On Christ the solid rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand.

There were originally six stanzas, the first beginning:

Nor earth, nor hell, my soul can move, I rest upon unchanging love.

The refrain is a fine one, and really sums up the whole hymn, keeping constantly at the front the corner-stone of the poet's trust.

My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But only lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid Rock I stand All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face I trust in His unchanging grace, In every high and stormy gale My anchor holds within the veil. On Christ the solid Rock, etc.

Wm. B. Bradbury composed the tune (1863). It is usually named "The Solid Rock."

"ABIDE WITH ME! FAST FALLS THE EVENTIDE."

The Rev. Henry Francis Lyte, author of this melodious hymn-prayer, was born at Ednam, near Kelso, Scotland, June first, 1793. A scholar, graduated at Trinity College, Dublin; a poet and a musician, the hard-working curate was a man of frail physique, with a face of almost feminine beauty, and a spirit as pure and gentle as a little child's. The shadow of consumption was over him all his life. His memory is chiefly associated with the district church at Lower Brixham, Devonshire, where he became "perpetual curate" in 1823. He died at Nice, France, Nov. 20, 1847.

On the evening of his last Sunday preaching and communion service he handed to one of his family the manuscript of his hymn, "Abide with me," and the music he had composed for it. It was not till eight years later that Henry Ward Beecher introduced it, or a part of it, to American Congregationalists, and fourteen years after the author's death it began to be sung as we now have it, in this country and England.

Abide with me! Fast falls the eventide, The darkness deepens,—Lord with me abide! When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me!

* * * * *

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!

THE TUNE

There is a pathos in the neglect and oblivion of Lyte's own tune set by himself to his words, especially as it was in a sense the work of a dying man who had hoped that he might not be "wholly mute and useless" while lying in his grave, and who had prayed—

O Thou whose touch can lend Life to the dead. Thy quickening grace supply, And grant me swan-like my last breath to spend In song that may not die!

His prayer was answered in God's own way. Another's melody hastened his hymn on its useful career, and revealed to the world its immortal value.

By the time it had won its slow recognition in England, it was probably tuneless, and the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861) discovering the fact just as they were finishing their work, asked Dr. William Henry Monk, their music editor, to supply the want. "In ten minutes," it is said, "Dr. Monk composed the sweet, pleading chant that is wedded permanently to Lyte's swan song."

William Henry Monk, Doctor of Music, was born in London, 1823. His musical education was early and thorough, and at the age of twenty-six he was organist and choir director in King's College, London. Elected (1876) professor of the National Training School, he interested himself actively in popular musical education, delivering lectures at various institutions, and establishing choral services.

His hymn-tunes are found in many song-manuals of the English Church and in Scotland, and several have come to America.

Dr. Monk died in 1889.

"COME, YE DISCONSOLATE."

By Thomas Moore—about 1814. The poem in its original form differed somewhat from the hymn we sing. Thomas Hastings—whose religious experience, perhaps, made him better qualified than Thomas Moore for spiritual expression—changed the second line,—

Come, at God's altar fervently kneel,

—to—

Come to the mercy seat,

—and in the second stanza replaced—

Hope when all others die,

—with—

Hope of the penitent;

—and for practically the whole of the last stanza—

Go ask the infidel what boon he brings us, What charm for aching hearts he can reveal. Sweet as that heavenly promise hope sings us, "Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal,"

—Hastings substituted—

Here see the Bread of life, see waters flowing Forth from the throne of God, pure from above! Come to the feast Love, come ever knowing Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.

Dr. Hastings was not much of a poet, but he could make a singable hymn, and he knew the rhythm and accent needed in a hymn-tune. The determination was to make an evangelical hymn of a poem "too good to lose," and in that view perhaps the editorial liberties taken with it were excusable. It was to Moore, however, that the real hymn-thought and key-note first came, and the title-line and the sweet refrain are his own—for which the Christian world has thanked him, lo these many years.

THE TUNE.

Those who question why Dr. Hastings' interest in Moore's poem did not cause him to make a tune for it, must conclude that it came to him with its permanent melody ready made, and that the tune satisfied him.

The "German Air" to which Moore tells us he wrote the words, probably took his fancy, if it did not induce his mood. Whether Samuel Webbe's tune now wedded to the hymn is an arrangement of the old air or wholly his own is immaterial. One can scarcely conceive a happier yoking of counterparts. Try singing "Come ye Disconsolate" to "Rescue the Perishing," for example, and we shall feel the impertinence of divorcing a hymn that has found its musical affinity.

"JESUS, I MY CROSS HAVE TAKEN."

This is another well-known and characteristic hymn of Henry Francis Lyte—originally six stanzas. We have been told that, besides his bodily affliction, the grief of an unhappy division or difference in his church weighed upon his spirit, and that it is alluded to in these lines—

Man may trouble and distress me, 'Twill but drive me to Thy breast, Life with trials hard may press me, Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.

O, 'tis not in grief to harm me While Thy love is left to me, O, 'tis not in joy to charm me Were that joy unmixed with Thee.

Tunes, "Autumn," by F.H. Barthelemon, or "Ellesdie," (formerly called "Disciple") from Mozart—familiar in either.

"FROM EVERY STORMY WIND THAT BLOWS."

This is the much-sung and deeply-cherished hymn of Christian peace that a pious Manxman, Hugh Stowell, was inspired to write nearly a hundred years ago. Ever since it has carried consolation to souls in both ordinary and extraordinary trials.

It was sung by the eight American martyrs, Revs. Albert Johnson, John E. Freeman, David E. Campbell and their wives, and Mr. and Mrs. McMullen, when by order of the bloody Nana Sahib the captive missionaries were taken prisoners and put to death at Cawnpore in 1857. Two little children, Fannie and Willie Campbell, suffered with their parents.

From every stormy wind that blows, From every swelling tide of woes There is a calm, a sure retreat; 'Tis found beneath the Mercy Seat.

Ah, whither could we flee for aid When tempted, desolate, dismayed, Or how the hosts of hell defeat Had suffering saints no Mercy Seat?

There, there on eagle wings we soar, And sin and sense molest no more, And heaven comes down our souls to greet While glory crowns the Mercy Seat.



Rev. Hugh Stowell was born at Douglas on the Isle of Man, Dec. 3, 1799. He was educated at Oxford and ordained to the ministry 1823, receiving twelve years later the appointment of Canon to Chester Cathedral.

He was a popular and effective preacher and a graceful writer. Forty-seven hymns are credited to him, the above being the best known. To presume it is "his best," leaves a good margin of merit for the remainder.

"From every stormy wind that blows" has practically but one tune. It has been sung to Hastings "Retreat" ever since the music was made.

"CHILD OF SIN AND SORROW."

Child of sin and sorrow, filled with dismay, Wait not for tomorrow, yield thee today. Heaven bids thee come, while yet there's room, Child of sin and sorrow, hear and obey.

Words and music by Thomas Hastings.

"LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT."

John Henry Newman, born in London, Feb. 21, 1801—known in religious history as Cardinal Newman—wrote this hymn when he was a young clergyman of the Church of England. "Born within the sound of Bow bells," says Dr. Benson, "he was an imaginative boy, and so superstitious, that he used constantly to cross himself when going into the dark." Intelligent students of the fine hymn will note this habit of its author's mind—and surmise its influence on his religious musings.

The agitations during the High Church movement, and the persuasions of Hurrell Froude, a Romanist friend, while he was a tutor at Oxford, gradually weakened his Protestant faith, and in his unrest he travelled to the Mediterranean coast, crossed to Sicily, where he fell violently ill, and after his recovery waited three weeks in Palermo for a return boat. On his trip to Marseilles he wrote the hymn—with no thought that it would ever be called a hymn.

When complimented on the beautiful production after it became famous he modestly said, "It was not the hymn but the tune that has gained the popularity. The tune is Dykes' and Dr. Dykes is a great master."

Dr. Newman was created a Cardinal of the Church of Rome in the Catholic Cathedral of London, 1879. Died Aug. 11, 1890.

THE TUNE.

"Lux Benigna," by Dr. Dykes, was composed in Aug. 1865, and was the tune chosen for this hymn by a committee preparing the Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern. Dr. Dykes' statement that the tune came into his head while walking through the Strand in London "presents a striking contrast with the solitary origin of the hymn itself" (Benson).

Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on. The night is dark and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene,—one step enough for me.

* * * * *

So long Thy power hath bless'd me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

"I HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS SAY."

Few if any Christian writers of his generation have possessed tuneful gifts in greater opulence or produced more vital and lasting treasures of spiritual verse than Horatius Bonar of Scotland. He inherited some of his poetic faculty from his grandfather, a clergyman who wrote several hymns, and it is told of Horatius that hymns used to "come to" him while riding on railroad trains. He was educated in the Edinburgh University and studied theology with Dr. Chalmers, and his life was greatly influenced by Dr. Guthrie, whom he followed in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland.

Born in 1808 in Edinburgh, he was about forty years old when he came back from a successful pastorate at Kelso to the city of his home and Alma Mater, and became virtually Chalmers' successor as minister of the Chalmers Memorial Church.

The peculiar richness of Bonar's sacred songs very early created for them a warm welcome in the religious world, and any devout lyric or poem with his name attached to it is sure to be read.

