The memory has not passed away of the hearty unison with which prayer-meeting and camp-meeting assemblies used to “crescendo” the last stanza—
The Rev. George Coles was born in Stewkley, Eng., Jan. 2, 1792, and died in New York City, May 1, 1858. He was editor of the N.Y. Christian Advocate, and Sunday School Advocate, for several years, and was a musician of some ability, besides being a good singer.
“SWEET THE MOMENTS, RICH IN BLESSING.”
The Hon. and Rev. Walter Shirley, Rector of Loughgree, county of Galway, Ireland, revised this hymn under the chastening discipline of a most trying experience. His brother, the Earl of Ferrars, a licentious man, murdered an old and faithful servant in a fit of rage, and was executed at Tyburn for the crime. Sir Walter, after the 160 / 128 disgrace and long distress of the imprisonment, trial, and final tragedy, returned to his little parish in Ireland, humbled but driven nearer to the Cross.
All the emotion of one who buries a mortifying sorrow in the heart of Christ, and tries to forget, trembles in the lines of the above hymn as he changed and adapted it in his saddest but devoutest hours. Its original writer was the Rev. James Allen, nearly twenty years younger than himself, a man of culture and piety, but a Christian of shifting creeds. It is not impossible that he sent his hymn to Shirley to revise. At all events it owes its present form to Shirley's hand.
* “Floating in His languid eye” seems to have been the earlier version.
The influence of Sir Walter's family misfortune is evident also in the mood out of which breathed his other trustful lines—
(changed now to “hath taught these scenes” etc).
Sir Walter Shirley, cousin of the Countess of Huntingdon, was born 1725, and died in 1786. 161 / 129 Even in his last sickness he continued to preach to his people in his house, seated in his chair.
Rev. James Oswald Allen was born at Gayle, Yorkshire, Eng., June 24, 1743. He left the University of Cambridge after a year's study, and became an itinerant preacher, but seems to have been a man of unstable religious views. After roving from one Christian denomination to another several times, he built a Chapel, and for forty years ministered there to a small Independent congregation. He died in Gayle, Oct. 31, 1804.
The tune long and happily associated with “Sweet the Moments” is “Sicily,” or the “Sicilian Hymn”—from an old Latin hymn-tune, “O Sanctissima.”
“O FOR A CLOSER WALK WITH GOD.”
The author, William Cowper, son of a clergyman, was born at Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, Eng., Nov. 15, 1731, and died at Dereham, Norfolk, April 25, 1800. Through much of his adult life he was afflicted with a mental ailment inducing melancholia and at times partial insanity, during which he once attempted suicide. He sought literary occupation as an antidote to his disorder of mind, and besides a great number of lighter pieces which diverted him and his friends, composed “The Task,” an able and delightful moral and domestic poetic treatise in blank verse, and in the same style of verse translated Homer's Odyssey and Iliad.
162 / 130One of the most beloved of English poets, this suffering man was also a true Christian, and wrote some of our sweetest and most spiritual hymns. Most of these were composed at Olney, where he resided for a time with John Newton, his fellow hymnist, and jointly with him issued the volume known as the Olney Hymns.
THE TUNE.
Music more or less closely identified with this familiar hymn is Gardiner's “Dedham,” and also “Mear,” often attributed to Aaron Williams. Both, about equally with the hymn, are seasoned by time, but have not worn out their harmony—or their fitness to Cowper's prayer.
William Gardiner was born in Leicester, Eng., March 15, 1770, and died there Nov. 11, 1853. He was a vocal composer and a “musicographer” or writer on musical subjects.
One Aaron Williams, to whom “Mear” has by some been credited, was of Welsh descent, a composer of psalmody and clerk of the Scotch church in London. He was born in 1734, and died in 1776. Another account, and the more probable one, names a minister of Boston of still earlier date as the author of the noble old harmony. It is found in a small New England collection of 1726, but not in any English or Scotch collection. “Mear” is presumably an American tune.
163 / 131“WHAT VARIOUS HINDRANCES WE MEET.”
