PART V AMERICAN HYMNODY

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The First American Hymn

Timothy Dwight, 1800.

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THE BEGINNINGS OF HYMNODY IN AMERICA

The rise of hymnody in America ran parallel with the development of hymn-singing in England. The Puritans who came from Holland in the Mayflower in 1620 were “separatists” from the Church of England, hence they used a psalm-book of their own, published by Henry Ainsworth at Amsterdam in 1612. This was the book that cheered their souls on the perilous crossing of the Atlantic and during the hard and trying years that followed their landing at Plymouth.

This was also the book that comforted Priscilla, when John Alden stole in and found that

The later Puritans who came directly from England, on the other hand, were not “separatists,” hence they brought with them the psalm-book of Sternhold and Hopkins, which was the version of the Psaltery approved at that time by the Established Church.

The wretched paraphrases of the Psalms in both the Ainsworth and the “orthodox” version of Sternhold and Hopkins eventually led to an insistent demand among the New England [348] Puritans for an entirely new psalm-book which should also adhere more closely to the Hebrew original. The result was the famous “Bay Psalmist” of 1640, which was the first book printed in British America.

The Puritan editors of this first attempt at American psalmody cared no more for poetic effect than did their brother versifiers across the waters. This they made quite plain in the concluding words of the Preface to the “Bay Psalmist”: “If therefore the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that God’s Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20, for wee have respected rather a plaine translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and soe have attended to Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and David’s poetry into english meetre: that soe wee may sing in Sion the Lords songs of praise according to his own will; untill hee take us from hence, and wipe away all our tears, & bid us enter into our masters joye to sing eternall Halleluiahs.”

The editors scarcely needed to apprise the worshiper that he should not look for artistic verses, for a glimpse within its pages was sufficient to disillusion any one who expected to find sacred poetry. The metrical form given the 137th Psalm is an example of the Puritan theologians’ contempt for polished language:

Nevertheless, strange as it may seem, the “Bay Psalmist” passed through twenty-seven editions, and was even reprinted several times abroad, being used extensively in England and Scotland. Gradually, however, psalmody began to lose its hold on the Reformed churches, both in Europe and America, and hymnody gained the ascendancy. The publication in 1707 of the epoch-making work of Isaac Watts, “Hymns and Spiritual Songs,” was the first step in breaking down the prejudice in the Calvinistic churches against “hymns of human composure.” In America the Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards, which began in 1734 and which received added impetus from the visit of John Whitefield in 1740, also brought about a demand for a happier form of congregational singing. Then came the influence of the Wesleyan revival with its glorious outburst of song.

Jonathan Edwards himself, stern Puritan that he was, was finally forced to confess that it was “really needful that [350] we should have some other songs than the Psalms of David.” Accordingly hymn singing grew rapidly in favor among the people.

The first attempt to introduce hymns in the authorized psalm-books was made by Joel Barlow, a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Instructed by the General Association of Congregational Churches of Connecticut to revise Watts’ “Psalms of David” in order to purge them of their British flavor, he was likewise authorized to append to the Psalms a collection of hymns. He made a selection of seventy hymns, and the new book was published in 1786.

It was received with delight by the Presbyterians, but the Congregationalists who had sponsored it were thoroughly dissatisfied. As an example of the morbid character of Puritan theology, Edward S. Ninde has called attention to the fact that while Barlow failed to include Wesley’s “Jesus, Lover of my soul” or Watts’ “When I survey the wondrous cross,” he did select such a hymn by Watts as “Hark, from the tombs, a doleful sound,” and another beginning with the lines,

A second attempt to make a complete revision of Watts’ “Psalms of David” was decided upon by the Congregational churches, and this time the task was entrusted to Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College. Dwight, who was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, was born in 1752. He entered Yale at the age of thirteen and graduated with highest honors in 1769. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he was commissioned a chaplain and throughout the conflict he wrote songs to enthuse the American troops. In 1795 [351] he was elected president of Yale College, in which position he served his Alma Mater for twenty years.

Dwight exhibited a spirit of bold independence when he added to the revised “Psalms” by Watts a collection of two hundred and sixty-three hymns. Of these hymns, one hundred and sixty-eight were also by Watts, indicating the hold which that great hymnist retained on the English-speaking world. Other hymn-writers represented in Dwight’s book included Stennett, Doddridge, Cowper, Newton, Toplady, and Charles Wesley. Only one of the latter’s hymns was chosen, however, and Toplady’s “Rock of Ages” was not included!

Dwight himself wrote thirty-three paraphrases of the Psalms, but they were so freely rendered that they are properly classified as original hymns. Among these is his splendid version of the 137th Psalm, “I love Thy Zion, Lord,” which may be regarded as the earliest hymn of American origin still in common use today. It is usually dated 1800, which is the year when Dwight’s work was published.

Dwight, who will always be remembered as the outstanding figure in the beginnings of American hymnody, died in 1817. The story of his life is an inspiring one, illustrating how his heroic qualities conquered despite a “thorn in the flesh.” A chronicler records that “during the greater part of forty years he was not able to read fifteen minutes in the twenty-four hours; and often, for days and weeks together, the pain which he endured in that part of the head immediately behind the eyes amounted to anguish.”

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The Hymn of a Wounded Spirit

Phoebe Hinsdale Brown, 1818.

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AMERICA’S FIRST WOMAN HYMNIST

Less than twenty years after Timothy Dwight’s hymns were published, a very poor and unpretentious American woman began to write lyrics that have been treasured by the Church until this present day, nor will they soon be forgotten. Her name was Phoebe Hinsdale Brown, and the story of her life is the most pathetic in the annals of American hymnody.

“As to my history,” she wrote near the end of her life, “it is soon told; a sinner saved by grace and sanctified by trials.”

She was born at Canaan, N. Y., May 1, 1783. Both parents died before she was two years old and the greater part of her childhood was spent in the home of an older sister who was married to a keeper of a county jail. The cruelties and privations suffered by the orphaned child during these years were such that her son in later years declared that it broke his heart to read of them in his mother’s diary. She was not permitted to attend school, and could neither read nor write. She was eighteen years old before she escaped from this bondage and found opportunity to attend school for three months. This was the extent of her education within school walls.

In 1805, at the age of twenty-two, she married Timothy H. Brown, a house painter. He was a good man, but extremely poor. Moving to Ellington, Mass., they lived in a small, unfinished frame house at the edge of the village. Four little children and a sick sister who occupied the only finished room in the house added to the domestic burdens of [354] Mrs. Brown. In the summer of 1818 a pathetic incident occurred that led to the writing of her most famous hymn.

There being no place in her crowded home where she might find opportunity for a few moments of quiet prayer and meditation, she would steal away at twilight to the edge of a neighboring estate, where there was a magnificent home surrounded by a beautiful garden.

“As there was seldom any one passing that way after dark,” she afterwards wrote, “I felt quite retired and alone with God. I often walked quite up to that beautiful garden ... and felt that I could have the privilege of those few moments of uninterrupted communion with God without encroaching upon any one.”

But her movements had been watched, and one day the lady of the mansion turned on her in the presence of others and rudely demanded: “Mrs. Brown, why do you come up at evening so near our house, and then go back without coming in? If you want anything, why don’t you come in and ask for it?”