Dr. Bonar died in Edinburgh, July 31, 1889. Writing of the hymn, "I heard the voice," etc., Dr. David Breed calls it "one of the most ingenious hymns in the language," referring to the fact that the invitation and response exactly halve each stanza between them—song followed by countersong. "Ingenious" seems hardly the right word for a division so obviously natural and almost automatic. It is a simple art beauty that a poet of culture makes by instinct. Bowring's "Watchman, tell us of the night," is not the only other instance of similar countersong structure, and the regularity in Thomas Scott's little hymn, "Hasten, sinner, to be wise," is only a simpler case of the way a poem plans itself by the compulsion of its subject.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest, Lay down, thou weary one, lay down Thy head upon My breast:

I came to Jesus as I was, Weary and worn and sad, I found in Him a resting-place, And He has made me glad.

THE TUNE.

The old melody of "Evan," long a favorite; and since known everywhere through the currency given to it in the Gospel Hymns, has been in many collections connected with the words. It is good congregational psalmody, and not unsuited to the sentiment, taken line by line, but it divides the stanzas into quatrains, which breaks the happy continuity. "Evan" was made by Dr. Mason in 1850 from a song written four years earlier by Rev. William Henry Havergal, Canon of Worcester Cathedral, Eng. He was the father of Frances Ridley Havergal.

The more ancient "Athens," by Felice Giardini (1716-1796), author of the "Italian Hymn," has clung, and still clings lovingly to Bonar's hymn in many communities. Its simplicity, and the involuntary accent of its sextuple time, exactly reproducing the easy iambic of the verses, inevitably made it popular, and thousands of older singers today will have no other music with "I heard the voice of Jesus say."

"Vox Jesu," from the andante in one of the quartets of Louis Spohr (1784-1859), is a psalm-tune of good harmony, but too little feeling.

An excellent tune for all the shades of expression in the hymn, is the arrangement by Hubert P. Main from Franz Abt—in A flat, triple time. Gentle music through the first fifteen bars, in alternate duet and quartet, utters the Divine Voice with the true accent of the lines, and the second portion completes the harmony in glad, full chorus—the answer of the human heart.

"Vox Dilecti," by Dr. Dykes, goes farther and writes the Voice in B flat minor—which seems a needless substitution of divine sadness for divine sweetness. It is a tune of striking chords, but its shift of key to G natural (major) after the first four lines marks it rather for trained choir performance than for assembly song.

It is possible to make too much of a dramatic perfection or a supposed indication of structural design in a hymn. Textual equations, such as distinguish Dr. Bonar's beautiful stanzas, are not necessarily technical. To emphasize them as ingenious by an ingenious tune seems, somehow, a reflection on the spontaneity of the hymn.

Louis Spohr was Director of the Court Theatre Orchestra in Cassel, Prussia, in the first half of the last century. He was an eminent composer of both vocal and instrumental music, and one of the greatest violinists of Europe.

Hubert Platt Main was born in Ridgefield, Ct., Aug. 17, 1839. He read music at sight when only ten years old, and at sixteen commenced writing hymn-tunes. Was assistant compiler with both Bradbury and Woodbury in their various publications, and in 1868 became connected with the firm of Biglow and Main, and has been their book-maker until the present time. As music editor in the partnership he has superintended the publication of more than five hundred music-books, services, etc.

"I LOVE TO STEAL AWHILE AWAY."

The burdened wife and mother who wrote this hymn would, at the time, have rated her history with "the short and simple annals of the poor." But the poor who are "remembered for what they have done," may have a larger place in history than many rich who did nothing.

Phebe Hinsdale Brown, was born in Canaan, N.Y., in 1783. Her father, George Hinsdale, who died in her early childhood, must have been a man of good abilities and religious feeling, being the reputed composer of the psalm-tune, "Hinsdale," found in some long-ago collections.

Left an orphan at two years of age, Phebe "fell into the hands of a relative who kept the county jail," and her childhood knew little but the bitter fare and ceaseless drudgery of domestic slavery. She grew up with a crushed spirit, and was a timid, shrinking woman as long as she lived. She married Timothy H. Brown, a house-painter of Ellington, Ct., and passed her days there and in Monson, Mass., where she lived some twenty-five years.

In her humble home in the former town her children were born, and it was while caring for her own little family of four, and a sick sister, that the incident occurred (August 1818), which called forth her tender hymn. She was a devout Christian, and in pleasant weather, whenever she could find the leisure, she would "steal away" at sunset from her burdens a little while, to rest and commune with God. Her favorite place was a wealthy neighbor's large and beautiful flower garden. A servant reported her visits there to the mistress of the house, who called the "intruder" to account.

"If you want anything, why don't you come in?" was the rude question, followed by a plain hint that no stealthy person was welcome.

Wounded by the ill-natured rebuff, the sensitive woman sat down the next evening with her baby in her lap, and half-blinded by her tears, wrote "An Apology for my Twilight Rambles," in the verses that have made her celebrated.

She sent the manuscript (nine stanzas) to her captious neighbor—with what result has never been told.

Crude and simple as the little rhyme was, it contained a germ of lyric beauty and life. The Rev. Dr. Charles Hyde of Ellington, who was a neighbor of Mrs. Brown, procured a copy. He was assisting Dr. Nettleton to compile the Village Hymns, and the humble bit of devotional verse was at once judged worthy of a place in the new book. Dr. Hyde and his daughter Emeline giving it some kind touches of rhythmic amendment,

I love to steal awhile away From little ones and care,

—became,—

I love to steal awhile away From every cumb'ring care.

In the last line of this stanza—

In gratitude and prayer

—was changed to—

In humble, grateful prayer,

—and the few other defects in syllabic smoothness or literary grace were affectionately repaired, but the slight furbishing it received did not alter the individuality of Mrs. Brown's work. It remained hers—and took its place among the immortals of its kind, another illustration of how little poetry it takes to make a good hymn. Only five stanzas were printed, the others being voted redundant by both author and editor. The second and third, as now sung, are—

I love in solitude to shed The penitential tear, And all His promises to plead Where none but God can hear.

I love to think on mercies past And future good implore, And all my cares and sorrows cast On Him whom I adore.

Phebe Brown died at Henry, Ill., in 1861; but she had made the church and the world her debtor not only for her little lyric of pious trust, but by rearing a son, the Rev. Samuel Brown, D.D., who became the pioneer American missionary to Japan—to which Christian calling two of her grandchildren also consecrated themselves.

THE TUNE.

Mrs. Brown's son Samuel, who, besides being a good minister, inherited his grandfather's musical gift, composed the tune of "Monson," (named in his mother's honor, after her late home), and it may have been the first music set to her hymn. It was the fate of his offering, however, to lose its filial place, and be succeeded by different melodies, though his own still survives in a few collections, sometimes with Collyer's "O Jesus in this solemn hour." It is good music for a hymn of praise rather than for meditative verse. Many years the hymn has been sung to "Woodstock," an appropriate and still familiar tune by Deodatus Dutton.

Dutton's "Woodstock" and Bradbury's "Brown," which often replaces it, are worthy rivals of each other, and both continue in favor as fit choral interpretations of the much-loved hymn.

Deodatus Dutton was born Dec. 22, 1808, and educated at Brown University and Washington College (now Trinity) Hartford Ct. While there he was a student of music and played the organ at Dr. Matthews' church. He studied theology in New York city, and had recently entered the ministry when he suddenly died, Dec. 16, 1832, a moment before rising to preach a sermon. During his brief life he had written several hymn-tunes, and published a book of psalmody. Mrs. Sigourney wrote a poem on his death.

"THERE'S A WIDENESS IN GOD'S MERCY."

Frederick William Faber, author of this favorite hymn-poem, had a peculiar genius for putting golden thoughts into common words, and making them sing. Probably no other sample of his work shows better than this his art of combining literary cleverness with the most reverent piety. Cant was a quality Faber never could put into his religious verse.

He was born in Yorkshire, Eng., June 28, 1814, and received his education at Oxford. Settled as Rector of Elton, in Huntingdonshire, in 1843, he came into sympathy with the "Oxford Movement," and followed Newman into the Romish Church. He continued his ministry as founder and priest for the London branch of the Catholic congregation of St. Philip Neri for fourteen years, dying Sept. 26, 1863, at the age of forty-nine.

His godly hymns betray no credal shibboleth or doctrinal bias, but are songs for the whole earthly church of God.

There's a wideness in God's mercy Like the wideness of the sea; There's a kindness in His justice Which is more than liberty. There is welcome for the sinner And more graces for the good; There is mercy with the Saviour, There is healing in His blood.

There's no place where earthly sorrows Are more felt than up in heaven; There's no place where earthly failings Have such kindly judgment given. There is plentiful redemption In the blood that has been shed, There is joy for all the members In the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader Than the measure of man's mind, And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind. If our love were but more simple We should take Him at His word, And our lives would be all sunshine In the sweetness of the Lord.

No tone of comfort has breathed itself more surely and tenderly into grieved hearts than these tuneful and singularly expressive sentences of Frederick Faber.

THE TUNE.

The music of S.J. Vail sung to Faber's hymn is one of that composer's best hymn-tunes, and its melody and natural movement impress the meaning as well as the simple beauty of the words.

Silas Jones Vail, an American music-writer, was born Oct., 1818, and died May 20, 1883. Another charming tune is "Wellesley," by Lizzie S. Tourjee, daughter of the late Dr. Eben Tourjee.

"HE LEADETH ME! OH, BLESSED THOUGHT."

Professor Gilmore, of Rochester University, N.Y., when a young Baptist minister (1861) supplying a pulpit in Philadelphia "jotted down this hymn in Deacon Watson's parlor" (as he says) and passed it to his wife, one evening after he had made "a conference-room talk" on the 23d Psalm.