Another hymn of Cowper's; and no one ever suffered more deeply the plaintive regret in the opening lines, or better wrought into poetic expression an argument for prayer.
The whole hymn is (or once was) so thoroughly learned by heart as to be fixed in the church among its household words. Preachers to the diffident do not forget to quote—
And there is all the lifetime of a proverb in the couplet—
Tune, Lowell Mason's “Rockingham.”
164 / 132“MY GRACIOUS REDEEMER I LOVE.”
This is one of Benjamin Francis's lays of devotion. The Christian Welshman who bore that name was a Gospel minister full of Evangelical zeal, who preached in many places, though his pastoral home was with the Baptist church in Shortwood, Wales. Flattering calls to London could not tempt him away from his first and only parish, and he remained there till his triumphant death. He was born in 1734, and died in 1799.
Tune, “Birmingham”—an English melody. Anonymous.
“BLEST BE THE TIE THAT BINDS.”
Perhaps the best hymn-expression of sacred brotherhood, at least it has had, and still has the indorsement of constant use. The author, John Fawcett, D.D., is always quoted as the example of his own words, since he sacrificed ambition and personal interest to Christian affection.
Born near Bradford, Yorkshire, Jan. 6, 1739, and converted under the preaching of Whitefield, 165 / 133 he joined the Methodists, but afterwards became a member of the new Baptist church in Bradford. Seven years later he was ordained over the Baptist Society at Wainsgate. In 1772 he received a call to succeed the celebrated Dr. Gill, in London, and accepted. But at the last moment, when his goods were packed for removal, the clinging love of his people, weeping their farewells around him, melted his heart. Their passionate regrets were more than either he or his good wife could withstand.
“I will stay,” he said; “you may unpack my goods, and we will live for the Lord lovingly together.”
It was out of this heart experience that the tender hymn was born.
Dr. Fawcett died July 25, 1817.
Tune, “Boylston,” L. Mason; or “Dennis,” H.G. Nägeli.
“I LOVE THY KINGDOM, LORD.”
“Dr. Dwight's Hymn,” as this is known par eminence among many others from his pen, is one of the imperishable lyrics of the Christian Church. The real spirit of the hundred and twenty-second Psalm is in it, and it is worthy of Watts in his best moments.
166 / 134Timothy Dwight was born at Northampton, Mass, May 14, 1752, and graduated at Yale College at the age of thirteen. He wrote several religious poems of considerable length. In 1795 he was elected President of Yale College, and in 1800 he revised Watts' Psalms, at the request of the General Association of Connecticut, adding a number of translations of his own.
Dr. Dwight died Jan. 11, 1817.
Tune, “St. Thomas,” Aaron Williams, (1734–1776.)
Mr. Hubert P. Main, however, believes the author to be Handel. It appeared as the second movement of a four-movement tune in Williams's 1762 collection, which contained pieces by the great masters, with his own; but while not credited to Handel, Williams did not claim it himself.
“MID SCENES OF CONFUSION.”
This hymn, common in chapel hymnbooks half a century and more ago, is said to have been written by the Rev. David Denham, about 1826.
167 / 135THE TUNE.
“Home, Sweet Home” was composed, according to the old account, by John Howard Payne as one of the airs in his opera of “Clari, the Maid of Milan,” which was brought out in London at Drury Lane in 1823. But Charles Mackay, the English poet, in the London Telegraph, asserts that Sir Henry Bishop, an eminent musician, in his vain search for a Sicilian national air, invented one, and that it was the melody of “Home, sweet Home,” which he afterwards set to Howard Payne's words. Mr. Mackay had this story from Sir Henry himself.
John Howard Payne, author at least, of the original words of “Home, Sweet Home,” was born in New York City June 9, 1791. He was a singer, and became an actor and theatrical writer. He composed the words of his immortal song in the year 1823, when he was himself homeless and hungry and sheltered temporarily in an attic in Paris.
His fortunes improved at last, and he was appointed to represent his native country as consul in Tunis, where he died, Apr. 9, 1852.
168 / 136“O, COULD I SPEAK THE MATCHLESS WORTH.”