Mrs. Brown tells how she went home, crushed in spirit. “After my children were all in bed, except my baby,” she continues, “I sat down in the kitchen, with my child in my arms, when the grief of my heart burst forth in a flood of tears. I took pen and paper, and gave vent to my oppressed heart in what I called ‘My Apology for my Twilight Rambles, addressed to a Lady.’” The “Apology,” which was sent to the woman who had so cruelly wounded her began with the lines:

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Then continued the beautiful verses of her now famous “Twilight Hymn:”

Seven years later, when Dr. Nettleton was preparing his volume of “Village Hymns,” he was told that Mrs. Brown had written some verses. At his request she brought forth her “Twilight Hymn” and three other lyrics, and they were promptly given a place in the collection. Only a few slight changes were made in the lines of the “Twilight Hymn,” including the second line, which was made to read “From every cumbering care,” and the fourth line, which was changed to “In humble, grateful prayer.” Four stanzas were omitted, otherwise the hymn remains almost exactly in the form of the “Apology.”

One of the omitted stanzas reveals a beautiful Christian attitude toward death. Mrs. Brown wrote:

One of the other hymns by Mrs. Brown included in “Village Hymns” is a missionary lyric, “Go, messenger of love, and bear.” This was written a year earlier than her “Twilight Hymn.” Her little son Samuel was seven years old at the time, and the pious mother’s prayer was that he might be used of the Lord in His service. It was the period when the English-speaking world was experiencing a tremendous revival of interest in foreign missions, and in her [356] heart she cherished the fond hope that her own boy might become a messenger of the gospel. Then came the inspiration for the hymn:

Her prayer was answered. The son, Samuel R. Brown in 1838 sailed as a missionary to China, and eleven years later, when Japan was opened to foreigners, he was transferred to that field. He was the first American missionary to the Japanese.

Mrs. Brown died at Henry, Illinois, October 10, 1861. She was buried at Monson, Mass., where some thirty years of her life had been spent. Her son, the missionary, has written this beautiful tribute to her memory:

“Her record is on high, and she is with the Lord, whom she loved and served as faithfully as any person I ever knew; [357] nay, more than any other. To her I owe all I am; and if I have done any good in the world, to her, under God, it is due. She seems even now to have me in her hands, holding me up to work for Christ and His cause with a grasp that I can feel. I ought to have been and to be a far better man than I am, having had such a mother.”

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A Triumphant Missionary Hymn

Thomas Hastings.

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THOMAS HASTINGS, POET AND MUSICIAN

High among the names of those who in the early days of America labored to raise the standard of hymnody must be inscribed the name of Thomas Hastings, Doctor of Music. Poet and musician by nature, Hastings may truly be said to have devoted his entire life to the elevation of sacred song.

The story of his life is typical of the struggles and hardships of many American pioneers who conquered in spite of the most adverse circumstances. Born at Washington, Conn., October 15, 1784, young Hastings removed with his parents to Clinton, N. Y., when he was only twelve years old. The journey was made in ox-sleds through unbroken wilderness in the dead of winter.

The frontier schools of those days offered little opportunity for education, but the eager lad trudged six miles a day to receive the instruction that was given. A passionate fondness for music was first satisfied when he secured a musical primer of four pages costing six pence. The proudest moment in his life came when he was named leader of the village choir.

It was not until he was thirty-two years old that Hastings was able to secure employment as a music teacher, but from that time until his death, in 1872, he devoted all his energies to the work he loved.

Hastings was ever tireless in contending that good music should have a recognized place in religious worship. From [360] 1823 to 1832, during which time he edited the Western Recorder, in Utica, N. Y., he had an excellent opportunity to spread his views on music. In the latter year twelve churches in New York City jointly engaged his services as choir director, and for the remainder of his life Hastings made the great American metropolis his home.

Though seriously handicapped by eye trouble, Hastings produced a prodigious amount of work. It is claimed that he wrote more than one thousand hymn tunes. He also published fifty volumes of church music. Some of the finest tunes in our American hymnals were composed by him. Who has not found inspiration in singing that sweet and haunting melody known as “Ortonville”? And how can we ever be sufficiently grateful for the tune called “Toplady,” which has endeared “Rock of Ages” to millions of hearts? Besides these there are at least a score of other beautiful hymn tunes that have been loved by the singing Church for nearly a century, any one of which would have won for the composer an enduring name.

Through the composing of tunes, Hastings was led to write words for hymns. More than six hundred are attributed to him, although many were written anonymously. “Hail to the brightness of Zion’s glad morning” is generally regarded as his best hymn. It strikingly reflects the spirit of the missionary age in which Hastings lived.

Another very popular and stirring missionary hymn, written by Hastings in 1831, is a song of two stanzas:

A hymn with the title, “Pilgrimage of Life,” though very simple, is singularly beautiful and very tender in its appeal. The first stanza reads:

Hastings did not cease writing and composing hymns until three days before his death. It is said that more of his hymns are found in the standard church hymnals of America than those of any other American writer. Their survival through almost a century is a testimony to their enduring quality.

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Key’s Hymn of Praise

Francis Scott Key, 1823.

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FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, PATRIOT AND HYMNIST

Francis Scott Key is known to every American child as the author of our national anthem, “The star spangled banner”; but his fame as a Christian hymnist has not gone abroad to the same degree. And yet, as the author of “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee,” he ranks among the foremost of American hymn-writers.

Key lived during the stirring days of our country’s early history. His father was an officer in the Continental army who fought with distinction during the Revolutionary War. Francis was born at Frederick, Maryland, August 1, 1779. After receiving a legal education he began to practice law in Washington, and served as United States district attorney for three terms, holding that office at the time of his death.

The story of how he came to write “Star spangled banner” scarcely needs to be repeated. It was during the War of 1812 that Key was authorized by President Madison to visit the British fleet near the mouth of the Potomac in order to obtain the release of a friend who had been captured.

The British admiral granted Key’s request, but owing to the fact that an attack was about to be made on Fort McHenry, which guarded the harbor of Baltimore, Key and his party were detained all night aboard the truce-boat on which they had come.

It was a night of great anxiety. A fierce bombardment [364] continued during the hours of darkness, and as long as the shore fortifications replied to the cannonading, Key and his friends were certain that all was well. Toward morning, the firing ceased, and they were filled with dark forebodings. The others went below to obtain some sleep, but Key continued to pace the deck until the first streaks of dawn showed that the “flag was still there.”

His joy was so unbounded that he seized a piece of paper, and hastily wrote the words of his famous anthem. It was not completed until later in the day, when he reached Baltimore and joined in the victorious joy that filled the city.

While “Star spangled banner” is not a Christian hymn, there are noble sentiments in it that reveal the writer at once as a devout Christian, and this was eminently true of Key.

As a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church he held a lay reader’s license, and for many years read the service and visited the sick. He also conducted a Bible class in Sunday school. Although he lived in a slave state, he was finally moved by conscientious scruples to free his slaves. He also did much to alleviate conditions among other unfortunate blacks.

When the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1823 appointed a committee to prepare a new hymn-book for that body, Key was made a lay member of it. Another member of the committee was Dr. William Muhlenberg, who in that same year had published a little hymnal for use in his own congregation. It was in this hymnal, known as “Church Poetry”, that Key’s beautiful hymn, “Lord, with glowing heart I’d praise Thee,” was first published.