Mrs. Gilmore, without his knowledge, sent it to the Watchman and Reflector (now the Watchman).

Years after its publication in that paper, when a candidate for the pastorate of the Second Baptist Church in Rochester, he was turning the leaves of the vestry hymnal in use there, and saw his hymn in it. Since that first publication in the Devotional Hymn and Tune Book (1865) it has been copied in the hymnals of various denominations, and steadily holds its place in public favor. The refrain added by the tunemaker emphasizes the sentiment of the lines, and undoubtedly enhances the effect of the hymn.

"He leadeth me" has the true hymn quality, combining all the simplicity of spontaneous thought and feeling with perfect accent and liquid rhythm.

He leadeth me! Oh, blessed thought, Oh, words with heavenly comfort fraught; Whate'er I do, where'er I be, Still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me!

* * * * *

Lord, I would clasp Thy hand in mine, Nor ever murmur nor repine— Content, whatever lot I see, Since 'tis my God that leadeth me.

Professor Joseph Henry Gilmore was born in Boston, April 29, 1834. He was graduated at Phillips Academy, Andover, at Brown University, and at the Newton Theological Institution, where he was afterwards Hebrew instructor.

After four years of pastoral service he was elected (1867) professor of the English Language and Literature in Rochester University. He has published Familiar Chats on Books and Reading, also several college text-books on rhetoric, logic and oratory.

THE TUNE.

The little hymn of four stanzas was peculiarly fortunate in meeting the eye of Mr. William B. Bradbury, (1863) and winning his musical sympathy and alliance. Few composers have so exactly caught the tone and spirit of their text as Bradbury did when he vocalized the gliding measures of "He leadeth me."



CHAPTER VI.

CHRISTIAN BALLADS.

Echoes of Hebrew thought, if not Hebrew psalmody, may have made their way into the more serious pagan literature. At least in the more enlightened pagans there has ever revealed itself more or less the instinct of the human soul that "feels after" God. St. Paul in his address to the Athenians made a tactful as well as scholarly point to preface a missionary sermon when he cited a line from a poem of Aratus (B.C. 272) familiar, doubtless, to the majority of his hearers.

Dr. Lyman Abbot has thus translated the passage in which the line occurs:

Let us begin from God. Let every mortal raise The grateful voice to tune God's endless praise, God fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air; We feel His spirit moving everywhere, And we His offspring are.[17] He, ever good, Daily provides for man his daily food. To Him, the First, the Last, all homage yield,— Our Father wonderful, our help, our shield.

[Footnote 17: [Greek: Tou gar kai genos esmen.]]

"RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT."

Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic poet, born in London 1688, died at Twickenham 1744, was not a hymnist, but passages in his most serious and exalted flights deserve a tuneful accompaniment. His translations of Homer made him famous, but his ethical poems, especially his "Essay on Man," are inexhaustible mines of quotation, many of the lines and couplets being common as proverbs. His "Messiah," written about 1711, is a religious anthem in which the prophecies of Holy Writ kindle all the splendor of his verse.

THE TUNE.

The closing strain, indicated by the above line, has been divided into stanzas of four lines suitable to a church hymn-tune. The melody selected by the compilers of the Plymouth Hymnal, and of the Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book is "Savannah," an American sounding name for what is really one of Pleyel's chorals. The music is worthy of Pope's triumphal song.

The seas shall waste, the skies to smoke decay, Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away, But fixed His Word; His saving power remains: Thy realm shall last; thy own Messiah reigns.

"OH, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT?"

This is a sombre poem, but its virile strength and its literary merit have given it currency, and commended it to the taste of many people, both weak and strong, who have the pensive temperament. Abraham Lincoln loved it and committed it to memory in his boyhood. Philip Phillips set it to music, and sang it—or a part of it—one day during the Civil war at the anniversary of the Christian Sanitary Commission, when President Lincoln, who was present, called for its repetition.[18] It was written by William Knox, born 1789, son of a Scottish farmer.

[Footnote 18: This account so nearly resembles the story of Mrs. Gates' "Your Mission," sung to a similar audience, on a similar occasion, by the same man, that a possible confusion by the narrators of the incident has been suggested. But that Mr. Phillips sang twice before the President during the war does not appear to be contradicted. To what air he sang the above verses is uncertain.]

The poem has fourteen stanzas, the following being the first and two last—

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He passeth from life to rest in the grave.

* * * * *

Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together like sunshine and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other like surge upon surge.

'Tis the wink of an eye; 'tis the draft of a breath From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud, Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Philip Phillips was born in Jamestown, Chautauqua Co., N.Y., Aug. 11, 1834, and died in Delaware, O., June 25, 1895. He wrote no hymns and was not an educated musician, but the airs of popular hymn-music came to him and were harmonized for him by others, most frequently by his friends, S.J. Vail and Hubert P. Main. He compiled and published thirty-one collections for Sunday-schools and gospel meetings, besides the Methodist Hymn and Tune Book, issued in 1866.

He was a pioneer gospel singer, and his tuneful journeys through America, England and Australia gave him the name of the "Singing Pilgrim," the title of his song collection (1867).

"WHEN ISRAEL OF THE LORD BELOVED."

The "Song of Rebecca the Jewess," in "Ivanhoe," was written by Sir Walter Scott, author of the Waverly Novels, "Marmion," etc., born in Edinburgh, 1771, and died at Abbotsford, 1832. The lines purport to be the Hebrew hymn with which Rebecca closed her daily devotions while in prison under sentence of death.

When Israel of the Lord beloved Out of the land of bondage came Her fathers' God before her moved, An awful Guide in smoke and flame.

* * * * *

Then rose the choral hymn of praise, And trump and timbrel answered keen, And Zion's daughters poured their lays. With priest's and warrior's voice between.

* * * * *

By day along th' astonished lands The cloudy Pillar glided slow, By night Arabia's crimson'd sands Returned the fiery Column's glow.

* * * * *

And O, when gathers o'er our path In shade and storm the frequent night Be Thou, long suffering, slow to wrath, A burning and a shining Light!

The "Hymn of Rebecca" has been set to music though never in common use as a hymn. Old "Truro", by Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) is a grand Scotch psalm harmony for the words, though one of the Unitarian hymnals borrows Zeuner's sonorous choral, the "Missionary Chant." Both sound the lyric of the Jewess in good Christian music.

"WE SAT DOWN AND WEPT BY THE WATERS."

The 137th Psalm has been for centuries a favorite with poets and poetical translators, and its pathos appealed to Lord Byron when engaged in writing his Hebrew Melodies.

Byron was born in London, 1788, and died at Missolonghi, Western Greece, 1824.

We sat down and wept by the waters Of Babel, and thought of the day When the foe, in the hue of his slaughters, Made Salem's high places his prey, And ye, Oh her desolate daughters, Were scattered all weeping away.

—Written April, 1814. It was the fashion then for musical societies to call on the popular poets for contributions, and tunes were composed for them, though these have practically passed into oblivion.

Byron's ringing ballad (from II Kings 19:35)—

Th' Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,

—has been so much a favorite for recitation and declamation that the loss of its tune is never thought of.

Another poetic rendering of the "Captivity Psalm" is worthy of notice among the lay hymns not unworthy to supplement clerical sermons. It was written by the Hon. Joel Barlow in 1799, and published in a pioneer psalm-book at Northampton, Mass. It is neither a translation nor properly a hymn but a poem built upon the words of the Jewish lament, and really reproducing something of its plaintive beauty. Two stanzas of it are as follows:

Along the banks where Babel's current flows Our captive bands in deep despondence strayed, While Zion's fall in deep remembrance rose, Her friends, her children mingled with the dead.

The tuneless harps that once with joy we strung When praise employed, or mirth inspired the lay, In mournful silence on the willows hung, And growing grief prolonged the tedious day.

Like Pope, this American poet loved onomatope and imitative verse, and the last line is a word-picture of home-sick weariness. This "psalm" was the best piece of work in Mr. Barlow's series of attempted improvements upon Isaac Watts—which on the whole were not very successful. The sweet cantabile of Mason's "Melton" gave "Along the banks" quite an extended lease of life, though it has now ceased to be sung.

Joel Barlow was a versatile gentleman, serving his country and generation in almost every useful capacity, from chaplain in the continental army to foreign ambassador. He was born in Redding, Ct., 1755, and died near Cracow, Poland, Dec. 1812.

"AS DOWN IN THE SUNLESS."

Thomas Moore, the poet of glees and love-madrigals, had sober thoughts in the intervals of his gaiety, and employed his genius in writing religious and even devout poems, which have been spiritually helpful in many phases of Christian experience. Among them was this and the four following hymns, with thirty-four others, each of which he carefully labelled with the name of a music composer, though the particular tune is left indefinite. "The still prayer of devotion" here answers, in rhyme and reality, the simile of the sea-flower in the unseen deep, and the mariner's compass represents the constancy of a believer.

As, still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So, dark as I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.

It is sung in Plymouth Hymnal to Barnby's "St. Botolph."

"THE TURF SHALL BE MY FRAGRANT SHRINE"

Is, in part, still preserved in hymn collections, and sung to the noble tune of "Louvan," Virgil Taylor's piece. The last stanza is especially reminiscent of the music.

There's nothing bright above, below, From flowers that bloom to stars that glow; But in its light my soul can see Some feature of Thy deity.

"O THOU WHO DRY'ST THE MOURNER'S TEAR"

Is associated in the Baptist Praise Book with Woodbury's "Siloam."