The writer of this hymn of worshiping ardor and exalted Christian love was an English Baptist minister, the Rev. Samuel Medley. He was born at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, June 23, 1738, and at eighteen years of age entered the Royal Navy, where, though he had been piously educated, he became dissipated and morally reckless. Wounded in a sea fight off Cape Lagos, and in dread of amputation he prayed penitently through nearly a whole night, and in the morning the surprised surgeon told him his limb could be saved.
The voice of his awakened conscience was not wholly disregarded, though it was not till some time after he left the navy that his vow to begin a religious life was sincerely kept. After teaching school for four years, he began to preach in 1766, Wartford in Hertfordshire being the first scene of his godly labors. He died in Liverpool July 17, 1799, at the end of a faithful ministry there of twenty-seven years. A small edition of his hymns was published during his lifetime, in 1789.
THE TUNE.
“Colebrook,” a plain choral; but with a noble movement, by Henry Smart, is the English music to this fine lyric, but Dr. Mason's “Ariel” is the American favorite. It justifies its name, for it has wings—in both full harmony and duet—and its melody feels the glory of the hymn at every bar.
157 / opp 126| Augustus Montague Toplady |
|
“ROCK OF AGES CLEFT FOR ME.”
Augustus Montagu Toplady, author of this almost universal hymn, was born at Farnham, Surrey, Eng., Nov. 4, 1740. Educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders in the Established Church. In his doctrinal debates with the Wesleys he was a harsh controversialist; but his piety was sincere, and marked late in life by exalted moods. Physically he was frail, and his fiery zeal wore out his body. Transferred from his vicarage at Broad Hembury, Devonshire, to Knightsbridge, London, at twenty-eight years of age, his health began to fail before he was thirty-five, and in one of his periods of illness he wrote—
And the same homesickness for heaven appears under a different figure in another hymn—
170 / 138Possessed of an ardent religious nature, his spiritual frames exemplified in a notable degree the emotional side of Calvinistic piety. Edward Payson himself, was not more enraptured in immediate view of death than was this young London priest and poet. Unquestioning faith became perfect certainty. As in the bold metaphor of “Rock of Ages,” the faith finds voice in—
A debtor to mercy alone,
—and other hymns in his collection of 1776, two years before the end came. Most of this devout writing was done in his last days, and he continued it as long as strength was left, until, on the 11th of August, 1778, he joyfully passed away.
Somehow there was always something peculiarly heartsome and “filling” to pious minds in the lines of Toplady in days when his minor hymns were more in vogue than now, and they were often quoted, without any idea whose making they were. “At anchor laid” was crooned by good old ladies at their spinning-wheels, and godly invalids found “When languor and disease invade” a comfort next to their Bibles.
“Rock of Ages” is said to have been written after the author, during a suburban walk, had been forced to shelter himself from a thunder 171 / 139 shower, under a cliff. This is, however, but one of several stories about the birth-occasion of the hymn.
It has been translated into many languages. One of the foreign dignitaries visiting Queen Victoria at her “Golden Jubilee” was a native of Madagascar, who surprised her by asking leave to sing, but delighted her, when leave was given, by singing “Rock of Ages.” It was a favorite of hers—and of Prince Albert, who whispered it when he was dying. People who were school-children when Rev. Justus Vinton came home to Willington, Ct., with two Karen pupils, repeat to-day the “la-pa-ta, i-oo-i-oo” caught by sound from the brown-faced boys as they sang their native version of “Rock of Ages.”
Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, the famous Confederate Cavalry leader, mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern, Va., and borne to a Richmond hospital, called for his minister and requested that “Rock of Ages” be sung to him.
The last sounds heard by the few saved from the wreck of the steamer “London” in the Bay of Biscay, 1866, were the voices of the helpless passengers singing “Rock of Ages” as the ship went down.
A company of Armenian Christians sang “Rock of Ages” in their native tongue while they were being massacred in Constantinople.
No history of this grand hymn of faith forgets the incident of Gladstone writing a Latin 172 / 140 translation of it while sitting in the House of Commons. That remarkable man was as masterly in his scholarly recreations as in his statesmanship. The supreme Christian sentiment of the hymn had permeated his soul till it spoke to him in a dead language as eloquently as in the living one; and this is what he made of it:
TOPLADY.
GLADSTONE.
The wonderful hymn has suffered the mutations common to time and taste.
—becomes—
—getting rid of the unpoetic word, and bettering the elocution, but missing the writer's thought 174 / 142 (of the unknown path,—instead of going to many “worlds”). The Unitarians have their version, with substitutes for the “atonement lines.”
But the Christian lyric maintains its life and inspiration through the vicissitudes of age and use, as all intrinsically superior things can and will,—and as in the twentieth line,—
—modernized to—
—the hymn will ever adapt itself to the new exigencies of common speech, without losing its vitality and power.
THE TUNE.
A happy inspiration of Dr. Thomas Hastings made the hymn and music inevitably one. Almost anywhere to call for the tune of “Toplady” (namesake of the pious poet) is as unintelligible to the multitude as “Key” would be to designate the “Star-spangled Banner.” The common people—thanks to Dr. Hastings—have learned “Rock of Ages” by sound.
Thomas Hastings was born in Washington, Ct., 1784. For eight years he was editor of the Western Recorder, but he gave his life to church music, and besides being a talented tone-poet he wrote as many as six hundred hymns. In 1832, by invitation from twelve New York churches, he went 177 / 143 to that city, and did the main work of his life there, dying, in 1872, at the good old age of eighty-nine. His musical collections number fifty-three. He wrote his famous tune in 1830.
175 / opp 142| Thomas Hastings |
|
“MY SOUL BE ON THY GUARD”
Strangely enough, this hymn, a trumpet note of Christian warning and resolution, was written by one who himself fell into unworthy ways.* But the one strong and spiritual watch-song by which he is remembered appeals for him, and lets us know possibly, something of his own conflicts. We can be thankful for the struggle he once made, and for the hymn it inspired. It is a voice of caution to others.
* I have been unable to verify this statement found in Mr. Butterworth's “Story of the Hymns.”—T.B.
George Heath, the author, was an English minister, born in 1781; died 1822. For a time he was pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Honiton, Devonshire, and was evidently a prolific writer, having composed a hundred and forty-four hymns, an edition of which was printed.
THE TUNE.
No other has been so familiarly linked with the words as Lowell Mason's “Laban” (1830). It has dash and animation enough to reënforce the hymn, and give it popular life, even if the hymn had less earnestness and vigor of its own.
178 / 144“PEOPLE OF THE LIVING GOD.”
Montgomery felt every line of this hymn as he committed it to paper. He wrote it when, after years in the “swim” of social excitements and ambitions, where his young independence swept him on, he came back to the little church of his boyhood. His father and mother had gone to the West Indies as missionaries, and died there. He was forty-three years old when, led by divine light, he sought readmission to the Moravian “meeting” at Fulneck, and anchored happily in a haven of peace.
James Montgomery, son of Rev. John Montgomery, was born at Irvine, Ayeshire, Scotland, 179 / 145 Nov. 4, 1771, and educated at the Moravian Seminary at Fulneck, Yorkshire, Eng. He became the editor of the Sheffield Iris, and his pen was busy in non-professional as well as professional work until old age. He died in Sheffield, April 30, 1854.
His literary career was singularly successful; and a glance through any complete edition of his poems will tell us why. His hymns were all published during his lifetime, and all, as well as his longer pieces, have the purity and polished beauty, if not the strength, of Addison's work. Like Addison, too, he could say that he had written no line which, dying, he would wish to blot.
The best of Montgomery was in his hymns. These were too many to enumerate here, and the more enduring ones too familiar to need enumeration. The church and the world will not soon forget “The Home in Heaven,”—
Nor—
—with its impressive couplet—
Nor the haunting sweetness of—
Nor, indeed, the hymn of Christian love just now before us.
THE TUNE.