In Dr. Muhlenberg’s hymn-book the hymn had only [365] three stanzas, and that is the form in which it has since appeared in all other hymnals. In 1900, however, Key’s autograph copy of the hymn was discovered, and it was found that the hymn originally had four stanzas. The missing one reads:

Another excellent hymn, “Before the Lord we bow”, was written by Key in 1832 for a Fourth of July celebration.

A bronze statue of Key, placed over his grave at Frederick, Md., shows him with his hand outstretched, as at the moment when he discovered the flag “still there,” while his other hand is waving his hat exultantly.

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Bryant’s Home Mission Hymn

William Cullen Bryant, 1840.

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AMERICA’S FIRST POET AND HIS HYMNS

William Cullen Bryant, America’s first great poet, was also a hymn-writer. Although he did not devote much of his thought and genius to sacred lyrics, he wrote at least two splendid hymns that merit a place in every hymn collection. The one, “Thou, whose unmeasured temple stands,” is a church dedication hymn of rare beauty; the other, “Look from Thy sphere of endless day,” is unquestionably one of the finest home mission hymns ever written.

Born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794, he was educated at Williams College to be a lawyer. It was his writing of “Thanatopsis” as a boy of seventeen years that gave the first notice to the world that America had produced a great poet.

It is said that when the lines of “Thanatopsis” were submitted to Richard H. Dana, editor of the “North American Review,” he was skeptical.

“No one on this side of the Atlantic,” he declared, “is capable of writing such verses.”

Bryant was brought up in a typical New England Puritan home. Family worship and strict attendance at public worship was the rule in the Bryant household. Every little while the children of the community would also gather in the district schoolhouse, where they would be examined in the Catechism by the parish minister, a venerable man who was loved by old and young alike.

While yet a little child Bryant began to pray that he [368] might receive the gift of writing poetry. No doubt he had been influenced to a large degree in this desire by the fact that his father was a lover of verse and possessed a splendid library of the great English poets. The youthful Bryant was taught to memorize the noble hymns of Isaac Watts, and when he was only five years old he would stand on a chair and recite them to imaginary audiences.

Early in life Bryant came under the influence of the Unitarian doctrines which were then sweeping through New England as a reaction against the stern, harsh teachings of Puritanism. When he was only twenty-six years old he was invited to contribute to a volume of hymns then in course of preparation by the Unitarians. He responded by writing five hymns. Six years later he wrote “Thou, whose unmeasured temple stands” for the dedication of the Second Unitarian Church of New York City. He usually attended the First Congregational Unitarian Church of that city.

About thirty years later, however, when Bryant was sixty-four years old, a profound change occurred in his religious convictions. During a trip abroad his wife became critically ill in Naples. At first her life was despaired of, but when she finally was on the road to recovery Bryant sent for a warm friend of the family, Rev. R. C. Waterston, who was in Naples at the time. The latter tells of his meeting with the aged poet in the following words:

“On the following day, the weather being delightful, we walked in the royal park or garden overlooking the Bay of Naples. Never can I forget the beautiful spirit that breathed through every word he (Bryant) uttered, the reverent love, the confiding trust, the aspiring hope, the rooted faith.... He said that he had never united himself with the Church, which, with his present feeling, he would most [369] gladly do. He then asked if it would be agreeable to me to come to his room on the morrow and administer the communion, adding that, as he had never been baptized, he desired that ordinance at the same time.

“The day following was the Sabbath, and a most heavenly day. In fulfilment of his wishes, in his own quiet room, a company of seven persons celebrated together the Lord’s Supper.... Previous to the breaking of bread, William Cullen Bryant was baptized. With snow-white head and flowing beard, he stood like one of the ancient prophets, and perhaps never, since the days of the apostles, has a truer disciple professed allegiance to the divine Master.”

Twenty years after this experience, in the last year of the poet’s life, he made some contributions to the Methodist Episcopal hymnal. A revision of one of the hymns which he had written in 1820 for the Unitarian hymnal reveals his changed attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ. For the Unitarian book he had written:

For the Methodist hymn-book he changed the third line to read:

The hymn was sung in its changed form at the poet’s funeral, as well as another beautiful hymn entitled “The Star of Bethlehem,” written in 1875 for the semi-centennial of the Church of the Messiah in Boston.

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An Exquisite Baptismal Hymn

William Augustus Muhlenberg, 1826.

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THE HYMN-WRITER OF THE MUHLENBERGS

William Augustus Muhlenberg, one of America’s early hymn-writers, came from a most distinguished family. His great grandfather, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, was the “patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America,” having come to these shores from Germany in 1742, and being the founder in that year of the first permanent Lutheran organization in the new world.

A son of the patriarch and grandfather of the hymn-writer bore the name of Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg. He, too, was a Lutheran minister, but during the stirring days of the Revolutionary period he entered into the political affairs of the struggling colonies. He was president of the convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States and also served as first speaker of the new House of Representatives. His brother, Rev. Peter Muhlenberg, was also a distinguished patriot. When the Revolution broke out, he was serving a congregation at Woodstock, Va. It was he who stood in the pulpit of his church and, throwing aside his clerical robe, stood revealed in the uniform of a Continental colonel.

“There is a time to preach and a time to pray,” he cried, “but these times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come!”

Thereupon he called upon the men of his congregation to enlist in his regiment. Before the war ended he had risen to the rank of major general.

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William Augustus Muhlenberg, the hymn-writer, was born in Philadelphia in 1796. Since the German language was then being used exclusively in the German Lutheran churches, he and his little sister were allowed to attend Christ Episcopal Church. In this way William Augustus drifted away from the Church of his great forbears, and when he grew up he became a clergyman in the Episcopal communion.

It is evident that Muhlenberg brought something of the spirit of the “singing church” into the church of his adoption, for in 1821 he issued a tract with the title, “A Plea for Christian Hymns.” It appears that the Episcopal Church at this time was using a prayer-book that included only fifty-seven hymns, and no one felt the poverty of his Church in this respect more keenly than did Muhlenberg.

Two years later the General Convention of the Episcopal body voted to prepare a hymn-book, and Muhlenberg was made a member of the committee. One of his associates was Francis Scott Key, author of “Star spangled banner.”

As a member of the committee Muhlenberg contributed four original hymns to the new collection. They were “I would not live alway,” “Like Noah’s weary dove,” “Shout the glad tidings, triumphantly sing,” and “Saviour, who Thy flock art leading.” The latter is a baptism hymn and is one of the most exquisite lyrics on that theme ever written. Although Muhlenberg never married, he had a very deep love for children. No service seemed so hallowed to him as the baptism of a little child. It is said that shortly after his ordination, when asked to officiate at such a rite, Muhlenberg flushed and hesitated, and then asked a bishop who was present to baptize the babe. The latter, however, insisted that the young clergyman should carry out the holy ordinance, [373] and from that day there was no duty that afforded Muhlenberg more joy.