"THE BIRD LET LOOSE IN EASTERN SKIES"

Has been sung in Mason's "Coventry," and the Plymouth Hymnal assigns it to "Spohr"—a namesake tune of Louis Spohr, while the Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book unites to it a beautiful triple-time melody from Mozart, and bearing his name.

"THOU ART, O GOD, THE LIFE AND LIGHT."

This is the best of the Irish poet's sacred songs—always excepting, "Come, Ye Disconsolate." It is said to have been originally set to a secular melody composed by the wife of Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It is joined to the tune of "Brighton" in the Unitarian books, and William Monk's "Matthias" voices the words for the Plymouth Hymnal. The verses have the true lyrical glow, and make a real song of praise as well a composition of more than ordinary literary beauty.

Thou art, O God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see; Its glow by day, its smile by night Are but reflections caught from Thee. Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine.

* * * * *

When night with wings of starry gloom O'ershadows all the earth, and skies Like some dark, beauteous bird, whose plume Is sparkling with unnumbered eyes, That sacred gloom, those fires divine, So grand, so countless, Lord, are Thine.

When youthful spring around us breathes, Thy Spirit warms her fragrant sigh, And every flower the summer wreathes Is born beneath that kindling eye. Where'er we turn Thy glories shine, And all things fair and bright are Thine.

"MOURNFULLY, TENDERLY, BEAR ON THE DEAD."

A tender funeral ballad by Henry S. Washburn, composed in 1846 and entitled "The Burial of Mrs. Judson." It is rare now in sheet-music form but the American Vocalist, to be found in the stores of most great music publishers and dealers, preserves the full poem and score.

Its occasion was the death at sea, off St. Helena, of the Baptist missionary, Mrs. Sarah Hall Boardman Judson, and the solemn committal of her remains to the dust on that historic island, Sept. 1, 1845. She was on her way to America from Burmah at the time of her death, and the ship proceeded on its homeward voyage immediately after her burial. The touching circumstances of the gifted lady's death, and the strange romance of her entombment where Napoleon's grave was made twenty-four years before, inspired Mr. Washburn, who was a prominent layman of the Baptist denomination, and interested in all its ecclesiastical and missionary activities, and he wrote this poetic memorial of the event:

Mournfully, tenderly, bear on the dead; Where the warrior has lain, let the Christian be laid. No place more befitting, O rock of the sea; Never such treasure was hidden in thee.

Mournfully, tenderly, solemn and slow; Tears are bedewing the path as ye go; Kindred and strangers are mourners today; Gently, so gently, O bear her away.

Mournfully, tenderly, gaze on that brow; Beautiful is it in quietude now. One look, and then settle the loved to her rest The ocean beneath her, the turf on her breast.

Mrs. Sarah Judson was the second wife of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D., the celebrated pioneer American Baptist missionary, and the mother by her first marriage, of the late Rev. George Dana Boardman, D.D., LL.D., of Philadelphia.

The Hon. Henry S. Washburn was born in Providence, R.I., 1813, and educated at Brown University. During most of his long life he resided in Massachusetts, and occupied there many positions of honor and trust, serving in the State Legislature both as Representative and Senator. He was the author of many poems and lyrics of high merit, some of which—notably "The Vacant Chair"—became popular in sheet-music and in books of religious and educational use. He died in 1903.

THE TUNE.

"The Burial of Mrs. Judson" became favorite parlor music when Lyman Heath composed the melody for it—of the same name. Its notes and movement were evidently inspired by the poem, for it reproduces the feeling of every line. The threnody was widely known and sung in the middle years of the last century, by people, too, who had scarcely heard of Mrs. Judson, and received in the music and words their first hint of her history. The poem prompted the tune, but the tune was the garland of the poem.

Lyman Heath of Bow, N.H., was born there Aug. 24, 1804. He studied music, and became a vocalist and vocal composer. Died July 30, 1870.

"TELL ME NOT IN MOURNFUL NUMBERS."

Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" was written when he was a young man, and for some years it carried the title he gave it, "What the Young Man's Heart Said to the Psalmist"—a caption altogether too long to bear currency.

The history of the beloved poet who wrote this optimistic ballad of hope and courage is too well known to need recounting here. He was born in Portland, Me., in 1807, graduated at Bowdoin College, and was for more than forty years professor of Belles Lettres in Harvard University. Died in Cambridge, March 4, 1882. Of his longer poems the most read and admired are his beautiful romance of "Evangeline," and his epic of "Hiawatha," but it is hardly too much to say that for the last sixty years, his "Psalm of Life" has been the common property of all American, if not English school-children, and a part of their education. When he was in London, Queen Victoria sent for him to come and see her at the palace. He went, and just as he was seating himself in the waiting coach after the interview, a man in working clothes appeared, hat in hand, at the coach window.

"Please sir, yer honor," said he, "an' are you Mr. Longfellow?"

"I am Mr. Longfellow," said the poet.

"An' did you write the Psalm of Life?" he asked.

"I wrote the Psalm of Life," replied the poet.

"An', yer honor, would you be willing to take a workingman by the hand?"

Mr. Longfellow gave the honest Englishman a hearty handshake, "And" (said he in telling the story) "I never in my life received a compliment that gave me more satisfaction."

The incident has a delightful democratic flavor—and it is perfectly characteristic of the amiable author of the most popular poem in the English language. The "Psalm of Life" is a wonderful example of the power of commonplaces put into tuneful and elegant verse.

The thought of setting the poem to music came to the compiler of one of the Unitarian church singing books. Some will question, however, whether the selection was the happiest that could have been made. The tune is "Rathbun," Ithamar Conkey's melody that always recalls Sir John Bowring's great hymn of praise.

"BUILD THEE MORE NOBLE MANSIONS."

This poem by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, known among his works as "The Chambered Nautilus," was considered by himself as his worthiest achievement in verse, and his wish that it might live is likely to be fulfilled. It is stately, and in character and effect a rhythmic sermon from a text in "natural theology." The biography of one of the little molluscan sea-navigators that continually enlarges its shell to adapt it to its growth inspired the thoughtful lines. The third, fourth and fifth stanzas are as follows:

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread the lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the last year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step the shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wand'ring sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on my ear it rings Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings,

"Build thee more noble mansions, O my soul. As the swift seasons roll: Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thy outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

Dr. Frederic Hedge included the poem in his hymn-book but without any singing-supplement to the words.

WHITTIER'S SERVICE SONG.

It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the harvest field.

If this stanza and the four following do not reveal all the strength of John G. Whittier's spirit, they convey its serious sweetness. The verses were loved and prized by both President Garfield and President McKinley. On the Sunday before the latter went from his Canton, O., home to his inauguration in Washington the poem was sung as a hymn at his request in the services at the Methodist church where he had been a constant worshipper.

The second stanza is the one most generally recognized and oftenest quoted:

Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatsoe'er is willed, is done.

John Greenleaf Whittier, the poet of the oppressed, was born in Haverhill, Mass., 1807, worked on a farm and on a shoe-bench, and studied at the local academy, until, becoming of age, he went to Hartford, Conn., and began a brief experience in editorial life. Soon after his return to Massachusetts he was elected to the Legislature, and after his duties ended there he left the state for Philadelphia to edit the Pennsylvania Freeman. A few years later he returned again, and established his home in Amesbury, the town with which his life and works are always associated.

He died in 1892 at Hampton Falls, N.H., where he had gone for his health.

THE TUNE.

"Abends," the smooth triple-time choral joined to Whittier's poem by the music editor of the new Methodist Hymnal, speaks its meaning so well that it is scarcely worth while to look for another. Sir Herbert Stanley Oakeley, the composer, was born at Ealing, Eng., July 22, 1830, and educated at Rugby and Oxford. He studied music in Germany, and became a superior organist, winning great applause by his recitals at Edinburgh University, where he was elected Musical Professor.

Archbishop Tait gave him the doctorate of music at Canterbury in 1871, and he was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1876.

Besides vocal duets, Scotch melodies and student songs, he composed many anthems and tunes for the church—notably "Edina" ("Saviour, blessed Saviour") and "Abends," originally written to Keble's "Sun of my Soul."

"THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN PINION."

This lay of a lost gift, with its striking lesson, might have been copied from the wounded bird's own song, it is so natural and so clear-toned. The opportune thought and pen of Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth gave being to the little ballad the day he heard the late Dr. George Lorimer preach from a text in the story of Samson's fall (Judges 16:21) "The Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza ... and he did grind in the prison-house." A sentence in the course of the doctor's sermon, "The bird with a broken pinion never soars as high again," was caught up by the listening author, and became the refrain of his impressive song. Rev. Frank M. Lamb, the tuneful evangelist, found it in print, and wrote a tune to it, and in his voice and the voices of other singers the little monitor has since told its story in revival meetings, and mission and gospel services throughout the land.

I walked through the woodland meadows Where sweet the thrushes sing, And found on a bed of mosses A bird with a broken wing. I healed its wound, and each morning It sang its old sweet strain, But the bird with a broken pinion Never soared as high again.

I found a young life broken By sin's seductive art; And, touched with a Christ-like pity, I took him to my heart. He lived—with a noble purpose, And struggled not in vain; But the life that sin had stricken Never soared as high again.

But the bird with a broken pinion Kept another from the snare, And the life that sin had stricken Saved another from despair. Each loss has its compensation, There is healing for every pain But the bird with a broken pinion Never soars as high again.

