great part of his fortune by the great fire in that city. This disaster was followed by the loss of his children on the steamer, Ville de Havre, Nov. 22, 1873. He seems to have been a devout Christian, for he wrote his hymn of submissive faith towards the end of the same year—

A friend of Spafford who knew his history read this hymn while repining under an inferior affliction of his own. “If he can feel like that after suffering what he has suffered,” he said, “I will cease my complaints.”

It may not have been the weight of Mr. Spafford's sorrows wearing him down, but one would infer some mental disturbance in the man seven or eight years later. “In 1881” [writes Mr. Hubert P. Main] “he went to Jerusalem under the hallucination that he was a second Messiah—and died there on the seventh anniversary of his landing in Palestine, Sept. 5, 1888.” The aberrations of an over-wrought mind are beckonings to God's compassion. When reason wanders He takes the soul of His helpless child into his own keeping—and “it is well.”

The tune to Spafford's hymn is by P.P. Bliss; a gentle, gliding melody that suits the mood of the words.

“WAITING AND WATCHING FOR ME.”

Written by Mrs. Marianne Farningham Hearn, born in Kent, Eng., Dec. 17, 1834. The hymn was first published in the fall of 1864 in the London Church World. Its unrhythmical first line—

—was replaced by the one now familiar—

Mrs. Hearn—a member of the Baptist denomination—has long been the editor of the (English) Sunday School Times, but her literary work has been more largely in connection with the Christian World newspaper of which she has been a staff-member since its foundation.

THE TUNE.

The long lines, not easily manageable for congregational singing, are wisely set by Mr. Bliss to duet music. There is a weighty thought in the hymn for every Christian, and experience has shown that a pair of good singers can make it very affecting, but the only use of the repeat, by way of a chorus, seems to be to give the miscellaneous voices a brief chance to sing.

“HE WILL HIDE ME.”

(Isa. 49:2.)

Providence decreed for her a life of domestic care and patient waiting. For eighteen years she was the constant attendant of a disabled grandmother, and long afterwards love and duty made her the home nurse during her mother's protracted illness and the last sickness of her father, until both parents passed away.

From her present home in Edeson, Ill., some utterances of her chastened spirit have found their way to the public, and been a gospel of blessing. Besides “He Will Hide Me” other hymns of Miss Servoss are “Portals of Light,” “He Careth,” “Patiently Enduring,” and “Gates of Praise,” the last being the best known.

THE TUNE.

An animating choral in nine-eight tempo, with a swinging movement and fugue chorus, is rather florid for the hymn, but undeniably musical. Mr. James McGranahan was the composer. He was born in Adamsville, Pa., July 4, 1840. His education was acquired mostly at the public schools, and both in general knowledge and in musical accomplishments it may be said of him that he is “self-made.”

Music was born in him, and at the age of nineteen, with some valuable help from men like Bassini, Webb, Root and Zerrahn, he had studied to so good purpose that he taught music classes himself. This talent, joined to the gift of a very sweet tenor voice, made him the natural successor of the lamented Bliss, and, with Major D.W. Whittle, he entered on a career of gospel work, making between 1881 and 1885 two successful tours of England, Scotland and Ireland, and through the chief American cities.

Among his publications are the Male Chorus Book, Songs of the Gospel and the Gospel Male Choir.

Resides at Kinsman, O.

“REVIVE THY WORK, O LORD.”

(Heb. 3:2.)

The supposed date of the hymn is 1860; the author, Albert Midlane. He was born at Newport on the Isle of Wight, Jan. 23, 1825 a business man, but, being a Sunday-school teacher, he was prompted to write verses for children. The habit grew upon him till he became a frequent and acceptable hymn-writer, both for juvenile and for general use. English collections have at least three hundred credited to him.

THE TUNE.

Music and words together make a song-litany alive with all the old psalm-tune unction and the new vigor; and both were upon Mr. McGranahan when he wrote the choral. It is one of his successes.

“WHERE IS MY WANDERING BOY TO-NIGHT?”

This remarkable composition—words and music by Rev. Robert Lowry—has a record among sacred songs like that of “The Prodigal Son” among parables.

A widowed lady of culture, about forty years of age, who was an accomplished vocalist, had ceased to sing, though her sweet voice was still in its prime. The cause was her sorrow for her runaway boy. She had not heard from him for five years. While spending a week with friends in a city distant from home, her hidden talent was betrayed by the friends to the pastor of their church, where a revival was in progress, and persuasion that seemed to put a duty upon her finally procured her consent to sing a solo.