Muhlenberg often expressed regret that he had written “I would not live alway.” It seems that the poem was called into being in 1824, following a “heart-breaking disappointment in the matter of love.” Muhlenberg was a young man at the time, and in his later years he sought to alter it in such a way that it would breathe more of the hopeful spirit of the New Testament. He contended that Paul’s words, “For me to live is Christ” were far better than Job’s lament, “I would not live alway.” However, the hymn as originally written had become so fixed in the consciousness of the Church, that all efforts of the author to revise it were in vain.

Nearly all the hymns of Muhlenberg that have lived were written during his earlier years. His later ministry centered in New York City, where he was head of a boys’ school for a number of years, and later rector of the Church of the Holy Communion. He soon became an outstanding leader in the great metropolis. After having founded St. Luke’s hospital, the first church institution of its kind in New York City, he spent the last twenty years of his life as its superintendent.

His death occurred when he was past eighty years. It is said that when the end was drawing near, the hospital chaplain came to his bedside to pray for his recovery.

“Let us have an understanding about this,” said the dying Muhlenberg. “You are asking God to restore me and I am asking God to take me home. There must not be a contradiction in our prayers, for it is evident that He cannot answer them both.”

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The Way, the Truth, and the Life

George Washington Doane, 1824.

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THE LYRICS OF BISHOP DOANE

Critics will forever disagree on the subject of the relative merits of great hymns. Bishop George Washington Doane’s fine hymn, “Thou art the Way; to Thee alone,” has been declared by some to be the foremost of all hymns written by American authors. Dr. Breed, on the other hand, declares that it is “by no means the equal” of other hymns by Doane. Another authority observes that it “rather stiffly and mechanically paraphrases” the passage on which it is founded, while Edward S. Ninde rejects this conclusion by contending that although “metrical expositions of Scriptures are apt to be stilted and spiritless ... this one is a success.”

Ninde, however, does not agree that it is “the first of American hymns,” reserving this honor, as do most critics, for Ray Palmer’s “My faith looks up to Thee.”

Bishop Doane was born in Trenton, N. J., May 27, 1799. This was the year in which George Washington died. The future hymn-writer was named after the great patriot. At the age of nineteen he was graduated by Union College with the highest scholastic honors. After teaching for a season, he became pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church, Boston, Mass., the church afterwards made famous by Phillips Brooks.

When only thirty-three years old he was elevated to the bishopric of New Jersey, which position he held until his death in 1859. By this time he had already won fame as a hymn-writer. It was in 1824, at the age of twenty-five, that [376] Doane published a little volume of lyrics entitled “Songs by the Way.” One of the hymns in this collection was the beautiful paraphrase, “Thou art the Way; to Thee alone.” This hymn alone would have been sufficient to have perpetuated the name of the young poet, but there was another gem in the same collection that will always be treasured by those who love Christian song. It is the exquisite evening hymn:

Among the many achievements of this versatile bishop was the founding of Saint Mary’s Hall, a school for young women, at Burlington, N. J. Doane lies buried in the neighboring churchyard, and it is said that the students on every Wednesday evening at chapel services sing “Softly now the light of day” as a memorial tribute to the founder of the institution.

Both of these hymns were quickly recognized as possessing unusual merit, and almost immediately found their way into Christian hymn-books. Today there is scarcely a hymnal published in the English language that does not contain them.

But Bishop Doane’s fame does not rest on these two hymns alone. He was destined to write a third one, equally great but of a very different character from the other two. It is the stirring missionary hymn:

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It was written in 1848 in response to a request from the young women of St. Mary’s Hall for a hymn to be used at a flag-raising. The third stanza is one of rare beauty:

The hymn, as may be surmised, is based on the passage from the Psaltery: “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth.”

Bishop Doane was a zealous advocate of missions. It was during his childhood that the modern missionary movement had its inception and swept like a tidal wave over the Christian world. “Fling out the banner” is a reflection of the remarkable enthusiasm that filled his own soul and that revealed itself in his aggressive missionary leadership. Indeed, he became known in his own Church as “the missionary bishop of America.”

A son, William C. Doane, also became one of the most distinguished bishops of the Episcopal Church. Writing of his father’s rare gifts as a hymnist, he declares that his heart was “full of song. It oozed out in his conversation, in his sermons, in everything that he did. Sometimes in a steamboat, often when the back of a letter was his only paper, the sweetest things came.”

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The Quaker Poet’s Prayer

John Greenleaf Whittier, 1872.

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THE QUAKER POET AS A HYMN-WRITER

Of all American poets, there is none who is so genuinely loved as John Greenleaf Whittier. A man of the people, a true American, and full of the milk of human kindness, Whittier’s poetry reflects so much of his own character that it will never lose its singular charm and beauty.

Whittier’s life is a story of struggle. He was born of humble Quaker parents at Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807. Instead of receiving the advantages of an education, he knew of nothing but drudgery and hard work throughout his childhood. But the poetic spark was in him even as a child. One day, when a small boy, he sat before the kitchen fire and wrote on his slate:

No doubt it was the memory of these childhood experiences that later inspired him to write with such depth of feeling and understanding the lines of “The Barefoot Boy”:

Through hard work he managed to save enough to attend Haverhill academy two seasons. Though this was the extent of his scholastic training, he never ceased to be a student.

A wandering Scotchman who chanced to visit the quiet Quaker home and sang such rollicking (!) lyrics as “Bonny Doon,” “Highland Mary,” and “Auld Lang Syne” kindled the boy’s imagination. He immediately borrowed a copy of Burns’ poems from the village schoolmaster, and now for the first time he seriously began to think of becoming a poet.

When he was only twenty-five years old he had already begun to attract attention by his poetry. He had also achieved some success in politics and was planning to run for Congress. Soon, however, came the call of the Abolition movement, and Whittier, always true to his Quaker conception of “the inner voice,” determined to sacrifice all of his political ambitions to become a champion of the slaves.

It was not long before he was recognized as preëminently the poet of anti-slavery, as Phillips was its orator, Mrs. Stowe its novelist, and Sumner its statesman. The fervor with which he threw himself into the cause may be seen reflected in the stirring lines of his poems written in those days, notably “The Star of Bethlehem.” However, since his anti-slavery poems are more vehement than inspiring, and as the events which suggested them were temporary, they will be read with constantly waning interest.

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The vigor with which he espoused the Abolition cause stirred up deep resentment among his enemies. At Philadelphia, where he published “The Pennsylvania Free-man,” the office of the paper was attacked by a mob and burned. But Whittier was not dismayed. When Daniel Webster in 1850 made his notable defense of the Fugitive Slave law in the United States senate, Whittier wrote “Ichabod” in reply.

At a time when the Abolition movement seemed to be losing, rather than gaining, ground, the poet gave expression to his faith in God in the beautiful poem, “Seed-Time and Harvest.” His duty, as he saw it, was to sow the seed; God would take care of the harvest.

Because the Quakers do not sing in their services, Whittier knew little of music. However, he once wrote: “A good hymn is the best use to which poetry can be devoted, but I do not claim that I have succeeded in composing one.”

And yet, the poems of Whittier, notably “Our Master” and “The Eternal Goodness,” have been the source of some of the finest hymns in the English language. There are at least seventy-five hymns now in use that bear his name. Practically all of them are extracts from longer poems. “Dear Lord and Father of mankind,” “I bow my forehead to the dust,” and “We need not climb the heavenly steeps” are among the best loved of Whittier’s hymns. Probably his most famous poem is “Snowbound.”