In the tune an extra stanza is added—as if something conventional were needed to make the poem a hymn. But the professional tone of the appended stanza, virtually all in its two lines—

Then come to the dear Redeemer, He will cleanse you from every stain,

—is forced into its connection. The poem told the truth, and stopped there; and should be left to fasten its own impression. There never was a more solemn warning uttered than in this little apologue. It promises "compensation" and "healing," but not perfect rehabilitation. Sin will leave its scars. Even He who "became sin for us" bore them in His resurrection body.

Rev. Frank M. Lamb, composer and singer of the hymn-tune, was born in Poland, Me., 1860, and educated in the schools of Poland and Auburn. He was licensed to preach in 1888, and ordained the same year, and has since held pastorates in Maine, New York, and Massachusetts.

Besides his tune, very pleasing and appropriate music has been written to the little ballad of the broken wing by Geo. C. Stebbins.



UNDER THE PALMS.

In the cantata, "Under the Palms" ("Captive Judah in Babylon")—the joint production of George F. Root[19] and Hezekiah Butterworth, several of the latter's songs detached themselves, with their music, from the main work, and lingered in choral or solo service in places where the sacred operetta was presented, both in America and England. One of these is an effective solo in deep contralto, with a suggestion of recitative and chant—

By the dark Euphrates' stream, By the Tigris, sad and lone I wandered, a captive maid; And the cruel Assyrian said, "Awake your harp's sweet tone!"

I had heard of my fathers' glory from the lips of holy men, And I thought of the land of my fathers; I thought of my fathers' land then.

Another is—

O church of Christ! our blest abode, Celestial grace is thine. Thou art the dwelling-place of God, The gate of joy divine.

Whene'er I come to thee in joy, Whene'er I come in tears, Still at the Gate called Beautiful My risen Lord appears.

—with the chorus—

Where'er for me the sun may set, Wherever I may dwell, My heart shall nevermore forget Thy courts, Immanuel!

[Footnote 19: See page 316.]

"IF YOU CANNOT ON THE OCEAN."

This popular Christian ballad, entitled "Your Mission," was written one stormy day in the winter of 1861-2 by Miss Ellen M. Huntington (Mrs. Isaac Gates), and made her reputation as one of the few didactic poets whose exquisite art wins a hearing for them everywhere. In a moment of revery, while looking through the window at the falling snow, the words came to her:

If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet.

She turned away and wrote the lines on her slate, following with verse after verse till she finished the whole poem. "It wrote itself," she says in her own account of it.

Reading afterwards what she had written, she was surprised at her work. The poem had a meaning and a "mission." So strong was the impression that the devout girl fell on her knees and consecrated it to a divine purpose. Free copies of it went to the Cooperstown, N.Y., local paper, and to the New York Examiner, and appeared in both. From that time the history and career of "Your Mission" presents a marked illustration of "catenal influence," or transmitted suggestion.

In the later days of the Civil War Philip Phillips, who had a wonderfully sweet tenor voice, was invited to sing at a great meeting of the United States Christian Commission in the Senate Chamber at Washington, February, 1865, President Lincoln and Secretary Seward (then president of the commission) were there, and the hall was crowded with leading statesmen, army generals, and friends of the Union. The song selected by Mr. Phillips was Mrs. Gates' "Your Mission":

If you cannot on the ocean Sail among the swiftest fleet, Rocking on the highest billows, Laughing at the storms you meet, You can stand among the sailors Anchored yet within the bay; You can lend a hand to help them As they launch their boats away.

The hushed audience listened spell-bound as the sweet singer went on, their interest growing to feverish eagerness until the climax was reached in the fifth stanza:

If you cannot in the conflict Prove yourself a soldier true, If where fire and smoke are thickest There's no work for you to do, When the battlefield is silent You can go with careful tread; You can bear away the wounded, You can cover up the dead.

In the storm of enthusiasm that followed, President Lincoln handed a hastily scribbled line on a bit of paper to Chairman Seward,

"Near the close let us have 'Your Mission' repeated."

Mr. Phillips' great success on this occasion brought him so many calls for his services that he gave up everything and devoted himself to his tuneful art. "Your Mission" so gladly welcomed at Washington made him the first gospel songster, chanting round the world the divine message of the hymns. It was the singing by Philip Phillips that first impressed Ira D. Sankey with the amazing power of evangelical solo song, and helped him years later to resign his lucrative business as a revenue officer and consecrate his own rare vocal gift to the Christian ministry of sacred music. Heaven alone can show the birth-records of souls won to God all along the journeys of the "Singing Pilgrims," and the rich succession of Mr. Sankey's melodies, that can be traced back by a chain of causes to the poem that "wrote itself" and became a hymn. And the chain may not yet be complete. In the words of that providential poem—

Though they may forget the singer They will not forget the song.

Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates, whose reputation as an author was made by this beautiful and always timely poem, was born in Torrington, Ct., and is the youngest sister of the late Collis P. Huntington. Her hymns—included in this volume and in other publications—are much admired and loved, both for their sweetness and elevated religious feeling, and for their poetic quality. Among her published books of verse are "Night," "At Noontide," and "Treasures of Kurium." Her address is New York City.

THE TUNE.

Sidney Martin Grannis, author of the tune, was born Sept. 23, 1827, in Geneseo, Livingston county, N.Y. Lived in Leroy, of the same state, from 1831 to 1884, when he removed to Los Angeles, Cal., where several of his admirers presented him a cottage and grounds, which at last accounts he still occupies. Mr. Grannis won his first reputation as a popular musician by his song "Do They Miss Me at Home," and his "Only Waiting," "Cling to the Union," and "People Will Talk You Know," had an equally wide currency. As a solo singer his voice was remarkable, covering a range of two octaves, and while travelling with members of the "Amphion Troupe," to which he belonged, he sang at more than five thousand concerts. His tune to "Your Mission" was composed in New Haven, Ct., in 1864.

"TOO LATE! TOO LATE! YE CANNOT ENTER NOW."

"Too Late" is a thrilling fragment or side-song of Alfred Tennyson's, representing the vain plea of the five Foolish Virgins. Its tune bears the name of a London lady, "Miss Lindsay" (afterwards Mrs. J. Worthington Bliss). The arrangement of air, duo and quartet is very impressive[20].

[Footnote 20: Methodist Hymnal, No. 743.]

"Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill: Late, late, so late! but we can enter still." "Too late! too late! ye cannot enter now!"

"No light! so late! and dark and chill the night— O let us in that we may find the light!" "Too late! too late! ye cannot enter now!"

* * * * *

"Have we not heard the Bridegroom is so sweet? O let us in that we may kiss his feet!" "No, No—! too late! ye cannot enter now!"

The words are found in "Queen Guinevere," a canto of the "Idyls of the King."

"OH, GALILEE, SWEET GALILEE."

This is the chorus of a charming poem of three stanzas that shaped itself in the mind of Mr. Robert Morris while sitting over the ruins on the traditional site of Capernaum by the Lake of Genneseret.

Each cooing dove, each sighing bough, That makes the eve so blest to me, Has something far diviner now, It bears me back to Galilee.

CHORUS Oh, Galilee, sweet Galilee, Where Jesus loved so much to be; Oh, Galilee, blue Galilee, Come sing thy song again to me.

Robert Morris, LL.D., born Aug. 31, 1818, was a scholar, and an expert in certain scientific subjects, and wrote works on numismatics and the "Poetry of Free Masonry." Commissioned to Palestine in 1868 on historic and archaeological service for the United Order, he explored the scenes of ancient Jewish and Christian life and event in the Holy Land, and being a religious man, followed the Saviour's earthly footsteps with a reverent zeal that left its inspiration with him while he lived. He died in the year 1888, but his Christian ballad secured him a lasting place in every devout memory.

THE TUNE.

The author wrote out his hymn in 1874 and sent it to his friend, the musician, Mr. Horatio R. Palmer,[21] and the latter learned it by heart, and carried it with him in his musings "till it floated out in the melody you know," (to use his own words.)

[Footnote 21: See page 311.]



CHAPTER VII.

OLD REVIVAL HYMNS.

The sober churches of the "Old Thirteen" states and of their successors far into the nineteenth century, sustained evening prayer-meetings more or less commonly, but necessity made them in most cases "cottage meetings" appointed on Sunday and here and there in the scattered homes of country parishes. Their intent was the same as that of "revival meetings," since so called, though the method—and the music—were different. The results in winning sinners, so far as they owed anything to the hymns and hymn-tunes, were apt to be a new generation of Christian recruits as sombre as the singing. "Lebanon" set forth the appalling shortness of human life; "Windham" gave its depressing story of the great majority of mankind on the "broad road," and other minor tunes proclaimed God's sovereignty and eternal decrees; or if a psalm had His love in it, it was likely to be sung in a similar melancholy key. Even in his gladness the good minister, Thomas Baldwin, of the Second Baptist Church, at Boston, North End, returning from Newport, N.H., where he had happily harmonized a discordant church, could not escape the strait-lace of a C minor for his thankful hymn—

From whence doth this union arise, That hatred is conquered by love.

"The Puritans took their pleasures seriously," and this did not cease to be true till at least two hundred years after the Pilgrims landed or Boston was founded.

Time, that covered the ghastly faces on the old grave-stones with moss, gradually stole away the unction of minor-tune singing.

The songs of the great revival of 1740 swept the country with positive rather than negative music. Even Jonathan Edwards admitted the need of better psalm-books and better psalmody.