The melody exactly suited to the gentle trochaic step of the home-song, “People of the living God,” is “Whitman,” composed for it by Lowell Mason. Few Christians, in America, we venture to say, could hear an instrument play “Whitman” without mentally repeating Montgomery's words.
“TO LEAVE MY DEAR FRIENDS.”
This hymn, called “The Bower of Prayer,” was dear to Christian hearts in many homes and especially in rural chapel worship half a century ago and earlier, and its sweet legato melody still lingers in the memories of aged men and women.
Elder John Osborne, a New Hampshire preacher of the “Christian” (Christ-ian) denomination, is said to have composed the tune (and possibly the words) about 1815—though apparently the music was arranged from a flute interlude in one of Haydn's themes. The warbling notes of the air are full of heart-feeling, and usually the best available treble voice sang it as a solo.
* The American Vocalist omits this stanza as too fanciful as well as too crude
“SAVIOUR, THY DYING LOVE.”
This hymn of grateful piety was written in 1862, by Rev. S. Dryden Phelps, D.D., of New Haven, and first published in Pure Gold, 1871; afterwards in the (earlier) Baptist Hymn and Tune Book.
The penultimate line, originally “Some sinful wanderer won,” was altered by the author himself. 182 / 148 The hymn is found in most Baptist hymnals, and was inserted by Mr. Sankey in Gospel Hymns No. 1. It has since won its way into several revival collections and undenominational manuals.
Rev. Sylvester Dryden Phelps, D.D., was born in Suffield, Ct., May 15, 1816, and studied at the Connecticut Literary Institution in that town. An early call to the ministry turned his talents to the service of the church, and his long settlement—comprising what might be called his principal life work—was in New Haven, where he was pastor of the First Baptist church twenty-nine years. He died there Nov. 23, 1895.
THE TUNE.
The Rev. Robert Lowry admired the hymn, and gave it a tune perfectly suited to its metre and spirit. It has never been sung in any other. The usual title of it is “Something for Jesus.” The meaning and sentiment of both words and music are not unlike Miss Havergal's—
I gave my life for thee.
“IN SOME WAY OR OTHER.”
This song of Christian confidence was written by Mrs. Martha A.W. Cook, wife of the Rev. Parsons Cook, editor of the Puritan Recorder, Boston.
It was published in the American Messenger in 1870, and is still in use here, as a German 183 / 149 version of it is in Germany. The first stanza follows, in the two languages:
In the English version the easy flow of the two last lines into one sentence is an example of rhythmic advantage over the foreign syntax.
Mrs. Cook was married to the well-known clergyman and editor, Parsons Cook, (1800–1865) in Bridgeport, Ct., and survived him at his death in Lynn, Mass. She was Miss Martha Ann Woodbridge, afterwards Mrs. Hawley, and a widow at the time of her re-marriage as Mr. Cook's second wife.
THE TUNE.
Professor Calvin S. Harrington, of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Ct., set music to the words as printed in Winnowed Hymns (1873) and arranged by Dr. Eben Tourjee, organizer of the great American Peace Jubilee in Boston. In the Gospel Hymns it is, however, superseded by the more popular composition of Philip Phillips.
184 / 150Dr. Eben Tourjee, late Dean of the College of Music in Boston University, and founder and head of the New England Conservatory, was born in Warwick, R.I., June 1, 1834. With only an academy education he rose by native genius, from a hard-working boyhood to be a teacher of music and a master of its science. From a course of study in Europe he returned and soon made his reputation as an organizer of musical schools and sangerfests. The New England Conservatory of Music was first established by him in Providence, but removed in 1870 to Boston, its permanent home. His doctorate of music was conferred upon him by Wesleyan University. Died in Boston, April 12, 1891.
Philip Phillips, known as “the singing Pilgrim,” was born in Jamestown, Chautauqua, Co., N.Y., Aug. 13, 1834. He compiled twenty-nine collections of sacred music for Sunday schools, gospel meetings, etc.; also a Methodist Hymn and Tune Book, 1866. He composed a great number of tunes, but wrote no hymns. Some of his books were published in London, for he was a cosmopolitan singer, and traveled through Europe and Australia as well as America. Died in Delaware, O., June 25, 1875.
“NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE.”
Mr. William Stead, fond of noting what is often believed to be the “providential chain of 185 / 151 causes” in everything that happens, recalls the fact that Benjamin Flower, editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer, while in jail (1798) at the instigation of Bp. Watson for an article defending the French Revolution, and criticising the Bishop's political course, was visited by several sympathizing ladies, one of whom was Miss Eliza Gould. The young lady's first acquaintance with him there in his cell led to an attachment which eventuated in marriage. Of that marriage Sarah Flower was born. By the theory of providential sequences Mr. Stead makes it appear that the forgotten vindictiveness of a British prelate “was the causa causans of one of the most spiritual and aspiring hymns in the Christian Hymnary.”
“Nearer, My God, to Thee” was on the lips of President McKinley as he lay dying by a murderer's wicked shot. It is dear to President Roosevelt for its memories of the battle of Las Quasimas, where the Rough Riders sang it at the burial of their slain comrades. Bishop Marvin was saved by it from hopeless dejection, while practically an exile during the Civil War, by hearing it sung in the wilds of Arkansas, by an old woman in a log hut.
A letter from Pittsburg, Pa., to a leading Boston paper relates the name and experience of a forger who had left the latter city and wandered eight years a fugitive from justice. On the 5th of November, (Sunday,) 1905, he found himself in Pittsburg, and ventured into the Dixon Theatre, 186 / 152 where a religious service was being held, to hear the music. The hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” so overcame him that he went out weeping bitterly. He walked the floor of his room all night, and in the morning telephoned for the police, confessed his name and crime, and surrendered himself to be taken back to the Boston authorities.
Mrs. Sarah Flower Adams, author of the noble hymn (supposed to have been written in 1840), was born at Harlow, Eng., Feb. 22, 1805, and died there in 1848. At her funeral another of her hymns was sung, ending—
The attempts to evangelize “Nearer, My God, to Thee” by those who cannot forget that Mrs. Adams was a Unitarian, are to be deplored. Such zeal is as needless as trying to sectarianize an Old Testament Psalm. The poem is a perfect religious piece—to be sung as it stands, with thanks that it was ever created.
THE TUNE.
In English churches (since 1861) the hymn was and may still be sung to “Horbury,” composed by Rev. John B. Dykes, and “St. Edmund,” by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Both tunes are simple and appropriate, but such a hymn earns and inevitably 187 / 153 acquires a single tune-voice, so that its music instantly names it by its words when played on instruments. Such a voice was given it by Lowell Mason's “Bethany,” (1856). (Why not “Bethel,” instead, every one who notes the imagery of the words must wonder.) “Bethany” appealed to the popular heart, and long ago (in America) hymn and tune became each other's property. It is even simpler than the English tunes, and a single hearing fixes it in memory.
“I NEED THEE EVERY HOUR.”
Mrs. Annie Sherwood Hawks, who wrote this hymn in 1872, was born in Hoosick, N.Y., in 1835.
She sent the hymn (five stanzas) to Dr. Lowry, who composed its tune, adding a chorus, to make it more effective. It first appeared in a small collection of original songs prepared by Lowry and Doane for the National Baptist Sunday School Association, which met at Cincinnati, O., November, 1872, and was sung there.
One instance, at least, of a hymn made doubly impressive by its chorus will be attested by all who have sung or heard the pleading words and music of Mrs. Hawks' and Dr. Lowry's “I need Thee, Oh, I need Thee.”
“I GAVE MY LIFE FOR THEE.”
This was written in her youth by Frances Ridley Havergal, and was suggested by the motto over the head of Christ in the great picture, “Ecce Homo,” in the Art Gallery of Dusseldorf, Prussia, where she was at school. The sight—as was the case with young Count Zinzendorf—seems to have had much to do with the gifted girl's early religious experience, and indeed exerted its influence on her whole life. The motto read “I did this for thee; what doest thou for me?” and the generative effect of the solemn picture and its question soon appeared in the hymn that flowed from Miss Havergal's heart and pen.