Whittier died in 1892. His last words were, “Love—love to all the world.” A friend bent over the dying man and whispered the words of his poem, “At Last.”

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Palmer’s Famous Hymn

Ray Palmer, 1830.

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AMERICA’S GREATEST HYMN AND ITS AUTHOR

Although a number of America’s great poets wrote hymns, it was not given to any one of them to compose America’s finest Christian lyric. Bryant wrote “Look from Thy sphere of endless day,” Whittier was the author of “Dear Lord and Father of mankind,” Holmes composed “O Love Divine, that stooped to share,” and Longfellow has given us “I heard the bells of Christmas day;” but, beautiful as these hymns are, none of them can compare with “My faith looks up to Thee.” This, “the most precious contribution which American genius has yet made to the hymnology of the Christian Church,” came from the pen of a very humble but gifted minister, Ray Palmer.

Palmer, who was born at Little Compton, R. I., November 12, 1808, was a direct descendant of John Alden and his good wife, Priscilla. One of his forebears was William Palmer, who came to Plymouth in 1621.

Through pressure of poverty Ray found it necessary to leave home at the age of thirteen, after having received a grammar education. For two years he clerked in a Boston dry goods store, during which time he passed through some deep spiritual experiences, with the result that he gave his heart to God.

Friends who recognized unusual gifts in the young man urged him to attend school. Eventually he graduated from Phillips Andover Academy and from Yale. For a while he taught in New York and New Haven, but in 1835 he was [384] ordained to the Congregational ministry. He served a congregation in Bath, Maine, for fifteen years, and another at Albany, N. Y., for a like period, after which he became Corresponding Secretary of the American Congregational Union, a position which he held until 1878, when he was compelled to retire because of failing health.

It was while he was teaching in New York City that “My faith looks up to Thee” was written. He was only twenty-two years old at the time, and he had no thought when writing it that he was composing a hymn for general use. He tells in his own account of the hymn how he had been reading a little German poem of two stanzas, picturing a penitent sinner before the cross. Deeply moved by the lines, he translated them into English, and then added the four stanzas that form his own hymn.

The words of the hymn, he tells us, were born out of his own spiritual experience.

“I gave form to what I felt, by writing, with little effort, the stanzas,” he said. “I recollect I wrote them with very tender emotion, and ended the last lines with tears.”

“A ransomed soul!” Who would not have been moved to deep emotion after having written a poem with such a sublime closing line!

This happened in the year 1832, almost a hundred years ago.

Palmer copied the poem into a little note-book which he constantly carried in his pocket. Frequently he would read it as a part of his private devotion. It never seemed to occur to him that it might some day be used as a hymn.

But God was watching over that little poem. One day as Palmer was walking along the busy streets of Boston, he chanced to meet Lowell Mason, the famous musician and [385] composer of Savannah, Ga. Mason was compiling a hymn-book at the time and asked Palmer, who had established something of a reputation as a poet, if he could give him some words for which he could compose music. Palmer remembered the poem in his note-book, and, while the two men stepped into a nearby store, a copy of the poem was made and given to Mason.

When the two men met again a few days later, Mason exclaimed: “Dr. Palmer, you may live many years and do many good things, but I think you will be best known to posterity as the author of ‘My faith looks up to Thee.’”

Mason wrote the beautiful tune known as “Olivet” for the hymn, and perhaps the music contributed as much as the words to endear it to the hearts of millions. Certainly here is an instance where words and music are wedded, and should never be parted asunder.

Palmer wrote many other splendid hymns. Some of his most famous are translations from the Latin. His rendering of the noted hymn of Bernard of Clairvaux, “O Jesus, Joy of loving hearts,” is a gem of wondrous beauty. It has become a favorite communion hymn.

In his ministry Palmer laid much emphasis on the Lord’s Supper, and many of his hymns were written for communion services. He once said, in a communion address: “When the cares and the business of life have hurried me hither and thither with no little distraction of mind, I love to come back again, and sit down before the cross, and gaze on the blessed Sufferer with silent, tender memories. It is like coming once more into the sunshine after long walking through gloom and mist.”

Palmer’s whole life was characterized by a warm, almost passionate, devotion to Christ. His faith in the Saviour was [386] so childlike and strong that it enabled him to rise above all external burdens and trials. Something of his personal love to Christ may be seen beautifully reflected in his hymn, “Jesus, these eyes have never seen,” which was his own favorite and which many regard as inferior only to “My faith looks up to Thee.” It is such an appealing lyric, we feel we must quote it in full.

Palmer looked upon his hymns as gifts from heaven, and therefore he refused to accept money for their use. He insisted, however, that those who published his hymns should print them exactly as they were written. He regarded the [387] somewhat common practice of tampering with texts as “immoral.”

Palmer died in 1887. On the day before he breathed his last, he was heard repeating feebly the last stanza of his favorite hymn:

[388]

A Hopeful Missionary Lyric

Samuel Francis Smith, 1832.

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SAMUEL SMITH, A PATRIOTIC HYMN-WRITER

Nearly a century has now elapsed since our national hymn, “America,” was written, and, despite all efforts to displace it by other anthems, it seems to retain its hold on the hearts of the people. Samuel Francis Smith will always be gratefully remembered as the author of this hymn, but we should not lose sight of the fact that the New England pastor who gave his country such an inspiring patriotic song has also given to the Christian Church some of the choicest gems in her hymnody.

Associated with “My country, ’tis of thee” will be the stirring missionary hymn, “The morning light is breaking,” the two being regarded as the foremost of Dr. Smith’s poetical works. Both were written in the winter of 1832, when he was only twenty-four years old. He was a student at Andover Theological Seminary at the time.

Altogether Dr. Smith contributed nearly 150 hymns to American hymnody, many of them on missionary themes. They were written in an era that witnessed a remarkable revival of interest in foreign missions. The famous “Haystack Meeting” at Williams College, which marked the beginning of the modern missionary movement in America, was held in 1806, just two years before Smith was born. Smith himself, while a theological student at Andover, caught the spirit of the times and felt constrained to become a missionary.

At this time reports came from Adoniram Judson in Burmah that, after years of painful disappointment and failure, [390] the light was breaking, and multitudes were turning to Christ. Smith was fired with hopeful enthusiasm, and it was in this spirit of glad exultation that he sat down to write his immortal missionary hymn:

Many other missionary hymns came from the gifted writer in succeeding years, and immediately after his graduation from Andover he became editor of a missionary magazine, through which he wielded a great influence. When the “Lone Star” mission in India was in danger of being abandoned because of lack of funds, Smith did much to save it by writing a poem with the title, “Lone Star.” Another missionary hymn by him begins with the line, “Onward speed thy conquering flight.” However, it does not attain to the poetic heights of “The morning light is breaking,” which has been compared to Heber’s “From Greenland’s icy mountains” in spiritual fervor and literary merit.

Another interesting hymn written by Smith during his student days is called “The Missionary’s Farewell.” The first stanza reads:

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Although Dr. Smith never carried out his earlier resolve to become a missionary, he visited many foreign fields and had the satisfaction of hearing his own hymns sung in many tongues. Referring to “The morning light is breaking,” he once wrote:

“It has been a great favorite at missionary gatherings, and I have myself heard it sung in five or six different languages in Europe and Asia. It is a favorite with the Burmans, Karens and Telugus in Asia, from whose lips I have heard it repeatedly.”