Edwards, during his life, spent some time among the Indians as a missionary teacher; but probably neither he nor David Brainerd ever saw a Christian hymn composed by an Indian. The following, from the early years of the last century, is apparently the first, certainly the only surviving, effort of a converted but half-educated red man to utter his thoughts in pious metre. Whoever trimmed the original words and measure into printable shape evidently took care to preserve the broken English of the simple convert. It is an interesting relic of the Christian thought and sentiment of a pagan just learning to prattle prayer and praise:

In de dark wood, no Indian nigh, Den me look heaben, send up cry, Upon my knees so low. Dat God on high, in shinee place, See me in night, with teary face, De priest, he tell me so.

God send Him angel take me care; Him come Heself and hear um prayer, If Indian heart do pray. God see me now, He know me here. He say, poor Indian, neber fear, Me wid you night and day.

So me lub God wid inside heart; He fight for me, He take my part, He save my life before. God lub poor Indian in de wood; So me lub God, and dat be good; Me pray Him two times more.

When me be old, me head be gray, Den He no lebe me, so He say: Me wid you till you die. Den take me up to shinee place, See white man, red man, black man's face, All happy 'like on high.

Few days, den God will come to me, He knock off chains, He set me free, Den take me up on high. Den Indian sing His praises blest, And lub and praise Him wid de rest, And neber, neber cry.

The above hymn, which may be found in different forms in old New England tracts and hymn-books, and which used to be sung in Methodist conference and prayer-meetings in the same way that old slave-hymns and the "Jubilee Singers" refrains are sometimes sung now, was composed by William Apes, a converted Indian, who was born in Massachusetts, in 1798. His father was a white man, but married an Indian descended from the family of King Philip, the Indian warrior, and the last of the Indian chiefs. His grandmother was the king's granddaughter, as he claimed, and was famous for her personal beauty. He caused his autobiography and religious experience to be published. The original hymn is quite long, and contains some singular and characteristic expressions.

The authorship of the tune to which the words were sung has been claimed for Samuel Cowdell, a schoolmaster of Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, 1820, but the date of the lost tune was probably much earlier.

In the early days of New England, before the Indian missions had been brought to an end by the sweeping away of the tribes, several fine hymns were composed by educated Indians, and were used in the churches. The best known is that beginning—

When shall we all meet again?

It was composed by three Indians at the planting of a memorial pine on leaving Dartmouth College, where they had been studying. The lines indicate an expectation of missionary life and work.

When shall we all meet again? When shall we all meet again? Oft shall glowing hope expire, Oft shall wearied love retire, Oft shall death and sorrow reign Ere we all shall meet again.

Though in distant lands we sigh, Parched beneath a burning sky, Though the deep between us rolls, Friendship shall unite our souls; And in fancy's wide domain, There we all shall meet again.

When these burnished locks are gray, Thinned by many a toil-spent day, When around this youthful pine Moss shall creep and ivy twine, (Long may this loved bower remain!) Here may we all meet again.

When the dreams of life are fled, When its wasted lamps are dead, When in cold oblivion's shade Beauty, health, and strength are laid, Where immortal spirits reign, There we all shall meet again.

This parting piece was sung in religious meetings as a hymn, like the other once so common, but later,—

"When shall we meet again, Meet ne'er to sever?"

—to a tune in B flat minor, excessively plaintive, and likely to sadden an emotional singer or hearer to tears. The full harmony is found in the American Vocalist, and the air is reprinted in the Revivalist (1868). The fact that minor music is the natural Indian tone in song makes it probable that the melody is as ancient as the hymn—though no date is given for either.

Tradition says that nearly fifty years later the same three Indians were providentially drawn to the spot where they parted, and met again, and while they were together composed and sang another ode. Truth to tell, however, it had only one note of gladness, and that was in the first stanza:

Parted many a toil-spent year, Pledged in youth to memory dear, Still to friendship's magnet true, We our social joys renew; Bound by love's unsevered chain, Here on earth we meet again.

The remaining three stanzas dwell principally on the ravages time has made. The reunion ode of those stoical college classmates of a stoical race could have been sung in the same B flat minor.

"AWAKED BY SINAI'S AWFUL SOUND."

The name of the Indian, Samson Occum, who wrote this hymn (variously spelt Ockom, Ockum, Occam, Occom) is not borne by any public institution, but New England owes the foundation of Dartmouth College to his hard work. Dartmouth College was originally "Moore's Indian Charity School," organized (1750) in Lebanon, Ct., by Rev. Eleazer Wheelock and endowed (1755) by Joshua Moore (or More). Good men and women who had at heart the spiritual welfare of a fading race contributed to the school's support and young Indians resorted to it from both New England and the Middle States, but funds were insufficient, and it was foreseen that the charity must inevitably outgrow its missionary purpose and if continued at all must depend on a wider and more liberal patronage.

Samson Occum was born in Mohegan, New London Co., Ct., probably in the year 1722. Converted from paganism in 1740 (possibly under the preaching of Whitefield, who was in this country at that time) he desired to become a missionary to his people, and entered Eleazer Wheelock's school. After four years study, then a young man of twenty-two, he began to teach and preach among the Montauk Indians, and in 1759 the Presbytery of Suffolk Co., L.I., ordained him to the ministry. A benevolent society in Scotland, hearing of, his ability and zeal, gave him an appointment, under its auspices, among the Oneidas in 1761, where he labored four years. The interests of the school at Lebanon, where he had been educated, were dear to him, and he was tireless in its cause, procuring pupils for it, and working eloquently as its advocate with voice and pen. In 1765 he crossed the Atlantic to solicit funds for the Indian school, and remained four years in England and Scotland, lecturing in its behalf, and preaching nearly four hundred sermons. As a result he raised ten thousand pounds. The donation was put in charge of a Board of Trustees of which Lord Dartmouth was chairman. When it was decided to remove the school from Lebanon, Ct., the efforts of Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, secured its location at Hanover in that state. It was christened after Lord Dartmouth—and the names of Occum, Moore and Wheelock retired into the encyclopedias.

The Rev. Samson Occum died in 1779, while laboring among the Stockbridge (N.Y.) Indians. Several hymns were written by this remarkable man, and also "An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Montauks." The hymn, "Awaked by Sinai's Awful Sound," set to the stentorian tune of "Ganges," was a tremendous sermon in itself to old-time congregations, and is probably as indicative of the doctrines which converted its writer as of the contemporary belief prominent in choir and pulpit.

Awaked by Sinai's awful sound, My soul in bonds of guilt I found, And knew not where to go, Eternal truth did loud proclaim "The sinner must be born again. Or sink in endless woe."

When to the law I trembling fled, It poured its curses on my head: I no relief could find. This fearful truth increased my pain, "The sinner must be born again," And whelmed my troubled mind.

* * * * *

But while I thus in anguish lay, Jesus of Nazareth passed that way; I felt His pity move. The sinner, once by justice slain, Now by His grace is born again, And sings eternal Love!

The rugged original has been so often and so variously altered and "toned down," that only a few unusually accurate aged memories can recall it. The hymn began going out of use fifty years ago, and is now seldom seen.

The name "S. Chandler," attached to "Ganges," leaves the identity of the composer in shadow. It is supposed he was born in 1760. The tune appeared about 1790.

"WHERE NOW ARE THE HEBREW CHILDREN?"

This quaint old unison, repeating the above three times, followed by the answer (thrice repeated) and climaxed with—

Safely in the Promised Land,

—was a favorite at ancient camp-meetings, and a good leader could keep it going in a congregation or a happy group of vocalists, improvising a new start-line after every stop until his memory or invention gave out.

They went up from the fiery furnace, They went up from the fiery furnace, They went up from the fiery furnace, Safely to the Promised Land.

Sometimes it was—

Where now is the good Elijah?

—and,—

He went up in a chariot of fire;

—and again,—

Where now is the good old Daniel?

He went up from the den of lions;

—and so on, finally announcing—

By and by we'll go home for to meet him, [three times] Safely in the Promised Land.

The enthusiasm excited by the swinging rhythm of the tune sometimes rose to a passionate pitch, and it was seldom used in the more controlled religious assemblies. If any attempt was ever made to print the song[22] the singers had little need to read the music. Like the ancient runes, it came into being by spontaneous generation, and lived in phonetic tradition.

[Footnote 22: Mr. Hubert P. Main believes he once saw "The Hebrew Children" in print in one of Horace Waters' editions of the Sabbath Bell.]

A strange, wild paean of exultant song was one often heard from Peter Cartwright, the muscular circuit-preacher. A remembered fragment shows its quality:

Then my soul mounted higher In a chariot of fire, And the moon it was under my feet.

There is a tradition that he sang it over a stalwart blacksmith while chastising him for an ungodly defiance and assault in the course of one of his gospel journeys—and that the defeated blacksmith became his friend and follower.

Peter Cartwright was born in Amherst county, Va., Sept. 1, 1785, and died near Pleasant Plains, Sangamon county, Ill., Sept., 1872.

"THE EDEN OF LOVE."

This song, written early in the last century, by John J. Hicks, recalls the name of the eccentric traveling evangelist, Lorenzo Dow, born in Coventry, Ct., October 16, 1777; died in Washington, D.C., Feb. 2, 1834. It was the favorite hymn of his wife, the beloved Peggy Dow, and has furnished the key-word of more than one devotional rhyme that has uplifted the toiling souls of rural evangelists and their greenwood congregations:

How sweet to reflect on the joys that await me In yon blissful region, the haven of rest, Where glorified spirits with welcome shall greet me, And lead me to mansions prepared for the blest. There, dwelling in light, and with glory enshrouded, My happiness perfect, my mind's sky unclouded, I'll bathe in the ocean of pleasure unbounded, And range with delight through the Eden of love.