The church was crowded. With a force and feeling that can easily be guessed she sang “Where Is My Boy Tonight?” and finished the first stanza. She began the second,—

—and as the congregation caught up the refrain,—

—a young man who had been sitting in a back seat made his way up the aisle and sobbed, “Mother, I'm here!” The embrace of that mother and her long-lost boy turned the service into a general hallelujah. At the inquiry meeting that night there were many souls at the Mercy Seat who never knelt there before—and the young wanderer was one.

Mr. Sankey, when in California with Mr. Moody, sang this hymn in one of the meetings and told the story of a mother in the far east who had commissioned him to search for her missing son. By a happy providence the son was in the house—and the story and the song sent him home repentant.

At another time Mr. Sankey sang the same hymn from the steps of a snow-bound train, and a man between whose father and himself had been trouble and a separation, was touched, and returned to be reconciled after an absence of twenty years.

There would not be room in a dozen pages to record all the similar saving incidents connected with the singing of “Where Is My Wandering Boy?” The rhetoric of love is strong in every note and syllable of the solo, and the tender chorus of voices swells the song to heaven like an antiphonal prayer.

Strange to say, Dr. Lowry set lightly by his hymns and tunes, and deprecated much mention of them though he could not deny their success. An active Christian since seventeen years of age, through his early pulpit service, his six years' professorship, and the long pastorate in Plainfield, N.J., closed by his death, he considered preaching to be his supreme function as it certainly was his first love. Music was to him “a side-issue,” an “efflorescence,” and writing a hymn ranked far below making and delivering a sermon. “I felt a sort of meanness when I began to be known as a composer,” he said. And yet he was the author of a hymn and tune which “has done more to bring back wandering boys than any other” ever written.^*

“ETERNITY.”

This is the title and refrain of both Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates' impressive poem and its tune.

Skill was needed to vocalize this great word, but the ear of Mr. Bliss for musical prosody did not fail to make it effective. After the beautiful harmony through the seven lines, the choral reverently softens under the rallentando of the closing bars, and dwelling on the awe-inspiring syllables, solemnly dies away.

TRIUMPH BY AND BY.

This rally-song of the Christian arena is wonderfully stirring, especially in great meetings, for it sings best in full choral volume.

Dr. Christopher Ruby Blackall, the author of the hymn, was born in Albany, N.Y., Sept. 18, 1830. He was a surgeon in the Civil War, and in medical practice fifteen years, but afterwards became connected with the American Baptist Publication Society as manager of one of its branches. He has written several Sunday-school songs set to music by W.H. Doane.

THE TUNE,

By Horatio R. Palmer is exactly what the hymn demands. The range scarcely exceeds an octave, but with the words “From on high,” the stroke of the soprano on upper D carries the feeling to unseen summits, and verifies the title of the song. From that note, through melody and chorus the “Triumph by and by” rings clear.

“NOT HALF HAS EVER BEEN TOLD”

This is emotional, but every word and note is uplifting, and creates the mood for religious impressions. The writer, Rev. John Bush Atchison, was born at Wilson, N.Y., Feb. 18, 1840, and died July 15, 1882.

The chorus (twice sung)—

Not half has been told,

—concludes with repeat of the two last lines of this first stanza.

Mr. Atchison was a Methodist clergyman who composed several good hymns. “Behold the Stone is Rolled Away,” “O Crown of Rejoicing,” and “Fully Persuaded,” indicate samples of his work more or less well-known. “Not Half Has Ever Been Told” was written in 1875.

THE TUNE.

He became a composer and wrote the melody to Atchison's words in 1877, which was arranged by a blind musician of Washington, D.C., J.W. Bischoff by name, with whom he had formed a partnership. The solo is long—would better, perhaps, have been four-line instead of eight—but well sung, it is a flight of melody that holds an assembly, and touches hearts.

Dr. Presbry's best known book was Gospel Bells (1883), the joint production of himself, Bischoff, and Rev. J.E. Rankin. He died Aug. 20, 1901.

“COME.”

One of the most characteristic (both words and music) of the Gospel Hymns—“Mrs. James Gibson Johnson” is the name attached to it as its author, though we have been unable to trace and verify her claim.

THE TUNE,

Composed by James McGranahan, delivers the whole stanza in soprano or tenor solo, when the alto, joining the treble, leads off the refrain in duet, the male voices striking alternate notes until the full harmony in the last three bars. The style and movement of the chorus are somewhat suggestive of a popular glee, but the music of the duet is flexible and sweet, and the bass and tenor progress with it not in the ride-and-tie-fashion but marking time with the title-syllable.

The contrast between the spiritual and the intellectual effect of the hymn and its wakeful tune is illustrated by a case in Baltimore. While Moody and Sankey were doing their gospel work in that city, a man, who, it seems, had brought a copy of the Gospel Hymns, walked out of one of the meetings after hearing this hymn-tune, and on reaching home, tore out the leaves that contained the song and threw them into the fire, saying he had “never heard such twaddle” in all his life.

“ALMOST PERSUADED.”

The Rev. Mr. Brundage tells the origin of this hymn. In a sermon preached by him many years ago, the closing words were:

“He who is almost persuaded is almost saved, but to be almost saved is to be entirely lost.” Mr. Bliss, being in the audience, was impressed with the thought, and immediately set about the composition of what proved one of his most popular songs, deriving his inspiration from the sermon of his friend, Mr. Brundage. Memoir of Bliss.

“MY AIN COUNTREE.”

This hymn was written by Miss Mary Augusta Lee one Sabbath day in 1860 at Bowmount, Croton Falls, N.Y., and first published in the New York Observer, Dec, 1861. The authoress had been reading the story of John Macduff who, with his wife, left Scotland for the United States, and accumulated property by toil and thrift in the great West. In her leisure after the necessity for hard work was past, the Scotch woman grew homesick and pined for her “ain countree.” Her husband, at her request, came east and settled with her in sight of the Atlantic where she could see the waters that washed the Scotland shore. But she still pined, and finally to save her life, John Macduff took her back to the heather hills of the mother-land, where she soon recovered her health and spirits.

Miss Lee was born in Croton Falls in 1838, and was of Scotch descent, and cared for by her grandfather and a Scotch nurse, her mother dying in her infancy. In 1870 she became the wife of a Mr. Demarest, and her married life was spent in Passaic, N.J., until their removal to Pasadena, Cal., in hope of restoring her failing health. She died at Los Angeles, Jan. 8, 1888.

THE TUNE

Is an air written in 1864 in the Scottish style by Mrs. Ione T. Hanna, wife of a banker in Denver, Colo., and harmonized for choral use by Hubert P. Main in 1873. Its plaintive sweetness suits the words which probably inspired it. The tone and metre of the hymn were natural to the young author's inheritance; a memory of her grandfather's home-land melodies, with which he once crooned “little Mary” to sleep.

Sung as a closing hymn, “My ain countree” sends the worshipper away with a tender, unworldly thought that lingers.

Mrs. Demarest wrote an additional stanza in 1881 at the request of Mr. Main.

CHAPTER XIII.

HYMNS, FESTIVAL AND OCCASIONAL.

CHRISTMAS.

“ADESTE FIDELES.”

This hymn is of doubtful authorship, by some assigned to as late a date as 1680, and by others to the 13th century as one of the Latin poems of St. Bonaventura, Bishop of Albano, who was born at Bagnarea in Tuscany, A.D. 1221. He was a learned man, a Franciscan friar, one of the greatest teachers and writers of his church, and finally a cardinal. Certainly Roman Catholic in its origin, whoever was its author, it is a Christian hymn qualified in every way to be sung by the universal church.

This has been translated by Rev. Frederick Oakeley (1808–1880) and by Rev. Edward Caswall (1814–1878) the version of the former being the one in more general use. The ancient hymn is much abridged in the hymnals, and even the translations have been altered and modernized in the three or four stanzas commonly sung. Caswall's version renders the first line “Come hither, ye faithful,” literally construing the Latin words.

The following is substantially Oakeley's English of the “Adeste, fideles.”

John Milton, son and grandson of John Miltons, was born in Breadstreet, London, Dec. 9, 1608, fitted for the University in St. Paul's school, and studied seven years at Cambridge. His parents intended him for the church, but he chose literature as a profession, travelled and made distinguished friendships in Italy, Switzerland and France, and when little past his majority was before the public as a poet, author of the Ode to the Nativity, of a Masque, and of many songs and elegies. In later years he entered political life under the stress of his Puritan sympathies, and served under Cromwell and his successor as Latin Secretary of State through the time of the Commonwealth. While in public duty he became blind, but in his retirement composed “Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.” Died in 1676.

THE TUNE.

In the old “Carmina Sacra” a noble choral (without name except “No war nor battle sound”) well interprets portions of the 4th and 5th stanzas of the great hymn, but replaces the line—

—with the more modern and less figurative—

Three stanzas are also added, by the Rev. H.O. Dwight, missionary to Constantinople. The substituted line, which is also, perhaps, the composition of Mr. Dwight, rhymes with—

—and as it is not un-Miltonic, few singers have ever known that it was not Milton's own.

Dr. John Knowles Paine, Professor of Music at Harvard University, and author of the Oratorio of “St. Peter,” composed a cantata to the great Christmas Ode of Milton, probably about 1868.

Professor Paine died Apr. 25, 1906.

It is worth noting that John Milton senior, the great poet's father, was a skilled musician and a composer of psalmody. The old tunes “York” and “Norwich,” in Ravenscroft's collection and copied from it in many early New England singing-books, are supposed to be his.

The Miltons were an old Oxfordshire Catholic family, and John, the poet's father, was disinherited for turning Protestant, but he prospered in business, and earned the comfort of a country gentleman. He died, very aged, in May, 1646, and his son addressed a Latin poem (“Ad Patrem”) to his memory.

“HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SING.”

This hymn of Charles Wesley, dating about 1730, was evidently written with the “Adeste Fideles” in mind, some of the stanzas, in fact, being almost like translations of it. The form of the two first lines was originally—

—but was altered thirty years later by Rev. Martin Madan (1726–1790) to—

Other changes by the same hand modified the three following stanzas, and a fifth stanza was added by John Wesley—

THE TUNE.

“Mendelssohn” is the favorite musical interpreter of the hymn. It is a noble and spirited choral from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's cantata, “Gott ist Licht.”

“JOY TO THE WORLD, THE LORD IS COME!”

This inspirational lyric of Dr. Watts never grows old. It was written in 1719.

Dr. Edward Hodges (1796–1867) wrote an excellent psalm-tune to it which is still in occasional use, but the music united to the hymn in the popular heart is “Antioch,” an adaptation from Handel's Messiah. This companionship holds unbroken from hymnal to hymnal and has done so for sixty or seventy years; and, in spite of its fugue, the tune—apparently by some magic of its own—contrives to enlist the entire voice of a congregation, the bass falling in on the third beat as if by intuition. The truth is, the tune has become the habit of the hymn, and to the thousands who have it by heart, as they do in every village where there is a singing school, “Antioch” is “Joy to the World,” and “Joy to the World” is “Antioch.”

“HARK! WHAT MEAN THOSE HOLY VOICES?”

This fine hymn, so many years appearing with the simple sign “Cawood” or “J. Cawood” printed under it, still holds its place by universal welcome.

The Rev. John Cawood, a farmer's son, was born at Matlock, Derbyshire, Eng., March 18, 1775, graduated at Oxford, 1801, and was appointed perpetual curate of St. Anne's in Bendly, Worcestershire. Died Nov. 7, 1852. He is said to have written seventeen hymns, but was too modest to publish any.

THE TUNE.

Dr. Dykes' “Oswald,” and Henry Smart's “Bethany” are worthy expressions of the feeling in Cawood's hymn. In America, Mason's “Amaland,” with fugue in the second and third lines, has long been a favorite.

“WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS.”

This was written by Nahum Tate (1652–1715), and after two hundred years the church remembers and sings the song. Six generations have grown up with their childhood memory of its pictorial verses illustrating St. Luke's Christmas story.

THE TUNE.

Modern hymnals have substituted “Christmas” and other more or less spirited tunes for Read's “Sherburne,” which was the first musical translation of the hymn to American ears. But, to show the traditional hold that the New England fugue melody maintains on the people, many collections print it as alternate tune. Some modifications have been made in it, but its survival is a tribute to its real merit.

Daniel Read, the creator of “Sherburne,” “Windham,” “Russia,” “Stafford,” “Lisbon,” and many other tunes characteristic of a bygone school of psalmody, was born in Rehoboth, Mass., Nov. 2, 1757. He published The American Singing Book, 1785, Columbian Harmony, 1793, and several other collections. Died in New Haven, Ct., 1836.

“IT CAME UPON THE MIDNIGHT CLEAR.”

Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears, author of this beautiful hymn-poem, was born at Sandisfield, Berkshire Co., Mass., April 6, 1810, and educated at Union College and Harvard University. He became pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Mass., 1838. Died in the adjoining town of Weston, Jan. 14, 1876. The hymn first appeared in the Christian Register in 1857.