A son of the distinguished hymn-writer became a missionary to the Burmans.

Dr. Smith filled many important pulpits in New England during his long and illustrious career. At one time he was a professor in modern languages. He was an unusual linguist, being familiar with fifteen tongues. In 1894, a year before his death, he was still vigorous in mind and body, writing and preaching, although he was eighty-six years old. It was in this year that he was found looking around for a textbook that would enable him to begin the study of Russian. It was in this year, too, that he wrote one of his finest hymns, for a church dedication.

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The celebrated hymnist happily has left a personal account of how he wrote “America.” Lowell Mason, the composer, had given him a collection of German books containing songs for children with the request that Smith should examine them and translate anything of merit.

“One dismal day in February, 1832,” he wrote long afterward, “about half an hour before sunset, I was turning over the leaves of one of the music books when my eye rested on the tune which is now known as ‘America.’ I liked the spirited movement of it, not knowing it at that time to be ‘God save the King.’ I glanced at the German words and saw that they were patriotic, and instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own, adapted to the tune. Picking up a scrap of waste paper which lay near me, I wrote at once, probably within half an hour, the hymn ’America’ as it is now known everywhere. The whole hymn stands today as it stood on the bit of waste paper, five or six inches long and two and a half wide.”

Dr. Smith was a member of the celebrated Harvard class of 1829, to which Oliver Wendell Holmes also belonged. The latter wrote a poem for one of the class reunions, in which he referred to the distinguished hymn-writer in the following lines:

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On November 19, 1895, the venerable pastor and poet was called suddenly to his eternal home. He died as he was taking a train from Boston to preach in a neighboring town.

[394]

A Pearl among Christmas Carols

Edmund Hamilton Sears, 1834.

[395]

TWO FAMOUS CHRISTMAS HYMNS AND THEIR AUTHOR

To be the writer of one great hymn classic on the nativity is an enviable distinction, but to be the author of two immortal Christmas lyrics is fame that has probably come to only one man, and he an American. His name was Edmund Hamilton Sears, and so long as Christians celebrate Christmas, they will sing the two hymns he wrote—“It came upon a midnight clear” and “Calm on the listening ear of night.”

Strangely enough, an interval of sixteen years separated the writing of the two hymns. Sears had just graduated from Union College at the age of twenty-four when he wrote “Calm on the listening ear of night.” It appeared in the “Boston Observer,” and was immediately recognized as a poem of unusual merit. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of it as “one of the finest and most beautiful hymns ever written.”

Sixteen years elapsed, and then at Christmas time in 1850 the Christian world was delighted to find in the “Christian Register” another lyric, “It came upon the midnight clear,” which many believe is superior to the earlier hymn. The language of this hymn is so surpassingly lovely and its movement so rhythmical, it fairly sings itself.

There is, in fact, a close resemblance between the two hymns, and yet they are different. While the earlier hymn is largely descriptive, the later one is characterized by a note of joyous optimism and triumphant faith. In Sears’ “Sermons [396] and Songs” he published the one at the beginning, and the other at the close, of a sermon for Christmas Eve on 1 Tim. 2:6.

Each of the two hymns had five stanzas in its original form. The fourth stanza of the older hymn is usually omitted. It reads:

The stanza omitted from the second Christmas hymn sounds the only minor note heard in that otherwise hopeful and joyous lyric:

Sears was a native of New England, having been born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, in 1810. He completed his theological course at Harvard Divinity School in 1837, whereupon he entered the Unitarian Church, serving as a pastor for nearly forty years.

Surprise has often been expressed that a Unitarian could write such marvelous hymns on the nativity; but Sears was [397] a Unitarian in name rather than in fact. He leaned strongly toward Swedenborgian teachings, and believed implicitly in the deity of Christ.

In addition to his hymns, he wrote a few works in prose. His books on “Regeneration,” “Foregleams of Immortality,” and “The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christ” were widely read in his day. These have now been almost entirely forgotten, but his two great hymns go singing through the years. They are found in practically all standard hymn-books, although the final stanza of “It came upon the midnight clear” is often altered. Sears died in 1876.

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Mrs. Stowe’s Hymn Masterpiece

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1855

[399]

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE AND HER HYMNS

Through the fame that her book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” brought her, the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe has become almost a household word on both sides of the Atlantic. But not many, perhaps, are familiar with Mrs. Stowe the hymn-writer. And yet she wrote a number of hymns that are worthy of finding a place in the best of collections. Indeed, for sheer poetic beauty there is probably not a single American lyric that can excel “Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh.”

It was her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, who introduced Mrs. Stowe as a hymn-writer, when he included three of her hymns in the “Plymouth Collection,” which he edited in 1865. One of the three was the hymn mentioned above; the other two were “That mystic word of Thine, O sovereign Lord” and “When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean.”

Like the Wesley family in England, the Beecher family became one of the most famous in religious and literary circles in America. Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1812. Her father was the noted Dr. Lyman Beecher, a distinguished clergyman of his day. Her mother, a very devout Christian, died when Harriet was less than four years of age. Her dying prayer was that her six sons might be called into the ministry. That prayer was answered, and the youngest of them, Henry Ward Beecher, who was only a boy when the mother died, became one of America’s greatest preachers. We do not know what [400] the dying mother’s prayer for her daughter was, but we do know that Harriet Beecher achieved fame such as comes to few women. Even as a child she revealed a spiritual nature of unusual depth. An earnest sermon preached by her father when she was fourteen made such an impression on her youthful heart that she determined to give herself wholly to Christ. She tells of the experience in these words:

“As soon as my father came home and was seated in his study, I went up to him and fell in his arms, saying, ‘Father, I have given myself to Jesus, and He has taken me.’ I never shall forget the expression of his face as he looked down into my earnest childish eyes; it was so sweet, so gentle, and like sunlight breaking out upon a landscape. ‘Is it so?’ he said, holding me silently to his heart, as I felt the hot tears fall on my head. ‘Then has a new flower blossomed in the kingdom this day.’”

In 1832 the father removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became president of Lane Theological Seminary. Here Harriet married Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, a member of the faculty. Many misfortunes and sorrows came into her life, but always she was sustained by her strong faith in God, and she bore them with unusual Christian fortitude. In 1849 her infant boy was snatched from her by the dreadful cholera scourge. Her husband, broken in health, was in an Eastern sanatorium at the time, and all the cares and anxieties of the household fell upon the shoulders of the brave young wife. A letter written to her husband, dated June 29, 1849, gives a graphic description of the plague as it was then raging in Cincinnati. She wrote:

“This week has been unusually fatal. The disease in the city has been malignant and virulent. Hearse drivers have scarce been allowed to unharness their horses, while [401] furniture carts and common vehicles are often employed for the removal of the dead. The sable trains which pass our windows, the frequent indications of crowding haste, and the absence of reverent decency have, in many cases, been most painful.... On Tuesday, one hundred and sixteen deaths from cholera were reported, and that night the air was of that peculiarly oppressive, deathly kind that seems to lie like lead on the brain and soul. As regards your coming home, I am decidedly opposed to it.”

Under date of July 26, she wrote again: “At last it is over and our dear little one is gone from us. He is now among the blessed. My Charley—my beautiful, loving, gladsome baby, so loving, so sweet, so full of life, and hope and strength—now lies shrouded, pale and cold, in the room below.... I write as though there were no sorrow like my sorrow, yet there has been in this city, as in the land of Egypt, scarce a house without its dead. This heart-break, this anguish, has been everywhere, and when it will end God alone knows.”

The succeeding years brought other tragedies to the sorely tried family. In 1857 the eldest son, Henry, pride of his mother’s heart, was drowned at the close of his freshman year at Dartmouth College. Then came the Civil War with its bloody battles. At Gettysburg a third son, Fred, was wounded in the head by a piece of shrapnel. Although it did not prove fatal, his mental faculties were permanently impaired.

Through all these afflictions the marvelous faith of Mrs. Stowe remained firm and unshaken. Many years afterwards, in looking back upon these bitter experiences, she wrote: “I thank God there is one thing running through all of them from the time I was thirteen years old, and [402] that is the intense unwavering sense of Christ’s educating, guiding presence and care.”

It was in the midst of these dark tragedies that Mrs. Stowe wrote a hymn entitled “The Secret.”

It was the writing of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that brought world-wide fame to this unusual mother. The family had moved from Cincinnati to Brunswick, Maine, where Professor Stowe had accepted a position in the faculty of Bowdoin College. There were six children now and the father’s income was meager. In order to help meet the family expenses, Mrs. Stowe began to write articles for a magazine [403] known as the “National Era.” She labored under difficulties. “If I sit by the open fire in the parlor,” she wrote, “my back freezes, if I sit in my bedroom and try to write my head and my feet are cold.... I can earn four hundred dollars a year by writing, but I don’t want to feel that I must, and when weary with teaching the children, and tending the baby, and buying provisions, and mending dresses, and darning stockings, I sit down and write a piece for some paper.”

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act aroused the deepest feeling among Abolitionists in the North. While living in Cincinnati her family had aided the so-called “underground railway,” by which runaway slaves were helped in their efforts to reach the Canadian boundary. Now Mrs. Stowe’s spirit burned within her. “I wish,” she writes at this period, “some Martin Luther would arise to set this community right.”

It was then she conceived the idea of writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In the month of February, 1851, while attending communion service in the college church at Brunswick, the scene of the death of Uncle Tom passed before her mind like the unfolding of a vision. When she returned home she immediately wrote down the mental picture she had seen. Then she gathered her children around her and read what she had written. Two of them broke into violent weeping, the first of many thousands who have wept over “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

The first chapter was not completed until the following April, and on June 5 it began to appear in serial form in the “National Era.” She had intended to write a short tale of a few chapters, but as her task progressed the conviction grew on her that she had been intrusted with a holy [404] mission. Afterwards she said: “I could not control the story; it wrote itself.” At another time she remarked: “The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of instruments in His hand. To Him alone should be given all the praise.”

Mrs. Stowe received $300 for her serial story! However, scarcely had the last instalment appeared when a Boston publisher made arrangements to print it in book form. Within one year it had passed through 120 editions, and four months after the book was off the press the author had received $10,000 in royalties. Almost in a day Mrs. Stowe had become one of the most famous women in the world, and the specter of poverty had been banished forever. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” exerted a profound influence not only over the American people, but its fame spread to Europe. The year following its publication Jenny Lind came to America. Asked to contribute to a fund Mrs. Stowe was raising for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of a slave family, the “Swedish Nightingale” gladly responded, also writing a letter to Mrs. Stowe in the following prophetic vein: “I have the feeling about ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ that great changes will take place by and by, from the impression people receive from it, and that the writer of that book can fall asleep today or tomorrow with the bright, sweet consciousness of having been a strong means in the Creator’s hand of having accomplished essential good.”

Tributes like this came to Mrs. Stowe from the great and lowly in all parts of the world.

Concerning Jenny Lind’s singing, Mrs. Stowe wrote to her husband from New York: “Well, we have heard Jenny Lind, and the affair was a bewildering dream of sweetness and beauty. Her face and movements are full of poetry [405] and feeling. She has the artless grace of a little child, the poetic effect of a wood-nymph.”

Mrs. Stowe died in 1896 at the ripe age of eighty-four. Not long before her death she wrote to a friend: “I have sometimes had in my sleep strange perceptions of a vivid spiritual life near to and with Christ, and multitudes of holy ones, and the joy of it is like no other joy—it cannot be told in the language of the world.... The inconceivable loveliness of Christ!... I was saying as I awoke:

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Bishop Coxe’s Missionary Hymn

Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 1851.

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A HYMN WRITTEN ON TWO SHORES

“Saviour, sprinkle many nations” has been called the “loveliest of missionary hymns.” The praise is scarcely too great. All the elements that make a great hymn are present here. Scriptural in language and devotional in spirit, it is fervent and touching in its appeal and exquisitely beautiful in poetic expression. It was given to the Church by Arthur Cleveland Coxe, an American bishop, in 1851, and since that time it has made its victorious course around the world.

A study of the hymn is interesting. The first stanza at once suggests the words of Jesus, uttered in the last week of His life, when Greek pilgrims in Jerusalem came seeking for Him: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” In the second stanza the author no doubt had in mind the immortal words of St. Augustine: “Thou, O Lord, hast made me for Thyself, and my heart can find no rest till it rest in Thee.” And in the final stanza we find almost an echo of the thought expressed by Paul in Romans: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”

Curiously enough, this beautiful missionary lyric was written on two shores of the Atlantic. It was on Good Friday, in the year 1850, that the first stanza was written [408] by Bishop Coxe at his home in Hartford, Conn. For lack of time, however, or because the needed inspiration did not come to him the unfinished manuscript was laid aside.

The next year he visited England, and one day, while wandering about the campus of Magdalen College, Oxford, the thought flashed through his mind that he had never completed the hymn. Finding a scrap of paper and a pencil, he sat down to write, and in a few moments the touching words of the two concluding stanzas were composed, and the hymn was sent on its way to stir the heart of the world.

Bishop Coxe was not primarily a hymn-writer. His fame rests chiefly on his religious ballads. It was in 1840, when a young student of twenty-two, that he published his first volume, entitled “Christian Ballads.” These are mostly moral poems, impressive and challenging in character, but not usually suitable as hymns. One of them, however, bearing the name of “Chelsea,” has yielded the famous hymn, “O where are kings and empires now?”

An interesting story is told concerning this hymn. In 1873 the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance was held in New York City. It was a period when many scientific objections had been raised regarding the value of prayer, and many anxious souls were fearful that the faith of the Church was being shaken to its foundations. President Woolsey of Yale University gave the opening address. After he had referred to the wave of skepticism that had swept over the world, particularly in regard to prayer, he looked out upon the assembly with a quiet, confident smile lighting his features, and then quoted the first stanza of Bishop Coxe’s hymn:

“For a moment,” writes an eye-witness, “there was silence. In another moment the full significance of the reference had flashed on every mind, and the response was instantaneous and universal. Shouts, waving of handkerchiefs, clapping of hands, stamping of feet—I never knew anything like it. Round after round continued, until the storm of applause ended in a burst of grateful tears. No one doubted that the Church still believed in prayer and that the tempest had passed without the loss of a sail.”