The words and tune were printed in Leavitt's Christian Lyre, 1830.

The same strain in the same metre is continued in the hymn of Rev. Wm. Hunter, D.D., (1842) printed in his Minstrel of Zion (1845). J.W. Dadmun's Melodian (1860) copied it, retaining, apparently, the original music, with an added refrain of invitation, "Will you go? will you go?"

We are bound for the land of the pure and the holy, The home of the happy, the kingdom of love; Ye wand'rers from God on the broad road of folly, O say, will you go to the Eden above?

The old hymn-tune has a brisk out-door delivery, and is full of revival fervor and the ozone of the pines.

"O CANA-AN, BRIGHT CANA-AN"

Was one of the stimulating melodies of the old-time awakenings, which were simply airs, and were sung unisonously. "O Cana-an" (pronounced in three syllables) was the chorus, the hymn-lines being either improvised or picked up miscellaneously from memory, the interline, "I am bound for the land of Cana-an," occurring between every two. John Wesley's "How happy is the pilgrim's lot" was one of the snatched stanzas swept into the current of the song. An example of the tune-leader's improvisations to keep the hymn going was—

If you get there before I do,— I am bound for the land of Cana-an! Look out for me, I'm coming too— I am bound for the land of Cana-an!

And then hymn and tune took possession of the assembly and rolled on in a circle with—

O Cana-an, bright Cana-an! I am bound for the land of Cana-an; O Cana-an it is my hap-py home, I am bound for the land of Cana-an

—till the voices came back to another starting-line and began again. There was always a movement to the front when that tune was sung, and—with all due abatement for superficial results in the sensation of the moment—it is undeniable that many souls were truly born into the kingdom of God under the sound of that rude woodland song.

Both its words and music are credited to Rev. John Maffit, who probably wrote the piece about 1829.

"A CHARGE TO KEEP I HAVE."

This hymn of Charles Wesley was often heard at the camp grounds, from the rows of tents in the morning while the good women prepared their pancakes and coffee, and

THE TUNE.

was invariably old "Kentucky," by Jeremiah Ingalls. Sung as a solo by a sweet and spirited voice, it slightly resembled "Golden Hill," but oftener its halting bars invited a more drawling style of execution unworthy of a hymn that merits a tune like "St. Thomas."

Old "Kentucky" was not field music.

"CHRISTIANS, IF YOUR HEARTS ARE WARM."

Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Mass., 1754, was not only a strenuous personality in the Baptist denomination, but was well known everywhere in New England, and, in fact, his preaching trip to Washington (1801) with the "Cheshire Cheese" made his fame national. He is spoken of as "the minister who wrote his own hymns"—a peculiarity in which he imitated Watts and Doddridge. When some natural shrinking was manifest in converts of his winter revivals, under his rigid rule of immediate baptism, he wrote this hymn to fortify them:

Christians, if your hearts are warm, Ice and cold can do no harm; If by Jesus you are prized Rise, believe and be baptized.

He found use for the hymn, too, in rallying church-members who staid away from his meetings in bad weather. The "poetry" expressed what he wanted to say—which, in his view, was sufficient apology for it. It was sung in revival meetings like others that he wrote, and a few hymnbooks now long obsolete contained it; but of Leland's hymns only one survives. Gray-headed men and women remember being sung to sleep by their mothers with that old-fashioned evening song to Amzi Chapin's[23] tune—

The day is past and gone, The evening shades appear, O may we all remember well The night of death draws near;

—and with all its solemnity and other-worldness it is dear to recollection, and its five stanzas are lovingly hunted up in the few hymnals where it is found. Bradbury's "Braden," (Baptist Praise Book, 1873,) is one of its tunes.

[Footnote 23: Amzi Chapin has left, apparently, nothing more than the record of his birth, March 2, 1768, and the memory of his tune. It appeared as early as 1805.]

Elder Leland was a remarkable revival preacher, and his prayers—as was said of Elder Jabez Swan's fifty or sixty years later—"brought heaven and earth together." He traveled through the Eastern States as an evangelist, and spent a season in Virginia in the same work. In 1801 he revisited that region on a curious errand. The farmers of Cheshire, Mass., where Leland was then a settled pastor, conceived the plan of sending "the biggest cheese in America" to President Jefferson, and Leland (who was a good democrat) offered to go to Washington on an ox-team with it, and "preach all the way"—which he actually did.

The cheese weighed 1450 lbs.

Elder Leland died in North Adams, Mass., Jan. 14, 1844. Another of his hymns, which deserved to live with his "Evening Song," seemed to be answered in the brightness of his death-bed hope:

O when shall I see Jesus And reign with Him above, And from that flowing fountain Drink everlasting love?

"AWAKE, MY SOUL, TO JOYFUL LAYS."

This glad hymn of Samuel Medley is his thanksgiving song, written soon after his conversion. In the places of rural worship no lay of Christian praise and gratitude was ever more heartily sung than this at the testimony meetings.

Awake, my soul, to joyful lays, And sing thy great Redeemer's praise; He justly claims a song from me: His loving-kindness, oh, how free! Loving-kindness, loving-kindness, His loving-kindness, oh, how free!

THE TUNE,

With its queer curvet in every second line, had no other name than "Loving-Kindness," and was probably a camp-meeting melody in use for some time before its publication. It is found in Leavitt's Christian Lyre as early as 1830. The name "William Caldwell" is all that is known of its composer, though he is supposed to have lived in Tennessee.

"THE LORD INTO HIS GARDEN COMES."

Was a common old-time piece sure to be heard at every religious rally, and every one present, saint and sinner, had it by heart, or at least the chorus of it—

Amen, amen, my soul replies, I'm bound to meet you in the skies, And claim my mansion there, etc.

The anonymous[24] "Garden Hymn, as old, at least, as 1800," has nearly passed out of reach, except by the long arm of the antiquary; but it served its generation.

[Footnote 24: A "Rev." Mr. Campbell, author of "The Glorious Light of Zion," "There is a Holy City," and "There is a Land of Pleasure," has been sometimes credited with the origin of the Garden Hymn.]

Its vigorous tune is credited to Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1838).

The Lord into His garden comes; The spices yield a rich perfume, The lilies grow and thrive, The lilies grow and thrive. Refreshing showers of grace divine From Jesus flow to every vine, Which makes the dead revive, Which makes the dead revive.

"THE CHARIOT! THE CHARIOT!"

Henry Hart Milman, generally known as Dean Milman, was born in 1791, and was educated at Oxford. In 1821 he was installed as university professor of poetry at Oxford, and it was while filling this position that he wrote this celebrated hymn, under the title of "The Last Day." It is not only a hymn, but a poem—a sublime ode that recalls, in a different movement, the tones of the "Dies Irae."

Dean Milman (of St Paul's), besides his many striking poems and learned historical works, wrote at least twelve hymns, among which are—

Ride on, ride on in majesty,

O help us Lord; each hour of need Thy heavenly succor give,

When our heads are bowed with woe,

—which last may have been written soon after he laid three of his children in one grave, in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. He lived a laborious and useful life of seventy-seven years, dying Sept. 24, 1868.

There were times in the old revivals when the silver clarion of the "Chariot Hymn" must needs replace the ruder blast of Occum in old "Ganges" and sinners unmoved by the invisible God of Horeb be made to behold Him—in a vision of the "Last Day."

The Chariot! the Chariot! its wheels roll in fire When the Lord cometh down in the pomp of His ire, Lo, self-moving, it drives on its pathway of cloud, And the heavens with the burden of Godhead are bowed.

* * * * *

The Judgment! the Judgment! the thrones are all set, Where the Lamb and the white-vested elders are met; There all flesh is at once in the sight of the Lord, And the doom of eternity hangs on His word.

The name "Williams" or "J. Williams" is attached to various editions of the trumpet-like tune, but so far no guide book gives us location, date or sketch of the composer.

"COME, MY BRETHREN."

Another of the "unstudied" revival hymns of invitation.

Come, my brethren, let us try For a little season Every burden to lay by, Come and let us reason.

What is this that casts you down. What is this that grieves you? Speak and let your wants be known; Speaking may relieve you.

This colloquial rhyme was apt to be started by some good brother or sister in one of the chilly pauses of a prayer-meeting. The air (there was never anything more to it) with a range of only a fifth, slurred the last syllable of every second line, giving the quaint effect of a bent note, and altogether the music was as homely as the verse. Both are anonymous. But the little chant sometimes served its purpose wonderfully well.

"BRETHREN, WHILE WE SOJOURN HERE."

This hymn was always welcome in the cottage meetings as well as in the larger greenwood assemblies. It was written by Rev. Joseph Swain, about 1783.

Brethren, while we sojourn here Fight we must, but should not fear. Foes we have, but we've a Friend, One who loves us to the end; Forward then with courage go; Long we shall not dwell below, Soon the joyful news will come, "Child, your Father calls, 'Come home.'"

The tune was sometimes "Pleyel's Hymn," but oftener it was sung to a melody now generally forgotten of much the same movement but slurred in peculiarly sweet and tender turns. The cadence of the last tune gave the refrain line a melting effect:

Child, your Father calls, "Come home."

Some of the spirit of this old tune (in the few hymnals where the hymn is now printed) is preserved in Geo. Kingsley's "Messiah" which accompanies the words, but the modulations are wanting.