In the same volume of “Christian Ballads” there appears another little poem, most appealing in its simplicity:

For a time Coxe gave promise of becoming the “John Keble of America,” but after his election as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, pressing duties interfered with his literary work, and in later years he wrote few poems.

Bishop Coxe was the son of a noted Presbyterian minister, Rev. Samuel H. Cox. He was born in Menham, N. J., in 1818. After his graduation from the University of the City of New York, he decided to leave the Presbyterian Church and to enter the Episcopalian fold. At the same time he added an “e” to the end of his name, much to his father’s displeasure! He died in 1896 at the age of seventy-eight years.

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The Hymn of a Consecrated Woman

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, 1856.

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A HYMN THAT GREW OUT OF SUFFERING

The fruits of a sanctified life are often seen long after the person who lived that life has ceased from earthly strivings. This was true in a very special sense of Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, author of “More love to Thee, O Christ.” Although it is fifty years since Mrs. Prentiss went home to glory, her beautiful Christian life still radiates its spirit of trust and hope through her hymns and devotional writings.

As a child she was blessed with an unusual home. Her father, Edward Payson, was one of New England’s most famous clergymen, revered and beloved by thousands because of his saintly life. It is said that after his death the name of “Edward Payson” was given in baptism to thousands of children whose parents had been blessed through his consecrated ministry.

The daughter, who was born in 1818, was much like her father. Spiritually minded from childhood, she possessed unusual gifts as a writer. When she was only sixteen years old she contributed verses and prose to “The Youth’s Companion.” Later she taught school at Portland, Me., her birthplace, and in Ipswich, Mass., and Richmond, Va., at each place being greatly beloved by her pupils.

In 1845 she became the bride of Rev. George L. Prentiss, who later was a professor in Union Theological Seminary, New York City.

Her home life was beautiful. Those who knew her best, [412] described her as “a very bright-eyed little woman, with a keen sense of humor, who cared more to shine in her own happy household than in a wide circle of society.”

But all the while she was carrying a heavy burden. Throughout life she was a sufferer, and scarcely knew what it meant to be well. Chronic insomnia added to her afflictions, but as her body languished under physical chastening her spirit rose above pain and tribulation, daily growing more radiant and beautiful. It was out of these trying experiences that she wrote her famous story, “Stepping Heavenward.” The purpose of the book, as she herself explained, was “for strengthening and comforting other souls.”

It met with instant success, more than 200,000 copies being sold. It also was translated into many foreign languages. Another story, “The Flower of the Family,” likewise became very popular.

It was as poet and hymn-writer, however, that Mrs. Prentiss was destined to achieve fame. Her volume, “Religious Poems,” numbering one hundred and twenty-three, breathes a spirit of fervent devotion to Christ. “To love Christ more,” she said, “is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul.... Out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!”

It is easy to understand how such a longing should finally find expression in her most famous hymn, “More love to Thee, O Christ.” The hymn in reality was the prayer of her life. It was born in 1856 during a time of great physical suffering and spiritual anxiety. It was written in great haste, and the last stanza was left incompleted. Not [413] until thirteen years later did Mrs. Prentiss show it to her husband. She then added a final line with a pencil and gave it to the printer, intending it only for private distribution. The following year, however, the “Great Revival” swept over America, and the hymn sprang into popularity everywhere.

When in August, 1878, the mortal remains of the sanctified singer were lowered into the grave, a company of intimate friends stood with bared heads and sang “More love to Thee, O Christ.” The whole Christian world seemed to join in mourning her death. From far-off China came a message of sympathy to the bereaved husband in the form of a fan on which Christian Chinese had inscribed the famous hymn in native characters.

After her death the following verse was found written on the flyleaf of one of her favorite books:

[414]

A Hymn of the Sea

Edward Hopper, 1871.

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A FAMOUS HYMN WRITTEN FOR SAILORS

It does not surprise us that the writer of “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me” was the pastor of a sailors’ church. Rev. Edward Hopper, who for many years was minister of the Church of Sea and Land in New York harbor, had in mind the daily life of the seamen attending his church when he wrote his famous lyric. A hymn on the theme of the stormy sea, picturing Jesus as the divine Pilot—this, he felt, would appeal to sailors and be a source of constant comfort and encouragement.

Perhaps Hopper got his idea from Charles Wesley. It was a common practice of the great English hymn-writer to compose hymns that were particularly adapted to the audiences he addressed. When he visited the men who worked in the Portland quarries in England, he wrote the hymn containing the lines:

In any event, Hopper’s beautiful hymn at once sprang into popular use, not only with sailors, but with Christians everywhere. It appeared for the first time anonymously in “The Sailors’ Magazine,” but several hymn-books adopted it. It was not until 1880, nine years after it was published, however, that the author’s name became known. In that year the anniversary of the Seamen’s Friend Society was held in Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, and Hopper was [416] asked to write a hymn for the occasion. He responded by producing “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me,” and the secret was out.

Hopper wrote several other hymns, but only this one has lived. Like Edward Perronet, the author of “All hail the power of Jesus’ Name,” he was “a bird of a single song.” We could have wished that the fires of inspired genius had continued to burn with both of these men. Here, however, apply the words: “Happy is the man who can produce one song which the world will keep on singing after its author shall have passed away.”

The author of “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me” was a child of the city. He was born in America’s great metropolis, New York City, in the year 1818. His father was a merchant. His mother was a descendant of the Huguenots, the persecuted French Protestants. He was educated for the ministry, and, after serving several churches in other places, he returned to New York in 1870 to begin his work among the men who go down to the sea in ships. He remained as pastor of the Church of Sea and Land until his death in 1888, and we scarcely need to add that his ministry was singularly successful.

The beautiful prayer in the third stanza of Hopper’s hymn was answered in his own passing. He was sitting in his study-chair, pencil in hand, when the final summons came. On the sheet before him were found some freshly written lines on “Heaven.” Thus was fulfilled in his own death the beautiful prayer expressed in the final stanza of his hymn:

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A Rally Hymn of the Church

George Duffield, 1858

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A TRAGEDY THAT INSPIRED A GREAT HYMN

The Christian Church has many stirring rally hymns, but none that is more effective when sung by a large assembly than George Duffield’s “Stand up, stand up for Jesus.” Who has not been moved to the depths of his soul by the inspiring words and resounding music of this unusual hymn?

A tragedy lies in its background. It was in the year 1858, and a great spiritual awakening was gripping the city of Philadelphia. Men referred to this revival afterwards as “the work of God in Philadelphia.”

One of the most earnest and zealous leaders in the movement was a young pastor, Dudley A. Tyng, not quite thirty years old. Because of his evangelical convictions and his strong opposition to slavery he had shortly before been compelled to resign as rector of the Church of the Epiphany, and in 1857 he had organized a little congregation that met in a public hall.

In the midst of the revival in 1858 he preached a powerful sermon at a noon-day meeting in Jayne’s Hall to a gathering of 5,000 men. His text was Exodus 10:11: “Go now, ye that are men, and serve the Lord.” It is said that the effect was overwhelming, no less than a thousand men giving themselves to the Lord.