Joseph Swain was born in Birmingham, Eng. in 1761. Bred among mechanics, he was early apprenticed to the engraver's trade, but he was a boy of poetic temperament and fond of writing verses. After the spiritual change which brought a new purpose into his life, he was baptized by Dr. Rippon and studied for the ministry. At the age of about twenty-five, he was settled over the Baptist church in Walworth, where he remained till his death, April 16, 1796.

For more than a century his hymns have lived and been loved in all the English-speaking world. Among those still in use are—

How sweet, how heavenly is the sight,

Pilgrims we are to Canaan bound,

O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight.

"HAPPY DAY."

O happy day that fixed my choice. —Doddridge. O how happy are they who the Saviour obey. —Charles Wesley.

These were voices as sure to be heard in converts' meetings as the leader's prayer or text, the former sung inevitably to Rimbault's tune, "Happy Day," and the latter to a "Western Melody" quite as closely akin to Wesley's words.

Edward Francis Rimbault, born at Soho, Eng., June 13, 1816, was at sixteen years of age organist at the Soho Swiss Church, and became a skilled though not a prolific composer. He once received—and declined—the offer of an appointment as professor of music in Harvard College. Died of a lingering illness Sept, 26, 1876.

"COME, HOLY SPIRIT, HEAVENLY DOVE." —Watts.

This was the immortal song-litany that fitted almost anywhere into every service. The Presbyterians and Congregationalists sang it in Tansur's "St. Martins," the Baptists in William Jones' "Stephens" and the Methodists in Maxim's "Turner" (which had the most music), but the hymn went about as well with one as with another.

The Rev. William Jones (1726-1800) an English rector, and Abraham Maxim of Buckfield, Me., (1773-1829) contributed quite a liberal share of the "continental" tunes popular in the latter part of the 18th century. Maxim was eccentric, but the tradition that an unfortunate affair of the heart once drove him into the woods to make away with himself, but a bird on the roof of a logger's hut, making plaintive sounds, interrupted him, and he sat down and wrote the tune "Hallowell," on a strip of white birch bark, is more likely legendary. The following words, said to have inspired his minor tune, are still set to it in the old collections:

As on some lonely building's top The sparrow makes her moan, Far from the tents of joy and hope I sit and grieve alone.[25]

[Footnote 25: Versified by Nahum Tate from Ps. 102:7.]

Maxim was fond of the minor mode, but his minors, like "Hallowell," "New Durham," etc., are things of the past. His major chorals and fugues, such as "Portland," "Buckfield," and "Turner" had in them the spirit of healthier melody and longer life. He published at least two collections, The Oriental Harmony, in 1802, and The Northern Harmony, in 1805.

William Tansur (Tans-ur), author of "St. Martins" (1669-1783), was an organist, composer, compiler, and theoretical writer. He was born at Barnes, Surrey, Eng., (according to one account,) and died at St. Neot's.

"COME, THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING."

This hymn of Rev. Robert Robinson was almost always heard in the tune of "Nettleton," composed by John Wyeth, about 1812. The more wavy melody of "Sicily" (or "Sicilian Hymn") sometimes carried the verses, but never with the same sympathetic unction. The sing-song movement and accent of old "Nettleton" made it the country favorite.

Robert Robinson, born in Norfolk, Eng., Sept. 27, 1735, was a poor boy, left fatherless at eight years of age, and apprenticed to a barber, but was converted by the preaching of Whitefield and studied till he obtained a good education, and was ordained to the Methodist ministry. He is supposed to have written his well-known hymn in 1758. A certain unsteadiness of mind, however, caused him to revise his religious beliefs too often for his spiritual health or enjoyment, and after preaching as a Methodist, a Baptist, and an Independent, he finally became a Socinian. On a stage-coach journey, when a lady fellow-passenger began singing "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," to relieve the monotony of the ride, he said to her, "Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago; and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, if I could feel as I felt then."

Robinson died June 9, 1790.

John Wyeth was born in Cambridge, Mass., 1792, and died at Harrisburg, Pa., 1858. He was a musician and publisher, and issued a Music Book, Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music.

"A POOR WAYFARING MAN OF GRIEF,"

Written by James Montgomery, Dec., 1826, was a hymn of tide and headway in George Coles' tune of "Duane St.," with a step that made every heart beat time. The four picturesque eight-line stanzas made a practical sermon in verse and song from Matt. 25:35, telling how—

A poor wayfaring man of grief Hath often crossed me on my way, Who sued so humbly for relief That I could never answer nay. I had no power to ask his name, Whither he went or whence he came, Yet there was something in his eye That won my love, I knew not why;

—and in the second and third stanzas the narrator relates how he entertained him, and this was the sequel—

Then in a moment to my view The stranger started from disguise The token in His hand I knew; My Saviour stood before my eyes.

When once that song was started, every tongue took it up, (and it was strange if every foot did not count the measure,) and the coldest kindled with gospel warmth as the story swept on.[26]

[Footnote 26: Montgomery's poem, "The Stranger," has seven stanzas. The full dramatic effect of their connection could only be produced by a set piece.]

"WHEN FOR ETERNAL WORLDS I STEER."

It was no solitary experience for hearers in a house of prayer where the famous Elder Swan held the pulpit, to feel a climactic thrill at the sudden breaking out of the eccentric orator with this song in the very middle of his sermon—

When for eternal worlds I steer, And seas are calm and skies are clear, And faith in lively exercise, And distant hills of Canaan rise, My soul for joy then claps her wings, And loud her lovely sonnet sings, "Vain world, adieu!"

With cheerful hope her eyes explore Each landmark on the distant shore, The trees of life, the pastures green, The golden streets, the crystal stream, Again for joy, she claps her wings, And loud her lovely sonnet sings, "Vain world, adieu!"

Elder Jabez Swan was born in Stonington, Ct., Feb. 23, 1800, and died 1884. He was a tireless worker as a pastor (long in New London, Ct.,) and a still harder toiler in the field as an evangelist and as a helper eagerly called for in revivals; and, through all, he was as happy as a boy in vacation. He was unlearned in the technics of the schools, but always eloquent and armed with ready wit; unpolished, but poetical as a Hebrew prophet and as terrible in his treatment of sin. Scoffers and "hoodlums" who interrupted him in his meetings never interrupted him but once.



The more important and canonical hymnals and praise-books had no place for "Sonnet," as the bugle-like air to this hymn was called. Rev. Jonathan Aldrich, about 1860, harmonized it in his Sacred Lyre, but this, and the few other old vestry and field manuals that contain it, were compiled before it became the fashion to date and authenticate hymns and tunes. In this case both are anonymous. Another (and probably earlier) tune sung to the same words is credited to "S. Arnold," and appears to have been composed about 1790.

"I'M A PILGRIM, AND I'M A STRANGER."

This hymn still lives—and is likely to live, at least in collections that print revival music. Mrs. Mary Stanley (Bunce) Dana, born in Beaufort, S.C., Feb. 15, 1810, wrote it while living in a northern state, where her husband died. By the name Dana she is known in hymnology, though she afterwards became Mrs. Shindler. The tune identified with the hymn, "I'm a Pilgrim," is untraced, save that it is said to be an "Italian Air," and that its original title was "Buono Notte" (good night).

No other hymn better expresses the outreaching of ardent faith. Its very repetitions emphasize and sweeten the vision of longed-for fruition.

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night, Do not detain me, for I am going.

* * * * *

There the sunbeams are ever shining, O my longing heart, my longing heart is there.

* * * * *

Of that country to which I'm going, My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light. There is no sorrow, nor any sighing, Nor any sin there, nor any dying, I'm a pilgrim, etc.

The same devout poetess also wrote (1840) the once popular consolatory hymn,—

O sing to me of heaven When I'm about to die,

—sung to the familiar tune by Rev. E.W. Dunbar; also to a melody composed 1854 by Dr. William Miller.

The line was first written—

When I am called to die,

—in the author's copy. The hymn (occasioned by the death of a pious friend) was written Jan. 15, 1840.

Mrs. Dana (Shindler) died in Texas, Feb. 8, 1883.

"JOYFULLY, JOYFULLY ONWARD I MOVE."

The maker of this hymn has been confounded with the maker of its tune—partly, perhaps, from the fact that the real composer of the tune also wrote hymns. The author of the words was the Rev. William Hunter, D.D., an Irish-American, and a Methodist minister. He was born near Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ire., May, 1811, and was brought to America when a child six years old. He received his education in the common schools and at Madison College, Hamilton, N.Y., (now Madison University), and was successively a pastor, editor and Hebrew professor. Besides his work in these different callings, he wrote many helpful hymns—in all one hundred and twenty-five—of which "Joyfully, Joyfully," dated 1842, is the best. It began originally with the line—

Friends fondly cherished have passed on before,

—and the line,—

Home to the land of delight I will go.

—was written,—

Home to the land of bright spirits I'll go.

Dr. Hunter died in Ohio, 1877.

THE TUNE.

Rev. Abraham Dow Merrill, the author of the music to this triumphal death-song, was born in Salem, N.H., 1796, and died April 29, 1878. He also was a Methodist minister, and is still everywhere remembered by the denomination to which he belonged in New Hampshire and Vermont. He rode over these states mingling in revival scenes many years. His picture bears a close resemblance to that of Washington, and he was somewhat famous for this resemblance. His work was everywhere blessed, and he left an imperishable influence in New England. The tune, linked with Dr. Hunter's hymn, formed the favorite melody which has been the dying song of many who learned to sing it amid the old revival scenes: