AND i hm oa.% ^m ■ ■ >, fHUBYUMAN MISHjftlCAl SUCK IV (Um-+z ■ THE G UILD L IBRARY Edited by Very Rev. Prof. Charteris, D.D., University of Edinburgh, and Rev. J. A. M'Clymont, D.D., Aberdeen. Crown 8vo Edition, Price Is. 6d. net. OUR LORD'S TEACHING. By Rev. J. Robertson, D.D., Whittinghame. 22nd Thousand. "A book of great excellence, clear, serious, weighty, wise in its thinking, thoroughly well digested, and written in a lucid and attractive style.' — Professor Marcus Dods, D.D., in the Expositor. RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD. By Principal Grant, D. D. , LL. D. , Queen's University, Canada. 23rd Thousand. "Have seldom seen a better and clearer text-book."— British Weekly. HANDBOOK OP CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. By Principal Stewart, D.D., University of St. Andrews. 22?id Thousand. "For its own purpose there is no book that can for a moment compete with it." — Expository Times. THE NEW TESTAMENT AND ITS WRITERS. By Rev. J. A. M'Clymont, D.D., Aberdeen. 32nd Thousand. 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" Nowhere is it possible to obtain in anything like the .same compass so clear and authoritative an array of historical facts and ecclesiastical statistics, and the volume has the additional advantage of being bright and readable." — Speaker. Now Ready. A FAITHFUL CHURCHMAN. Sketch of the Life and Work of Professor James Robertson, D.D., with a fresh Account of the Disruption Controversy, and of the Extension of the Church of Scotland. By Prof. Ciiaktelis. D.D., University of Edinburgh. THE PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. By R. M. Wenley, Sc.D. (Edin.), D.Phil. (Glas.), Senior Professor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan. THE MISSIONARY EXPANSION OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES. By the Rev. J. A. Geaham, M.A., Guild Missionary at Kalimpong. With Maps and Illustrations. HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS. By the Rev. Duncan Campbell, B.D., Minister of St. Matthew's, Edinburgh. In the Press. BIBLE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. By the Rev. George M. Mackie. M.A., Beyrout. With Illustrations. Copies of these books may be had interleaved for 8d. extra. HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/makersOOcamp ^ HYMNS HYMN MAKERS BY REV. DUNCAN CAMPBELL, B.D. minister of st. Matthew's, Edinburgh author of 'the roll call of faith and other sermons ' LONDON: A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE EDINBURGH : R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED Publication Agents for the Church of Scotland 1898 PREFACE In 1863 Mr. Charles D. Cleveland, United States Consul at Cardiff, wrote to Daniel Sedgwick, the " Father of Eng- lish Hymnology," suggesting that he should prepare a Biographical Dictionary of Hymn-writers that would " sell for half a crown or a crown — the cheaper the better." "Such a book,'' he added, "would, I think, be very popular ; every Christian who could afford would, I cannot but believe, buy it." 1 Daniel Sedgwick did not undertake the task, but it was undertaken by Dr. Julian ; on a very different scale, however, to that suggested by Mr. Cleveland, Dr. Julian's Dictionary covering the whole range of hymnology. This Dictionary is indeed a monumental work — German, in its evidence of painstaking research, accurate scholarship, and fulness of detail — French in its lucidity, and in the vividness of its biographical sketches. But the " Christians " who can afford to buy it are comparatively few, and so there is room for 1 Quoted from the Sedgwick MSS. by the kind permission of Dr. Julian. x HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS a book realising more nearly Mr. Cleveland's suggestion as to price, "the cheaper the better." Hymns and Hymn Makers is an attempt in this direc- tion. It was not possible, however, in a volume of 200 pages, to give an account of all the hymn-writers whose names appear in the six hymn-books 1 annotated; unless the Author had contented himself with a bare dry statement of facts. A selection had to be made. The selection adopted may appear somewhat arbitrary, but the Author has endeavoured to give an account of the most prominent hymn -writers, as well as of some others not so distin- guished in this particular field, whose inclusion seemed to be desirable on other grounds. As to his method of treatment, the Author may be permitted to state that he has not presumed to write for students of hymnology. He has written for the ordinary Hymn Lover (to adopt Mr. Garret Horder's happy phrase), and so has contented himself with relating such incidents in the lives of the writers dealt with, as he thought might best help to make their personality vivid. In addition to direct quotations from Dr. Julian's Dictionary, which are made with his and Mr. Murray's permission, and which are acknowledged in their proper 1 The hymn-books annotated are : — The Church 11 ym nary ; Hymns Ancient and Modern; The Scottish Hymnal j Church Praise; Congre- gational Church Hymnal; The Presbyterian Book of Praise (Canada). The first-named (recently published) has been prepared by a Joint- Committee of the Church of Scotland, Free Church, United Pres- byterian Church, and Presbyterian Church of Ireland. PREFACE XI place, the Author desires to state that he has found that work of the greatest service in the way of direc- tion and suggestion. Under terrestrial conditions, copy- right cannot be claimed for inspiration ; none the less ought it to be acknowledged and given thanks for. Should the perusal of these pages lead any of his readers to pursue the subject under Dr. Julian's guidance, the Author will feel he has done them good service. Other works on hymnology, which . may be studied with advantage, and to which the Author has also to acknowledge indebtedness, are Duffield's English Hymns; Miller's Singers and Songs of the Church; Horder's Hymn Lover ; The Voice of Christian Life in Song (Mrs. Charles) ; Selborne's Hymns (reprinted from Encyclopaedia Britannica) ; Ellerton's Life and Writings on Hymnology ; Prescott's Christian Hymns and Hymn- writers ; Hatfield's Poets of the Church ; Christopher's Hymn- writers and their Hymns ; The Eomance of Psalter and Hymnal (Welsh) ; The Poets of the Century (Miles) ; Neale's Mediaeval Hymns, and Hymns of the Eastern Church ; MacgilPs Songs of the Christian Creed ; Chat- field's Songs and Hymns of the Greek Christian Poets ; Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry ; Duffield's Latin Hymn- writers and their Hymns ; Miss Winkworth's Christian Singers of Germany. But, so far as possible, the Author has gone to original sources for information, and has examined the Memoirs xii HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS of hymn-writers for himself, having spent much time in the Advocate's Library, the Bodleian, and the British Museum for this purpose. He has also made many personal inquiries by correspondence and otherwise, and desires to give special thanks to those living hymn-writers, and to the friends of recent hymn -writers who have courteously answered his inquiries and furnished him with interesting particulars, which he has embodied in his He has further to thank most cordially the Editors of the series and the private friends who have given him valuable counsel, and helped in the correction of proofs. He is conscious that his volume has many shortcomings ; they would have been far more numerous but for their generous aid. DUNCAN CAMPBELL. CONTEXTS Introduction xv SECTION I. Ter Sanctus. Gloria in Excelsis. Te Deum 1 II. Hymns from Greek Sources .... 4 III. Early Latin Hymns 11 IV. Later Latin Hymns 18 V. Early English Hymns 26 VI a. Later English Hymns 37 VI b. Later English Hymns 66 VII. English Hymns by Liying Writers . . . 140 VIII. Hymns from German Sources . . . .157 IX. American Hymns 166 INTRODUCTION Augustine defines a hymn in the following terms : — "It is a song with praise of God. If thou praisest God and singest not, thou utterest no hymn. If thou singest and praisest not God, thou utterest no hymn. A hymn then con- taineth these three things, song, and praise, and that of God." But this definition is too narrow. We wish to express in our hymns, as the psalmists did in their psalms, aspiration and penitence as well as praise. The definition of Augustine rigidly applied would more than decimate the hymnals of to-day. We require a definition that will cover every devotional mood, and so the following has been suggested : "A hymn is the uplifting of the soul to God in terms of song." This is at once narrower and wider than that of Dr. Johnson which runs : " A hymn is a song of adoration to some superior being." It is narrower, for the phrase "superior being" might apply to others than Deity, but it is also wider, taking in the whole round of spiritual emotion. Praise, adoration, may be and ought to be the predominant element. It was so undoubtedly in the spring-tide of hymnody — the first hymn writers being simply set on telling out in jubilant strain, for the relief of their own hearts, for the quickening and comfort of their brethren, and for the greater glory of God, what God had revealed of Himself, and what He had done for men ; but later on hymns xvi HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS began to embody moods of spiritual analysis, the desire to express the individual's consciousness, to show the soul to God as well as God to the soul. So much by way of genera] definition. But let us go further and ask "What constitutes a good hymn for jmblic worship ? " It must give voice to the general need. It must move to adoration. It must lift. Even a penitential hymn should lift — although, like the Dies Irae, it may first lay low in the dust, for, as Browning teaches us, there is a " stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too," "an obeisance in spirit " by which " we climb to God's feet." Further, a good hymn should have certain striking ideas vividly, memorably expressed, those ideas forming a connected whole. The diamonds should be so strung together that each may give lustre to all the rest. A good hymn is not necessarily informing. It is not the function of a hymn to instruct or awaken thought, that should be the function of a sermon. A hymn has to do with the emotions rather than with the intellect, though fresh thought, if it be of the order that commends itself at once to the mind, is welcome. Anything, however, in praise as in prayer that arrests the flow of devotional feeling, that excites the critical faculty, or prompts us to ask "What does the writer mean here?" is to be con- demned. Poems may be packed with thought and so quaintly, daintily phrased that you linger over every line, but a hymn must march straight forward and carry the singer by a natural sequence to the end without a break. In language, too, a good hymn should be simple and direct, so as to be easily understood, and it should also be melodious, its cadences falling gratefully on the ear. It may sometimes happen, however, that hymns which sin against all the canons will win and hold a place in general esteem from which no critics can dislodge them. INTRODUCTION xvn Such hymns as Toplady's Rock of Ages, and Matheson's Love that wilt not let me go, may easily be riddled by criticism, but its arrows pass through them and leave them unscathed. These two hymns represent quite opposite types; the one bristles with theology in every line, the other has no theology at all. The language of the one is simple, plain, direct ; of the other refined and subtle ; but both possess the ''indescribable something" that fastens on the imagination and on the heart. There is a famous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius overlooking the stairs that lead up to the Capitol in Rome, which a great modern sculptor, who had just finished an equestrian statue himself, came to examine one day. He picked a thousand faults in it, but all his hostile criticism was nullified by the final frank admission, " Mais ! cette mauvaise bete vit et la mienne est morte " — " This horrid beast lives, and mine is dead.'"' For life is more than form, and so there are hymns "faultlessly faultless'' which yet are "splendidly null," and others full of faults that breathe and burn. II Hymns may be broadly classified into objective and subjective, the former being mainly occupied with the devout contemplation of Deity in its essence, or as mani- festing itself in the providences of life, but chiefly in the redemption of the world by Jesus Christ j the latter embodying and expressing human moods and experiences. The glory and majesty, the mercy and goodness of God, the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection of the Son, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Judgment and the glory to come, these are the themes of the objective hymn : the divine attributes, all that God has done or has promised yet to do for man's salvation, being as it were xvm HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS held up before the mind to excite wonder, love, and praise. The earlier hymns are all in this vein — e.g. The Te Deum and the Gloria in Excelsis. There is no intro- spection or self-analysis. They are purely and simply calls to praise. They recognise the broad facts of human need and human destiny, but recognise them only as a back- ground to throw into stronger relief the greatness and goodness of God. In other words we may say that in these early hymns the leading feature is adoration. This no doubt was pro- bably due to the profound impression made upon the world by the " Mystery of Godliness " when first revealed. The facts were so surprising, so overwhelming, that the simple contemplation of them enthralled the imagination and engrossed the mind. Later, however, when men began to philosophise about the facts, to study them in relation to consciousness and the development of the spiritual life, the reflex action of the great Christian verities upon the soul began to claim expression from the singers of the Church, and so we get those hymns which tell more of how men feel or wish to feel than of what God is and does. Race, however, and mental type as well as environment and experience have much to do with the production of subjective as distinguished from objective hymns. To the latter class belong mostly hymns of Latin origin, while our subjective hymns are chiefly from Teutonic sources. We may say generally that the subjective are better adapted for private use, and the objective for use in the congregation. Take, for example, that wistful hymn by Cowper, Oh for a closer ivalk with God. In every congregation there are probably some to whom its verses come home with thrilling power, bringing back in days of faltering faith INTRODUCTION xix something of the old vision and the old peace, but they sound unreal on the lips of many in such assemblies, who have never had such experiences. Let us, however, not mistake. It were foolish to main- tain that hymns ought to be studiously kept clown to the level of average experience. If they were, no prose could be plain enough, rude enough, bald enough for the purpose. What Browning makes Andrea del Sarto say of art, applies equally to poetry : "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for 1 " If hymns are to fulfil their lifting function they must express not merely what we have attained to, but what we are aiming at. For telling out what we actually are and feel, there is another form of worship assigned — that of prayer. In our praises, so far as by these we express our own moods, we have to do not with the actual but with the possible, not with our poor achievements but with the aspirations of the soul. It were well, however, to avoid pitching the expression even of our aspiration in too high a key. $ fin many cases, no doubt, the hymns we would choose for private devotion are different from those we are accustomed to sing in public worship, but not a few of the latter are as frequently used in the closet as in the sanctuary for bracing and cheering the soul. How many, in days of languor and unrest, have got the message that lifted and cheered from the old Mar Saba Monk, in the hymn beginning, Art thou weary, art thou languid] When choosing was difficult or im- possible, Bonar or Xewman has come to our aid and shown us the true solution of the problem, the one with his Thy way, not mine, Lord, the other with his Lead, kindly Light. When the sense of our own un- worthiness has made conscience accuse and heart condemn, what shelter and hope it has brought to whisper, Rock of ages, cleft for me, or Just as J am, without one plea ; xx HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS or when conscience has been silent, and we have thought, like the brilliant Frenchman, to deal with sin by ignoring it, if we want to see it once again as God sees it, we shall get the right view by responding to the pathetic invitation, come and mourn with me awhile. In dark and desolate hours, has not the sense both of light and of fellowship often been restored by the words, Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear% while if we have had days of vision, or even moments on the Mount, be- holding the Glory, that high experience will nowhere find more fitting expression than in St. Bernard's ardent words, Jesus, the very thought of Thee, With siveetness fills my breast. Ill The Hebrew Psalter is at once the literary and the spiritual precursor of the Christian hymnal. We may go further and say — the Hebrew Psalter taught the churches how to praise. The fundamental notes of sacred song were first struck on the Hebrew lyre. These notes may be capable of infinite variation, but every genuine spiritual melody must have them as its base. The Christian singer has a wider range and a clearer vision. What the psalmist knew only under type, figure, and asjnration, is for him history, fact, and certainty. The salvation concerning which prophets searched diligently, and which angels desire to look into, the " Gospel of the glory of the blessed God," now clearly revealed and declared, the rich experiences of the Christian centuries, the victories of the Cross, all these give to the Christian singer a variety of theme far beyond what the psalmist possessed. But as regards the primary conditions of praise — the recognition of a living relation between man and God, INTRODUCTION xxi the sense that man's soul was made for God, and that God seeks man's soul, with all that this involves of aspiration, reverence, surrender, trust — for all this he must sit at the psalmist's feet. The Church has come in practice to distinguish between psalms and hymns, following so far the category of St. Paul, who, in writing to the Ephesians, gives the classifica- tion psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. But even in the Xew Testament, and frequently in the Greek Version of the Old Testament, the word hymn and the derived verb are sometimes applied to what we know as psalms. There can be little doubt, for example, that in St. Matthew xxvi. 30 " And when they had sung an hymn " (literally "having hymned") the reference is to the Hallel (Ps. cxiii.-cxviii.) which it was the custom to sing at the Paschal feast. The word occurs also in the Greek titles of some of the Psalms, and in the Greek text of several others, as in Ps. xxii. 23-25, quoted verbatim in Hebrews ii. 12 "In the midst of the congregation will I sing thy praise " (hymn Thee). As to whether the words in Acts xvi. 25, " Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns unto God," refer to forms of praise other than those of the Psalter we have no means of determining, though the Apostle's own language already quoted, and a similar classification in Col. iii. 16, would suggest that the Christian hope had already begun to express itself in lyric form. This conclusion is strengthened when we find in several of the Epistles passages of a rhythmical character which many critics hold to be quotations from early hymns : Eph. v. 14 ; 1 Tim. iii. 16 ; 1 Tim. vi. 15, 16 ; 2 Tim. ii. 11, 12. It is more than probable, however, that for long the Hebrew Psalter was the chief vehicle of Christian praise. The question here arises, In what category are we to xxii HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS place that notable triad preserved to us by St. Luke — the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and The Nunc Di?nittis, i.e. the songs of Mary, Zacharias, and Simeon, which are invested with an altogether unique significance by the personality of the singers, and their nearness to the Lord ? Shall we call them psalms or hymns 1 By their literary character they are linked to the Psalter, to the period of type and figure, to the twilight of Revelation ; while their form is wholly Hebrew, a rhythmical cadence, guided not by sound but sense, thought answering to thought instead of line to line. But if Hebrew in form and literary character they are Christian in theme and spirit, heralding the Gospel day. Their form indeed has been against their general use as praise, where praise has been associated with metre and rhyme ; but as the practice of chanting makes way, a place in almost all the churches is being found for these — the earliest, the most sacred utterances of the Christian muse. It is difficult to determine at what period hymns as distinct from 2^alms began to form a regular feature in public worship. The earliest allusion in secular literature to the practice of singing hymns, is the statement in the younger Pliny's well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan, to the effect that there were Christians in Bithynia who " on a stated day, before it was light, sang hymns to Christ as God." 1 They 'prevented the dawning of the morning with their songs ; but the practice did not become general until much later. IV According to the Augustinian definition, a hymn implies Music. "If thou praisest God and singest not, thou utterest no hymn." Happy the hymn that early finds its mate, and in its 1 a.d. 103-105. INTRODUCTION xxm mate a helpmeet — a musical setting that commends it to the popular ear. There are hymns of rare beauty that have never found their way into favour as vehicles of praise for lack of appropriate musical interpretation ; on the other hand there are hymns such as Lore that wilt not let me go; Hark/ the herald-angels sing, which owe not a little of their universal acceptance to the fact that the lyric poet's alter ego has set noble music to his golden words. Instances might even be given, were it not invidious, of hymns distinctly mediocre, hymns by no means golden, that are everywhere sung because some musician of genius has given them voice. Generally speaking, hymns to be musically effective must have tunes written for them, and that by some one who takes note of their spirit, their character, their message, and not simply of their metre. But nothing could be better said on this subject than was said more than 200 years ago by Thomas Mace in his quaint volume entitled Mustek's Monument, in which, among other points, he sets himself to " show the necessity of singing psalms well, in parochial churches, or not to sing at all." What he says with regard to musical composition is this : — The musician should observe to cast all such psalms as are concerning humiliation, confession, supplication, lamentation, or sorrow, etc., into a flat, solemn, mournful key ; and on the contrary, all such as are concerning rejoicing, praising of God, giving thanks or extolling His wondrous works or goodness, etc., into a sharp, sprightly, brisk key ; contriving for both as much majesty and stateliness as can be found out in the art which abounds with plenty ; observing the nature of the words, so as to suit them with the same likeness of conceit or humour from his art ; there being a very great affinity, nearness, naturalness, or sameness betwixt language and music although not known to many. And it is a bemoanable pity to consider how few there are who know, but fewer who consider, what wonderful, powerful, efficacious virtues and operations musick has upon the souls and spirits of men divinely bent. xxiv HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Of course, as a general rule, tunes are written for hymns. Still in a number of cases the process is reversed, the hymns being written at the suggestion — if one may use the expression — of some striking tune. It was so in the case of the famous children's hymn, There is a happy land, which was written by Mr. Y r oung, for an Indian air, and Mr. Baring-Gould informs us that Onward ! Christian soldiers was composed to an air of Haydn's, though it owes its extraordinary popularity to quite a different tune written for it by Sir Arthur Sullivan in strict accordance with the rules just quoted from Musick's Monument} When a hymn is once well suited with a tune there should be neither separation nor divorce, its whole devotional influence being often lost by an arbitrary change. When, however, a hymn is sung every day as is the case with the Te Deum and the Magnificat in many churches, a change of tune may be expedient to avoid monotony ; but for hymns that are only in occasional use one good tune is best. Tastes, of course, will differ as to what is best, alike in hymns and tunes, but in the end the general voice will be found confirming the verdict of reverent culture and holding by what is dignified, solemn, and devout. There have been hymns and tunes that attained with surprising swiftness a surprising popularity, which, after a few years, passed into oblivion. They were true utterances for their day, perhaps, and expressed the mood of their generation, but, either because the mood was spasmodic, or because they were too highly strung or were destitute of real poetic feeling or barren of thought, when tested by time and the calmer moods of the Church, they were found to lack those elements which are essential to the materials of permanent praise. On the whole it may be taken for 1 The God of Abraham praise, composed by Olivers to the tune " Ltioni " is another illustration. INTRODUCTION xxv granted that in hymns and tunes, as in species, the "fittest survive." One who had been engaged in Christian work in China has told us that he had enjoyed the friendship of two famous missionaries there — the one a Calvinist and Presbyterian, William Burns, the other a Wesleyan and Arminian, Dr. Davenport. Both were keen theologians and often dis- cussed together their respective creeds with the usual result — that each remained more firmly fixed in his own opinion than before. But Dr. Davenport, speaking one day to their mutual friend who tells the story, said, "When Mr. Burns and I discuss Arminian and Calvinistic theories we do not agree, but when Mr. Burns begins to pray, he is a 'pure Arminian." Some time afterwards meeting William Burns, this friend mentioned that he had recently seen Dr. Davenport, when Burns at once said, " Ah, Dr. Davenport is a saintly man. He and I used to be always discussing the Calvinistic and Arminian theories, but the remarkable thing was that when Dr. Davenport began to pray he was a Calvinist" The incident illustrates the fact that our divisions take rise for the most part in the intellectual sphere — the reasoning faculty having a special aptitude for bringing into view and magnifying the points wherein men differ. On the other hand, when men are moving in the spiritual and devotional spheres, the points on which they differ seem to fall into the background, while those on which there is agreement come to the front. In other words, discussion separates, worship unites. This is made abundantly evident when we take up almost any hymn- book in common use. No doubt hymns have been some- times written for controversial purposes. Gnostics, Arians, xxvi HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS and Orthodox ; Ritualists and Evangelicals ; Protestants and Roman Catholics ; Unitarians and Trinitarians have written hymns to serve sectarian ends. They have been used as weapons, as arguments, as battle cries, to promul- gate creeds or to sap them. This, however, is a perversion of their true use. Hymns indeed can hardly fail to reflect and be coloured by their composer's theology, but almost inevitably, when a hymn -writer sets himself deliberately to enlist sacred poetry in the service of dogma or ecclesiasticism, the muse takes flight. She cannot breathe in the heavy air of con- troversy. One may write versified prose in a controversial spirit, but a true hymn demands a mood detached from sectarian or party strife, a mood possessed by and pulsating with those great emotions that are common to every worshipping soul. And so the greatest hymns — hymns with truest lyric ring — the hymns that help us most, though written, as some of them have been, by narrowest sectaries, are free from the sectarian taint, because when men get into the spirit of praise they are brought for the time being into touch with the spirit of Heaven, and in Heaven all are as one. It would indeed be a most instructive object lesson on unity in diversity if we could bring together the hymn- writers represented in almost any modern hymnal to sing their hymns together. Fancy a choir including within it Toplady, staunchest of Calvinists ; Wesley, staunchest of Arminians ; Presbyterian Bonar and Anglican Keble ; Luther who left Rome and Faber who went over to it ; mediaeval monks and Charles Kingsley ; Heber and Navier ; Watts, the Independent ; Montgomery, the Moravian; Barton, the Quaker; Sears, the Unitarian; Newman, the Cardinal, singing side by side ! Set these men to discuss problems in theology or questions of church INTRODUCTION xxvn ritual and government, what discord there would be ! But singing together, when not the intellect but the heart and spirit speak, they would make one music, for singing together men forget the non-essentials on which they differ, and remember only the passion for holiness, the enthusiasm for righteousness, the gratitude for mercy, the love for their Lord in which they agree. Hymns are sung in assemblies where their authors would never come. The words of bishop, abbot, and cardinal are used in lowly conventicles where their stately canonicals would seem strangely out of place. On the other hand, the hymns of many a simple nonconformist layman are sung by white-robed choristers under the fretted roofs of venerable cathedrals — the one touch, not of nature, but of grace, making singers and writers kin, so giving us a fore-glimpse of the time when the whole Christian company shall be gathered into one flock under the great Shepherd and shall not only believe in but see and know the communion of saints. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of hymns as sung in the sanctuary. They have probably done as much to keep alive in the Church and in the world the "faith once delivered to the saints" as all the creeds, for so long as men continue to sing, My soul doth magnify the Lord ; We praise Thee, God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord, they will have in their ears and in their hearts a witness they cannot silence to the great doctrines of grace. So true it is as Herbert sang — A verse may find him who a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice. SECTION I TER SANCTUS. GLORIA IN EXCELSIS. TE DEUM The hymns whose names stand at the head of this section are not dealt with first because they are the oldest we possess. In germ they may be, but in completed form they are subsequent to Shepherd of tender youth and Hail, gladdening Light. But as two of them, the Ter Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) and the Gloria in Excelsis, have had a fixed place in the Service-books of East and West, and all three in those of the Western Church for more than a thousand years, they are invested with very special interest. No other hymns have been sung so often ; no other hymns link us to so many worshippers through so many centuries. They deserve first place, however, not for historical reasons only, but for their intrinsic beauty. As hymns of pure adoration, simple, yet solemn, and rich in spiritual suggestion they are unapproached. In one respect the Ter Sanctus may be counted the oldest of the three, for it is based on Isaiah's song of the Seraphim ; in Service-books its place is in the Communion Office, but the Gloria in Excelsis has probably been longer in use as a hymn of the Church. Its germ is the angel's song at Bethlehem. In the West 2 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS it has a place, like the Ter SancUts, in the order for Holy Communion. In the East it is used as a morning hymn. It may have been one of those to which Pliny refers in his letter to Trajan, when he speaks of the Christians singing hymns to Christ as God at the dawning of the day. A copy of it appears in the Codex Alexandrinus, the famous Uncial MS. of the Holy Scriptures now in the British Museum, which dates back to the middle of the fifth century. With regard to the Te Deum, there is a beautiful tradition which one would fain have verified, that it was composed under inspiration and recited by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, immediately after the baptism of the latter in a.d. 387. It would be an ideal origin for this ideal hymn, which is "at once a hymn, a creed, and a prayer, or rather a creed taking wings and soaring heaven- ward." But the tradition has no historical foundation, and reaches no farther back than a.d. 859. The first undoubted reference to the hymn, or at least to a hymn called Te Deum Laudamus, is in a.d. 502, when St. Caesarius, Bishop of Aries, is said to have ordered its use in the Sunday morning service, but the oldest text extant, an Irish MS., is of the seventh century (680-691). Probably, however, like the Apostle's Creed, it was a growth, not a single inspiration. As now current in the West, it consists of twenty-nine verses, but several of the earliest forms have only tw r enty-six. As the last eight verses are almost identical with the concluding verses of the Gloria in Excelsis, as sung in the Eastern Church, it has been argued that the Te Deum, in its original form, stopped at the words, Make them to be mimbered with Thy saints in glory everlasting, and that the last eight verses are an addition from the Gloria. It will be observed that the tone of these closing measures is different from that of the opening stanzas, the sin- TER SANCTUS GLORIA IN EXCELSIS TE DEUM 3 shadow on life darkening these measures, while the atmosphere of the rest of the hymn is glowing light. The Te Deum forms part of the daily morning service in the Roman and Anglican Churches, though usually omitted during Lent, and sometimes also during Advent. It does not appear in Greek Service-books, though it has come to be very popular in Russia since the seventeenth century, where it is known as the Song of St. Ambrose. In addition to its use in the daily service, it is, in the West, always appointed to be sung on occasions of great rejoicing and after a victory, or on the conclusion of peace, also at coronations, at the consecration of bishops, and after the election of a pope. Shakespeare refers to it as a song of triumph in his Henry V., and in his Henry VIII. as being used at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and so it has been termed the " shrine round which the Church has hung her joys for centuries," while its very name is associated with gladness and victory. SECTION II HYMNS FROM GKEEK SOURCES The Service-books of the Eastern Church are computed by Dr. Neale to contain about 4000 closely printed quarto pages of sacred poetry, "a glorious mass of theology." But Greek hymns are cast in a form not easy to reproduce in English, though Dr. Neale and others have been able so to render some of them that they rank in popularity with the best original English hymns. The first Greek hymn-writer, however, who falls to be mentioned is not represented in those Service-books, his compositions in their original form not being adapted for church use. Clement of Alexandria, c. 170-220. — After studying in the philosophic schools of East and West, he embraced Christianity, and was one of the first to bring Greek culture to bear on the exposition of Christian truth. From a.d. 190-203 he was head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, having among his pupils the illustrious Origen. He wrote many treatises marked by extensive learning, original thinking, and lofty aspirations eloquently expressed. The earliest hymn we possess is from his pen, if it be not an adaptation of some still older hymn. Mrs. Browning terms it "bald of merit " ; but Dr. Bonar found it fascinating, — in spite of its homely images and broken style, — by reason of its fervour of spirit and splendid wit- ness to the unsearchable riches of Christ. Mrs. Charles HYMNS FROM GREEK SOURCES 5 writes of it thus : " Through all the images here so quaintly interwoven — like a stained window, of which the eye loses the design in the complication of colours — we may surely trace, as in quaint old letters on a scroll winding through all the mosaic of tints, 'Christ is all.'" Shepherd of tender youth is a free rendering of some of its lines by an American writer, Dr. Dexter. Lead, Holy Shepherd, lead us is another by Dr. Macgill. But a better idea of the quaintness of the original may be gathered from Dr. Alexander's version, which is fairly literal. These are some of the most characteristic stanzas — Bridle of colts untamed, Over our will presiding ; "Wing of unwandering birds Our flight securely guiding. Rudder of youth unbending, Firm against adverse shock ; Shepherd with wisdom tending- Lambs of the royal flock : Thy simple children bring In one, that they may sing In solemn lays Their hymns of praise, With guileless lips to Christ their King. Shepherd who dost us keep, Husbandman who tillest, Bit to restrain us. Rudder To guide us as Thou wiliest. Fisher of men, whom thou to life dost bring From evil sea of sin, And from the billowy strife Gathering pure fisbes in, Caught with sweet bait of life. Next in point of date there falls to be mentioned an exquisite evening hymn given in the Greek Service-books 6 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS as a candle or lamp -lighting hymn, and still in daily use in the Greek Church. The English version by Keble, Hail, gladdening Light, of His pure glory 'poured, has now a place in most modern hymn-books. There is another rendering by Longfellow in his Golden Legend, of which the opening lines are : gladsome Light Of the Father immortal ! St. Basil, in a.d. 370, refers to it in the following terms, as a proof that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had been accepted and settled by the Church : — " It seemed fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of the light at eventide in silence, but on its appearing, immediately to give thanks. Who was the author of these words of thanksgiving at the Lighting of the Lamps we are not able to say. The people, however, utter the ancient form, and no one has ever reckoned guilty of impiety those Avho say, ' We praise Father, Son, and God's Holy Spirit.'" Synesius, c. — 414, Bishop of Ptolemais. — A con- temporary of St. Augustine. One of the most picturesque figures of his period, familiar to the ordinary reader through the portrait of him in Kingsley's Hypatia. His last letter is said to have been written to that illustrious lady. He played many parts in life, but so acted in them all that he "deserved to be admired, and still more to be loved." He was soldier, sportsman, statesman, orator, poet, philosopher, and last of all, bishop. The episcopal character, Gibbon says, he assumed with reluctance, but supported with dignity. In Mrs. Browning's estimation he was, for true and natural gifts, the chief of all our Greek Christian poets. His poems are deeply tinged with the Neo-Platonic philo- sophy, but there is a touching Christian simplicity in his last ode, of which Lord Jesus, think on me is a free rendering by Mr. Chatfield. The whole ode makes HYMNS FROM CREEK SOURCES 7 evident that the statesman - philosopher and " Squire Bishop " had the heart of a little child. St. Andrew, 660-732, Archbishop of Crete.— In addi- tion to several homilies (of which one on his great predecessor Titus is said to be specially good) there are extant a number of canons by this author. A canon, " the highest effort of Greek Hymnody," consists of eight or nine odes founded on the canticles used in the service of the Greek Church. His "great canon," the "king of canons," though of prodigious length, extending to over 300 stanzas, is still sung on the Thursday before Palm Sunday. It is of a deeply penitential character, " the soul being set to go through a list of the chief sinners and- saints of Holy Writ, likening itself to the one, and lamenting how far it comes short of the other." Christian I dost thou see them ? is a translation by Neale from one of his compositions. St. Cosmas, c. — 760. — Often called "the Melodist," and ranked second among Greek ecclesiastical poets — John of Damascus, his foster-brother and friend, being usually given the first place. Both were monks of the Monastery of St. Sabas, where it is said "they excited each other to hymnology, and assisted, corrected, and polished each other's compositions." St. Cosmas afterwards became Bishop of Maiuma, near Gaza, in Palestine. He was the most learned of Greek Church poets, and specially fond of types, but is hard to comprehend. Neale has translated several of his poems, but only one, In days of old on Sinai (a hymn on the Trans- figuration), is in common use. St. Cosmas has a place in the Calendar of the Greek Church, and the estimation in which he was held is indicated by these lines in the hymn for his day — Where perfect sweetness dwells is Cosmas gone ; But his sweet lays to cheer the Church live on. 8 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS St. John Damascene, c. — 780. — A native of Damascus, where be is said to have held high civil office for a time, but most of his life was spent in a monastery founded by St. Sabas in what Major Conder terms a " horrible wilder- ness," whose caves were the favourite resort first of Essene, and then of Christian, Anchorites. This monastery, still inhabited, stands on a lofty cliff overhanging the Kedron Valley about ten miles south-east of Jerusalem, and not far from the western shores of the Dead Sea. Cosmas, his foster-brother (q.v.), and Stephen, his nephew, whose name Neale associates with his Art thou weary, art thou languid, were fellow-monks and fellow-poets. It touches the imagination to reflect how the waves of deep Christian feeling, set in motion centuries ago by those recluses, have widened in their sweep until now in every continent they make music for the Church. Surely the writers must have had their visions and ecstasies, like Longfellow's monk, breaking in on the dull monotony of their narrow life ; or was it that the very limitations of their earthly horizon brought the heavenly near 1 Those eternal bowers, however, by John of Damascus is martial rather than monastic, though it ends in a tender, wistful strain : "While I do my duty, struggling through the tide, Whisper thou of beauty on the other side ! Tell who will the story of our now distress, • the future glory ! the loveliness ! This strenuous age of ours loses a good deal when the war of our activities drowns that gentle whisper. The Day of Resurrection, a trumpet- note for Easter morn, is also from his pen, and is still chanted in the churches of Greece, after pealing cannon, rolling drum, and blazing rockets in the streets and the flashing lights of HYMNS FROM GREEK SOURCES 9 a thousand tapers in the church, have announced that the long dark Lenten period has passed, and the great Christian festival of the Resurrection been ushered in. Among many other compositions ascribed to this famous poet is one of exquisite pathos and intense emotion entitled The Last Kiss. It is sung towards the close of the funeral office in the Eastern Church, while the friends and relations are, in turn, kissing the corpse, the priest doing so last of all. It is then borne to the grave, when the priest casts the first earth on the coffin, with the words, "The earth is the Lord's and all that therein is, the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein." We quote the first of the twelve stanzas as translated by Xeale : Take the last kiss — the last for ever ! Yet render thanks amidst your gloom : He, severed from his home and kindred, Is passing onwards to the tomb : For earthly labours, earthly pleasures, And carnal joys he cares no more. Where are his kinsfolk and acquaintance .' They stand upon another shore, Let us say, around him pressed, {; Grant him, Lord, eternal rest ! " St. Joseph, the Hymnographer, — 883. — A Sicilian by birth. The mpst prolific of Greek hymn-writers, and of great repute in the Eastern Church. He was for many years a slave in Crete. He afterwards founded a monastery in Constantinople. Dr. Xeale has translated a number of his compositions, though protesting against his tediousness, verbiage, and bombast. This protest, however, would seem uncalled for to judge by his own renderings in such instances as Let our choir new anthems raise; Stars of the mprning, so gloriously bright; happy band of pilgrims, and Safe home, safe home in port. 10 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS But the first two are centos composed of thoughts scattered up and down the poems of St. Joseph, and the last two " contain so little that is from the Greek " that they should really be counted as original hymns by Dr. Neale. SECTION III EARLY LATIN HYMNS During the first three centuries of the Christian era the singers of the Church, with a few exceptions (there are some early Syriac hymns), used the language of the New Testament — the language of the Evangelists and Apostles — as the vehicle of praise. But in the middle of the fourth century the voice of Christian song began to make itself heard in the Latin tongue, and for a thousand years that tongue was practically its sole medium in the churches of the West. The strain was opened by — St. Hilary, 368. — A native of Poitiers, he was brought up as a Pagan, but became a convert to Christianity through reading the Scriptures. Like Ambrose of Milan, while still a layman (and married) he was elected by his fellow-citizens to the see of his native town, receiving ordination as deacon and priest, and consecration as bishop in rapid succession. On account of his life-long struggle with Arianism, he has been styled The Hammer of the Avians, and The Athanasius of the West. His treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity is the earliest work in Latin on that subject. According to St. Jerome he wrote a Booh of Hymns, and is referred to by Isidore, Archbishop of Seville in the seventh century, as the first Latin hymn- writer, but only some seven or eight of his hymns have been preserved. 12 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Gone are the shades of night, is a translation of one of these by Mr. Brownlie. St. Ambrose, 340-397. — Born at Treves and trained as a lawyer, he was appointed Consular of Liguria. In this capacity he had to preside at the election of a Bishop for the Diocese of Milan. A fierce contest was expected, as the Arians were in great force. Suddenly a voice — said to be the voice of a child — rang out "Ambrose for Bishop." The cry was at once taken up by the crowd, for both parties knew him to be sagacious, upright, and devout, and he was elected. But not only was Ambrose not yet a priest, he had not even been baptized. In the fourth century, however, Church order was not so rigid as it afterwards became; it could adapt itself to emergencies. And so within eight days, after his reluctance to accept the sacred office so unexpectedly conferred had been overcome, Ambrose was baptized, ordained, and consecrated. He proved a strong statesmanlike bishop, and no mean theologian. He took the reins at a crisis when Arianism and Orthodoxy were in fierce conflict, but ere he died, and mainly through his influence, the Catholic faith was triumphant in Milan. Masterful as Hildebrand, he asserted himself successfully alike against the Arian Empress Faustina, his enemy, and the Orthodox Emperor Theodosius, his friend, in whose face he shut the doors of the Basilica, until he had done penance for ruthless slaughter at Thessalonica. Ambrose did much for Church music. He introduced antiphonal or responsive singing in Milan, and, accord- ing to Mabillon (following Bellarmine), was the first in Italy to encourage general congregational singing. 1 This is borne out by the following classic passage 1 According to tradition, Ignatius, c. — 109, was the first to introduce responsive singing into the service of the Church, " because he had seen a vision of angels praising God in antiphonal hymns." EARLY LATIN HYMNS 13 from the Confessions of St. Augustine, whom Ambrose baptized :— How did I weep in Thy hymns and canticles, sharply affected by the voices of Thy Church sweetly sounding them ! Those tones flowed into mine ear, and the truth distilled into my heart, and thence the affection of my devotion overflowed and tears ran down, and they did me good. Not long had the Church of Milan begun to practise this kind of consolation and exhortation, the brethren giving great care to the tuneful harmony of voices and hearts. For it was a year, or not much more, since Justina, mother of the boy Emperor Yalentinian, persecuted Thy servant Ambrose, on account of her heresy, to which she had been seduced by the Arians. The devout people kept watch in the church, ready to die with their bishop, Thy servant. There my mother, Thy handmaid, bearing a chief part of those anxieties and watchings, lived in prayers. We, though as yet unmelted by the heat of Thy spirit, were nevertheless excited by the alarm and tumult of the city. Then it was first instituted that according to the custom of Eastern regions, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should faint through the fatigue of sorrow, and from that day to this the custom has been retained ; and to-day many, indeed almost all, Thy congregations throughout other parts of the world follow that example. As a hymn-writer Ambrose belongs to the transition period when the classical metres were beginning to be laid aside, and rhymed verse was preparing to take their place. The golden age of Latin rhyme was yet to come. Many hymns are attributed to him, but only twelve on good authority. Jesus, Lord of heavenly grace, is a render- ing by Chandler of his morning hymn. A verse of an evening hymn is cpuoted in the Confessions of St. Augustine as coming to his mind in bed the night after his mother's funeral. In Cooke's Hymnary this verse is rendered by J. D. Chambers as follows : — Blest Creator, God most High, Great Ruler of the starry sky, AYho robing day with beauteous light Hast clothed in soft repose the night, 14 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS That sleep may wearied limbs restore, And fit for toil and use once more ; May gently soothe the careworn breast, And lull our anxious griefs to rest. Prudentius, 348-413. — A native of Spain, but a loyal patriotic Roman, who regarded the " empire as an instru- ment in the hands of Providence for the advancement of Christianity," and who lived to see the imperial influence cast avowedly into the Christian scale. In his boyhood, however, the throne was filled by Julian the Apostate, whom he describes as " faithful to Rome, though faithless to his God." Prudentius was trained for the bar and rose to high office in the State, "holding the reins of power over famous cities." But at the age of fifty-seven, brought somehow to feel that his past life had been wasted, he resolved — Now then, at last, close on the very end of life, May yet my sinful soul put off her foolishness ; And if by deeds it cannot, yet, at least, by words give praise to God, Join day to day by constant hymns, Fail not each night in songs to celebrate the Lord, Fight against heresies, maintain the Catholic faith. The Spiritual Combat, Christian Day, and Martyrs' Garland are among his best-known writings, but though Neale calls him " the prince of early Christian poets," and Bentley "the Horace and Virgil of the Christians," his poems are now chiefly studied for the sake of their historical and ecclesiastical allusions. Several beautiful hymns, however, have been gleaned from his pages. Of the Father's love begotten, is a translation, by Dr. Neale and Sir H. Baker, of some stanzas from one of the twelve poems that make up The Christian's Day. Sweet flowerets of the martyr band, is from the last poem of the series, and is a translation by Sir H. Baker. EARLY LATIN HYMNS 15 Coelius Sedulius, (c.)450. — Author of Carmen Paschale; a minute and vivid poem on the gospel story, extending to 1700 hexameters. Little is known of him, save that he was converted late in life, and is named by Fortunatus as one of the first five Christian poets. From east to west, from shore to shore is a translation by Mr. Ellerton of some stanzas from a " triumphal song " concerning Christ, alphabetically arranged. Hoc: vain the cruel Herod? s fear, is a translation from the same poem by Neale. Venantius Fortunatus, 530-609. — An Italian by birth, though most of his life was spent in France. Like Clement Marot he began with being the fashionable poet of his day, the last of the Latin "troubadours," but in later life he strung his harp to graver strains. The "world- famous" processional hymn, The Royed Banners go (Vexilla Piegis), composed for the consecration of a church at Poitiers, of which see he was bishop, has been ascribed to him. In this hymn Latin rhyme was " first fully developed, and that in a form seldom surpassed." Gregory the Great, 5-I0-60I. — One of the most famous of the Popes, and one of the four great doctors of the Latin Church. Until over thirty years of age he was engaged in secular pursuits, having been trained as a lawyer, but on the death of his father, he gave up his fortune to pious uses, and joined the order of St. Benedict. The sight of some English slaves exposed for sale in the market at Rome, drew from him the well-known words, "Xon angli sed angeli," and inspired him with the desire to go as a missionary to Britain. This pious wish was frustrated by his ecclesiastical superiors, though after- wards he had the privilege of consecrating Augustine for the work — to do for England what Columba was doing for Scotland. When the papal chair fell vacant in a.d. 590, he was elected Pope with rare unanimity, himself only protesting. 16 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS His pontificate lasted for fourteen years. He did much to extend the power and influence of the papacy by his astute statesmanship, rigid ecclesiastical discipline, and personal piety. Gregory is also credited with having done much to improve Church music, but the exact nature of the reforms he introduced cannot now be determined. Their wisdom, however, may well be questioned, if it be the case, as is sometimes represented, that he discouraged congregational singing. The Gregorian tones or chants which bear his name are said to have been due to his anxiety to " supersede the more melodious and flowing style of Church music, which is popularly attributed to St. Ambrose, by the severer and more solemn monotone which is their characteristic." 1 The famous Veni Creator {Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire), is sometimes attributed to Pope Gregory, but on insufficient grounds. The hymns beginning Good it is to keep the Fast; and Christ our King, are, however, generally admitted to be his composition. Bede (the Venerable), 673-735.— Author of The great forerunner of the morn. Though but a simple monk in the monastery of Jarrow (for he refused to become abbot), the fame of his learning drew so many scholars from other lands to sit at his feet, that the kingdom of Nortkumbria became one of the great literary centres of Western Europe in the early years of the eighth century. He wrote treatises on astronomy, medicine, rhetoric, and music, but his most valuable legacy to the world was his Ecclesiastical History, a work of great research and wonderful accuracy, which still remains our chief authority for the history of England in the first seven centuries of our era. One of his pupils has left on record a touching account of his last days. 1 Julian. EAELY LATIN HYMNS 17 Nearly a fortnight before Easter he was seized with an extreme weakness, in consequence of his difficulty of breathing, but with- out pain. He continued thus until Ascension day, always joyous and happy, giving thanks to God day and night. He gave us our lessons daily, and employed the rest of his time in chanting psalms, and passed every night, after a short sleep, in joy and thanksgiving, but without closing his eyes. From the moment of waking he resumed his prayers and praises to God, with hia arms in the form of a cross. He also sang anthems. ... At this time he was finishing a translation of the Gospel of St. John into our English tongue, for the use of the Church. On the eve of the Feast of Ascension, at the first dawn of morning, he desired that what had been commenced should be quickly finished. In the evening the young secretary said to him, "Beloved master, there remains only one verse which is not written." " Write it then, quickly," he said. And the young man cried, "It is finished." You say truly "It is finished," said he. "Support my head in thine arms, for I desire to sit in the holy place where I am accustomed to pray, that sitting there, I may call upon my Father." Thus, lying on the floor of his cell, he sang for the last time, "Glory be to the Fatlier, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit" ; and with these last words on his lips, — a fitting close to one who had sung God's praises in his life — he gave up the ghost. SECTION IV LATER LATIN HYMNS Those who first wrote Christian hymns in Latin had often difficulty in finding terms to express the new Christian ideas, but the use of this language for centuries by the theologians of the Western Church so moulded it as to render it capable, in skilful hands, of expressing the most subtle shades of thought with a terse vigour and a sonorous cadence, — the envy and despair of translators. Among the first of these later Latin hymns may be mentioned All Glory, laud, and honour, usually ascribed to St. Theodulph (9th century), Bishop of Orleans, and said to have been composed by him while in prison at Angers. According to a popular legend, "it was first sung on Palm Sunday a.d. 821, when Louis the Pious, King of France, was at Angers, and took part in the usual procession of the clergy and laity. As the procession passed the place where St. Theodulph was incarcerated, he stood at the open window of his cell, and, amid the silence of the people, sang this hymn which he had already composed. The King was so delighted with it that he at once ordered the Bishop to be set at liberty and restored to his see, and the hymn henceforth to be always used on Palm Sunday." St. Bernard, 1091-1153. — A native of Burgundy and of noble birth. Like his father, who had fought in the LATER LATIN HYMNS 19 first Crusade, he wished to be a soldier, but became a monk, as had been his pious mother's wish and prayer. Four of his brothers followed him into the cloister, and he drew so many after him by his almost magical fascina- tion that "mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, companions their friends," lest they should fall under his influence. His self-denial was most rigorous; he counted sleep as a loss, took food only to keep him- self from fainting, and delighted in the most menial offices. But though neither loving nor seeking greatness it was thrust on him. The Head of the Benedictine monastery at Citeaux — Stephen Harding, an Englishman — discerning his genius, sent him forth with a band of devotees to found a new monastery at Clairvaux, of which he became the abbot. When, after the death of Honorius II., Christendom was divided between two rival claimants for the Papacy, St. Bernard's advocacy finally won the triple crown for Innocent II. His influence was further mani- fested and confirmed by his controversy with the famous Abelard, and again by his successful organising of the second Crusade, though the terrible disaster that overtook this enterprise exposed him in the end to sharp reproach. But none ever questioned the purity of his motives and the absolute consistency of his life. Luther called him " the best monk that ever lived." Jesus, the very thought of Thee ; Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts ; Jesu, King most ivonderful, are transla- tions from a long poem on the " Name of Jesus " by the great statesman-abbot, whom we like to picture turning from ecclesiastical and political turmoil to pour out his soul in fervent adoration of the Lord. Another Bernard (12th century), sometimes styled of Morlaix (the place of his birth), sometimes of Clugny (the name of his monastery), must be mentioned next. 20 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Neale, in his tribute to Keble, thus distinguishes the two : — Bernard, Minstrel of the Cross, And Bernard, who with home-sick view, Counting all other joys but loss, Jerusalem the golden drew. Nothing is known of this writer's history save that he was a monk of the famous abbey of Clugny, near Macon, the wealthiest and most influential monastery in France. Brief life is here our 'portion ; Jerusalem the Golden ; The world is very evil, are from a poem entitled De contemptu Mundi, translated under the title, A Rhythm on the Celestial Country, by Neale, who expresses his thankfulness that the "Cluniac's verses have been per- mitted to solace the death-beds of so many of God's servants, and not seldom to have supplied them with the last earthly language of praise." Few would imagine that those visions of the "sweet and blessed country " are taken from what is in great part a satire, fierce and outspoken as any of Lucian's, aimed against the corruptions of the time. Adam of St. Victor (12th century). — "The foremost among the sacred Latin poets of the Middle Ages" (Trench). " My dear and reverend master " (Neale). When two such authorities on hymnology speak of a hymn-writer in these terms, one is surprised to find so few examples from his pen in common use. But though his Latin is terse and felicitous, and his knowledge of Scrip- ture deep and accurate, his metrical constructions and recondite symbolisms do not easily lend themselves to translation. In Hymns Ancient and Modern we find, however, these four : In royal robes of splendour ; Come, sing, ye choirs exultant; Yesterday, ivith exultation; Come, pure hearts, in sweetest measures. Adam, who was a monk of the famous Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, is LATER LATIN HYMNS 21 described as Brito, which may indicate either a native of Britain or of Brittany. Thomas of Celano (13th century). — The friend and biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, and reputed author of the Dies Irae, the most sublime and awe-inspiring compo- sition in the whole range of hymnology — " unearthly in its pathos, magnificent in its diction," with " triple hammer- stroke of triple rhyme." Used in the Burial Service of the Roman Church, it is sung in most Protestant Churches as an Advent hymn. The opening words are taken from Zeph- aniah i. 15, and for seven stanzas the writer, by visions of judgment, strives to awaken the sense of utter helplessness to " reduce the soul to complete despair, that it may be brought to cast itself in passionate trust on the mercy and love of the Redeemer." Of all the old Latin hymns the Dies Irae is the best known among Protestants, partly because, as a writer in the Christian Magazine of 1760 quaintly says, "It savoureth more of Protestantism than of Popery," and partly because in Germany Goethe introduced it with thrilling effect into his Faust, while in Britain it laid hold on the imagination of Scott, who makes use of it in his Lay of the Last Minstrel. There were many English versions before Scott's day, — one by Joshua Sylvester as early as 1621, — and there have been many since, over 200 by English and American writers, but Scott first made it known to the masses, and yet, as has been pointed out by two acute critics, Mr. Gladstone and a writer in the Spectator, 1868 (presumably Mr. Hutton), Scott's version is really an original hymn, though counted among the versions of the Dies Irae, because it starts on the same note. The tender, pleading strain of the Dies Irae in the 8th stanza, however, is but faintly suggested by Scott. The version by Dr. Irons is that most commonly adopted. From Julian's dictionary we gather that he wrote it after hearing the original sung in Notre Dame at a solemn 22 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS requiem service in memory of Archbishop Affre of Paris, who fell at the Barricades in 1848. St. Thomas Aquinas, 1227-1274.— The greatest of mediaeval divines and ranking in the Roman Church next to the four Latin Fathers, — Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory. His Summa Theologiae, still the standard text-book for Romanist theologians, was held in such esteem as to be placed on a table at the Council of Trent along- side of the Holy Scriptures and the Decrees of the Popes. He belonged to the Dominican order, and combined splendid genius with untiring industry. He is said to have been able to dictate to four secretaries at once. Great cities, universities, and churches contended for his lectures and sermons when he was alive, and for his relics when dead ; while popes and princes at critical junctures sought his advice. But though he exercised commanding influence, he remained unspoiled, living a devout and simple life, refusing all dignities. He was offered but declined the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Archbishopric of Naples, and a Cardinal's hat. His common title is " the Angelical Doctor," and it has been said of him that he was "the most saintly of the learned and the most learned of the saints." A beautiful legend relates that the Lord appeared to him one day in a vision, and said, "Thomas, thou hast written well of Me; what reward wouldst thou have for thy labour?" — "None other than Thyself, Lord ! " His hymn, Noiv my tongue, the mystery telling, in Dr. Neale's judgment contests the second place in the Western Church with the Stahat Mater ; The royal banners for- ward go ; Jesus, the very thought of Thee, and some others, leaving the Dies Irae in unapproachable glory. The grounds of this judgment, however, are probably not so much literary as dogmatic. Jean Baptiste Santeuil, 1630-1697.— At the age of LATER LATIN HYMNS 23 twenty lie entered the abbey of St. Victor, Paris. His earliest poetic efforts in glorification of the French capital made him a favourite at court and in society, and brought him the friendship of Louis XIV. and the Princes of Conde. Bossuet was also his friend. He was led to hymn -writing through his brother Claude, who was also a talented poet, and who, having been invited by the Archbishop of Paris to aid in reform- ing the hymns of the Breviary, called Jean Baptiste to his aid. The latter has been charged with showing more of classical than of ecclesiastical feeling in his hymns, as if — to reverse Fuller's criticism on Sternhold and Hopkins — he had drunk more of Helicon than of Jordan, but they suited the taste of the time so well that he was asked to write hymns for the Cluniac Breviary as well. Disposer Supreme and Sio?i, open ivicle thy gates are good examples of his style. Charles Coffin, 1676-1749. — Educated at Duplessis College, Paris. In 1701 appointed by the historian Bollin, his chief subordinate at Beauvais College. Rector of Paris University 1718-21 ; then head of Beauvais till his death. The best of his hymns appear in the Paris Breviary. In Hymns Ancient and Modern there are a large number of this writer's compositions translated by Chandler, Isaac Williams, and others. Great God, Who, hid from mortal sight is termed by Lord Selborne a "noble hymn," one that breathes the true Ambrosian spirit. Among hymns of uncertain authorship there are three of special beauty and interest which we must not omit to notice : the Veni Creator, the Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the Stahat Mater. The first-named, formerly ascribed to St. Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Charlemagne and others, is now generally regarded as anonymous. Yet round no other hymn, save the Te Deum, do so many sacred memories gather, 24 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS associated as it has been with the most solemn functions of the Church, — councils, consecrations, coronations, ordinations, — for at least eight centuries. In mediaeval times its singing was "marked with special dignity, by the ringing of bells, the use of incense, of lights, of the best vestments." 1 It needs, however, no ceremonial to heighten its effect, for the strain itself arrests the worshipper and brings a hush of solemn expectation on the soul. The Dies Irae has been more frequently translated, but there is no hymn of which so many versions are in common use. There are no fewer than five in the hymnals dealt with in the index of this volume. Come, Holy Ghost, Eternal God (Book of Common Prayer). Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire (Bp. Cosin). Creator Spirit ! by whose aid (Dryden). Come, Holy Ghost, Creator come (Tate and Brady). Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest (Caswall). The Veni Sancte Sjnritus (Come, Thou Holy Paraclete), is termed by Archbishop Trench the "loveliest of all ] ymns in the whole circle of Latin poetry." He adds, L.at "it could only have been composed by one who had been acquainted with many sorrows and also with many consolations." It has often been assigned to Robert II., King of France, sometimes also to Stephen Langton, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, but Dr. Julian holds that the most probable author was Pope Innocent III. In mediaeval times it was called the " Golden Sequence." In its Latin form every third line ends in ium and rhymes with every other third line. Such a " formal verse scheme " would seem to be artificial and cramping, but in spite of these fettering conditions it glows with poetic feeling and devotion, combining in its movement a certain stately grace with perfect rhythmic melody. 1 Julian. LATEK LATIN BYMNS Xo hymn has so often inspired the genius of painters and musicians as that which tells in (; mournful numbers " of the weeping mother at the Cross. Xo gallery of sacred art is without its Stdbat Mater, while the musical settings of this intensely pathetic hymn are among the master- pieces of such famous composers as Palestrina, Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorak. Ascribed to Gregory the Great. St. Bernard, St. Bonaventura. Pope Innocent III., Jacobus de Benedictis, and others, its authorship remains uncertain. As regards date it cannot be traced farther back than 1150, and it did not come into general use until the 14th century, when the Flagellants made it known, singing it in their pilgrimages from town to town. Frequently translated, the hymn is not often sung in Protestant churches except as one of a series illustrating the Seven "Words of the Cross. The favourite Engii>h rendering is that by Caswall, At tit cross lor st>iti Mr. Spectator*'' thanking him for the hymns published in previous issues, and sending a version by himself of the 111th Psalm, with the modest proviso, "If the following essay be not too incorrigible, bestow upon it a few brightenings from your genius that I may learn how to write better, or to write no more." How are Thy servants blest, Lord/ is said in the \ stator to have been " made by a gentleman at the conclusion of his travels.'* Lord Macaulay regards it as a reminiscence of a storm Addison experienced in coasting between Marseilles and Genoa when the " ; captain of the ship gave up all for lost." It is given in the Spectator in the first person, and with three additional verses, two of which run as follows : — Thy mercy sweetened every soil Made every region please. The hoary Alpine hills it warmed, And smoothed the Tyrrhene Seas. Think, my soul, devoutly think, How with affrighted eyes Thou sawest the wide extended deep In all its horrors rise. Addison's hymns were printed in the Spectator anony- mously, which led to their being claimed by a Captain Thomson for Andrew Marvell, in whose commonplace book they were found, but Marvell's most recent biographer has unreservedly withdrawn this claim. SECTION VI A LATER ENGLISH HYMNS It was in Nonconformist circles that English hymnody had its first great development. For nearly a hundred years the principal hymn- writers were Xonconforr:. or were intimately associated with Nonconformity. The greatest of them all, it is true, — Charles Wesley — lived and died in communion with the Church of England : but for long his hymns were chiefly sung by those who had separated themselves from the National Church. It is note- worthy that, with scarcely an exception, the hymn-writers ,of this period were Evangelicals. This era opens with — Isaac Watts, 1674-1748. — "It was not my design to exalt myself to the rank and glory of poets, but I was ambitious to be a servant to the churches, and a helper to the joy of the meanest Christian/'" Such was Watts' ambition — which he realised. Until he began to sing, the Metrical Psalter was almost the only vehicle of praise in the English and Scottish Churches of the Eeformation, while in some Nonconformist congregations there was no singing at all. Watts ' ; lisped in numbers,'"' and began to write hymns for church use at the age of twenty. Coming home from chapel one day he expressed the opinion that the psalmody did not possess the dignity and beauty that a 38 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Christian service ought to have. His father challenged him to write something better if he could. Young Isaac, in the course of the week, wrote what is one of our favourite paraphrases, the 65th, Behold the glories of the Lamb. Watts came of a sturdy Nonconformist stock, his father being in prison for his convictions at the time of Isaac's birth, and though offered a university education the young man declined it, preferring to remain in the ranks of Nonconformity. To this generation he is chiefly known as a writer of hymns, but he was profoundly and widely learned as well, writing on Logic (his text- book on this subject was used for years at Oxford), on Astronomy, the Freedom of the Will, the Art of Reading and Writing, the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Logos of St. John, and the Harmony of all the Religions. It was by his hymns, however, he won his empire over hearts and consciences — an empire acknowledged wherever the English tongue is spoken. For many a day in Independent churches no other hymns than his were sung. In the first twenty-five years of this century a new edition was published every year, and as late as 1864 60,000 copies per annum were sold.^ As a collection his hymns have no such sale to-day, but many of them are to be found in almost every hymn-book of the English-speaking race. In addition to those in Scottish Hymnals, we owe to his pen the first draft at least of twenty-three of our Paraphrases. In 1751 Mr. Alexander Macfarlane translated several of Watts' hymns into Gaelic and received the thanks of the Synod of Argyle for his " exact and beautiful transla- tion," the hymns being considered "excellently adapted to excite devotion." In the 600 that he wrote, the caustic critic could easily pick out bald, quaint, or extravagant expressions, but when he had done his worst we should have left us LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 39 from Watts' pen a selection of hymns not easy to parallel for strong simple diction, pure feeling, and reverent thought, as for example — Join all the glorious names; There is a land of pure delight ; Jesus shall reign where'er the sun ; Our God, our help in ages past. His lyre is one with many chords, the wistful, the solemn, the majestic, the jubilant. But he strikes his highest note when he deals with such a theme as the person and redeeming work of Christ, as in When I survey the ivondrous Cross. For tender solemn beauty, for a reverent setting forth of what the inner vision discerns as it looks upon the Crucified, we know of no verse in the whole range of hymnology to touch the stanza beginning, See from His head, His hands, His feet. There have been many singers with a finer sense of melody, his metrical and musical range was limited, — he used only six metres, — but not the most tuneful of our sacred poets has given us lines more exquisite than those. Friends made a happy home for him, though he had never a home of his own, friends whose children he taught, for whom he made sometimes playful, sometimes serious verses, for whom he prayed, and whom he enveloped in an atmo- sphere at once sunny and devout, for as he sang he lived. The "Seraphic" Doctor is the term that has been fitly applied to him, and even his philosophic and literary pro- ductions bear the same stamp, so that Dr. Johnson writes of them, " It is difficult to read a page without learning or at least wishing to be better." "He that sat down to reason is on a sudden compelled to pray." Simon Browne, c. 1680-1732.— Author of Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. A contemporary of Dr. Watts, and in early manhood a Congregational minister, but he . gave up his charge and " ceased to preach and pray," under the delusion that "God had annihilated in him the thinking substance and utterly divested him of 40 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS consciousness." He continued, however, to do in- tellectual work of a high order, compiling a dictionary, writing books in defence of Christianity, and "reasoning," his friends said, "as if he possessed two souls." He was among those chosen to complete what Matthew Henry had left unfinished of his great commentary. John Byrom, 1691-1763. — Fellow in the University of Cambridge and of the Royal Society. He invented and taught a system of shorthand, which marked an era in the history of stenography ; among his pupils being Horace Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, the Wesleys, and the father of the historian Gibbon. He was in friendly relations with the great mystic, William Law, and versified several passages from his writings, expressing the hope that " his verse would cling to the prose like ivy to an oak." An ardent Jacobite, he was the author of the well- known lines : — God bless the King, God bless our Faith's defender, God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender. But who Pretender is, and who is King, God bless us all ! that's quite another thing. John Wesley admired his poems, and George XTacdonald in our own day speaks of his verses as a " well of the water of life, telling of the love and truth which are the grand power of God." The hymn, Christians, awake, salute the happy mom, is a selection from his Christmas Carol. Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751. — Ever to be gratefully remembered by Scotchmen as the original author of the 2nd Paraphrase, though it was altered and improved by Logan and others. Had the last stanza, however, been left as he wrote it, our Scottish ideal of Christian liberality might have been higher : — LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 41 To Thee as to our Covenant God We'll our whole selves resign, And count that not our tenth alone But all we have is thine. Of the 39th Paraphrase Lord Selborne writes : " A more sweet, vigorous, and perfect composition is not to be found even in the whole body of ancient hymns." The first verse, as written by Doddridge, however, seems happier than Cameron's adaptation. Hark the glad sound ! The Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long, Let every heart prepare a Throne And every voice a song. Doddridge w T as the twentieth child of his parents and laid aside at his birth as stillborn, but he survived and grew into a youth of high promise. The Duchess of Bedford, recognising this promise, offered to send him to the University, and give him a living in the Church of England, but, like Isaac Watts, he was determined to "take his lot among the Dissenters." He received several calls from Presbyterian congregations, but in the end became minister of an Independent Church in Northampton. In addition to his pastoral work there, Doddridge had charge of a Theological Academy for preparing candidates for the ministry. One of his methods of instruction was to take the students through his library and give short lectures about the various books on its shelves. He was a man of great personal piety, "instant in prayer," using his vestry as oratory ; but his piety was practical as well as devotional, for he was in advance of his time in the matter of charitable and missionary organisation. He had a happy family life and many friends, among others Bishop Warburton ; James Hervey of the Meditations ; Colonel Gardiner, whose life he 42 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS wrote ; and Isaac Watts, who suggested the writing of The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, long cherished in evangelical circles as next to the Bible, their best "aid to the devout life." In the same circles his Family Expositor was the favourite commentary. He died in Lisbon, whither he had gone in search of health, and where his grave is still to be seen. His hymns were for the most part written as a poetical synopsis and application of his sermons. These first lines are familiar to all — Ye servants of the Lord ; happy day, that fixed my choice ; Fountain of good, to own Thy love ; My God, and is Thy table spread ? Charles Wesley, 1707-1788; John Wesley, 1703- 1791. — We take the brothers together, for, though it is with Charles we have chiefly to do, John also wrote and translated hymns, and powerfully influenced the course of English hymnology by his work as a hymnal editor, and by his strenuous advocacy of the use of hymns in public worship. Of all those who have " admonished " the Church with hymns the first place in respect of quantity must be given to Charles Wesley, as he is credited with having written more than 6000, while the brothers together published some fifty books and booklets of hymns including a very remarkable series on the Lord's Supper. The marvel is that having written so much he wrote, on the whole, so well. Some of his compositions are no doubt poor enough, for though his brother made bold to say in the preface to one of their hymn-books, "In these hymns there is no doggrel (sic) ... no feeble expletives . . . nothing turgid or bombast ... no words without meaning," other critics will hardly be so generous. But if he has given us chaff as well as wheat, tinsel as well as gold, his wheat is of the finest, his gold is of the purest. The apostle's phrase, LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 43 " Admonishing with hymns " is specially applicable to his work. Often he sang, like Keble, as the birds sing, because they must, or as St. Paul preached, because necessity was laid upon him; but more often still he wrote with didactic aim, making his hymns an appendix to his sermons — a gathering up into verse of their central truth. What one has written of John Wesley as hymn- book editor applies equally to Charles, "He saw that hymns might be used not only for raising devotion, but also for instructing and establishing the faith of his disciples — in short a kind of creed in verse," "a body of experimental and practical divinity." The brothers were born at Ep worth, near Lincoln, where their father was vicar. Their mother, a notable disciplinarian who taught her children to "cry softly," was of inexhaustible patience. Her husband once re- monstrated, "You have told this child the same thing twenty times"; she replied, "I should have lost my labour if I had only told him nineteen, for it was at the twentieth I succeeded." Charles was educated at Westminster School, and became its captain. One of his schoolfellows was William Murray of Scone, afterwards Earl Mansfield and Chief -Justice of England, who never forgot how Wesley befriended him when his strange Scotch dialect made him the butt of the school. From Westminster Charles went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gathered round him a band of seriously-disposed students — Whitfield among the rest — for the study of the Greek Testament, the observance of weekly Communion and of stated hours of private devotion, the visitation of the sick, and the instruction of neglected children. This association, founded by Charles, fostered by John, had many derisive epithets cast at it, among others that of "Methodist," which became afterwards the recognised title of the denomination to which John Wesley's teaching 44 HYMNS AND- HYMN MAKERS gave rise. Both John and Charles owed much in their religious, and probably also in their poetical, development to two members of the Moravian Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf and Peter Bohler. The Moravians as a community had and have combined with great practical sagacity, an intense and ardent piety which seeks and finds expression — on its active side — in missionary enterprise ; on its contemplative side — in a hymnody aglow with passionate devotion to the person of Christ. Wesley's hymns indeed have been called by Ward Beecher "Moravian hymns re-sung." But this must not be taken to mean that they were mere translations or adaptations. We have some translations from the pen of John (who knew German, Charles did not), as for example that beautiful rendering of one of the saintly mystic Tersteegen's compositions, Thou hidden love of God, a hymn whose teaching recalls St. Augustine's memorable words, " Thou hast made us for Thyself, and we are rest- less till we find our rest in Thee." Charles felt the in- spiration of this Moravian evangelical fervour. Most of his hymns are bright and sunny. His creed was simple and clear. He "saw life steadily and saw it whole." There is no trace in his poetry of the weary, wistful, modern mood with its haunting sense of insoluble mystery. He rested in what was revealed. He knew the heights of faith but not the depths of doubt. The great dramatic hymn, Come, Thou traveller unknown, a poetic spiritual- ising of the scene at Peniel, which Isaac Watts considered "worth all the verses" he himself had written, may seem to imply that he had had his doubts. But it is not the song of a man groping in the darkness ; faith is master all the while. After his brother's death John could never repeat without emotion the third line of its first verse : — My company before is gone. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 45 Charles Wesley, while loyally aiding and fully sym- pathising with his brother in his great work of evangelisa- tion, did not approve his action where it involved departure from the recognised principles of the Church of England, as when he began to " ordain " his preachers. For himself he was resolved to die as he had lived in the communion of the Church of England, and to be buried in the grave- yard of his parish church. The Church Hymnary contains twenty-one hymns from Charles Wesley's pen, but the greatness of our debt is apparent only when we weigh as well as count. How maimed the hymn-book would be that left out Hark/ the herald-angels sing ; Come, Thou long-expected Jesus; Love divine, all loves excelling ; for a heart to praise my God ; Christ, whose glory fills the shies ; Gentle Jesus, meek and mild; Hail the day that sees Him rise ; Love divine, how sweet thou art ! and Jesus, Lover of my soul, of which Ward Beecher said, " I would rather have written that hymn than to have the fame of all the kings that ever sat upon the earth ! " Wesley deals with various phases of the Christian life, and with various aspects of Christian doctrine. He sings of the birth, of the death, and of the rising of Christ, and of the gift of the Holy Ghost. He calls to praise, to service, to conflict, to submission, to trust, but no theme so fired his muse as the love of Christ. All he wrote might be termed one great fugue, with Cowper's lines as typical melody — Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die. These lines were Cowper's ideal ; — Wesley realised it. Joseph Hart, 1712-1768. — In 1759 he published Hymns Composed on various Subjects, ivith the Author's Experience. From this curious volume we gather that for 46 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS many years Hart passed through extraordinary alterna- tions, periods of deep conviction of sin and remorse being followed by periods of gross indulgence and free-thinking. One of his writings in the latter stage bears the title, " The unreasonableness of Religion." The higher nature triumphed over the lower in the end, however. At one , time his hymns were widely used. His Come, Holy Spirit, come, and Come, ye sinners, 'poor and wretched, are still favourites. Both are characterised by fervent trust in the Redeemer, and magnify the freeness of grace. Anne Steele, 1716-1778. — One of the earliest female "poets of the sanctuary," and one of the best. She wrote under the nom de plume of "Theodosia." Miss Steele was of a devout and simple nature, " often thinking of the poor woman's two mites cast into the treasury, and ever encouraged by reflection on the gracious reception that little offering found." As we may judge from her best known hymns, When I survey life's varied scene; Father, whatever of earthly bliss ; Far from these narrow scenes of night, she was one of the many who " learn in suffering what they teach in song." She had experience both of weary sickness and of sore bereavement. Miss Steele may be termed the " Frances Eidley Havergal " of the eighteenth century, as Miss Havergal has been termed the "Theodosia" of the nineteenth. Both exhibit the same "intense personal devotion to the Lord Jesus." But while Miss Steele seems to think of Him more frequently as her "bleeding, dying Lord — dwelling on His sufferings in their physical aspect — Miss Havergal often refers to His loving help and sympathy, recognises with gladness His present claims as ' Master ' and ' King,' and anticipates almost with ecstasy His ' second coming.' " 1 John Berridge, 1716-1793. — An eccentric but earnest and devoted clergyman of the Church of England, vicar 1 Julian. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 47 of Everton. His remarkable wit made him a great favourite at the University. When it was known that he was to dine in Hall the table of his College would be crowded with graduates. And he was as learned as witty. His father was a wealthy farmer, and had intended his son to follow the same calling, but after making trial of him in this capacity, is reported to have said, "John, I find that you are unable to form any practical idea of the price of cattle, and therefore I shall send you to college to be a light to the Gentiles." Berridge, like Chalmers, began his ministerial career by preaching a cold morality, but the evangelical revival of the period set him on fire, and he became one of the great evangelists of his time, with Wesley and Whitfield, New- ton and Simeon, Rowland Hill, Fletcher of Maddeley, and the Countess of Huntingdon as friends and fellow-workers. In his own quaint style he thus described the change : — " Once I used Jesus as a healthy man will use a walking- staff — lean an ounce upon it or vapour with it in the air. But now He is my whole crutch ; no foot can stir a step without Him." A friend alluding to the disagreements between Berridge and the Wesleys, expressed the belief that they would unite in perfect harmony in heaven. To this Berridge at once replied, "Ay, ay, that we shall, for the Lord washed our hearts here, and He will wash our brains there." The epitaph for his tombstone, written by himself, is as follows : — Here lie the earthly remains of John Berridge, late vicar of Everton, and an itinerate servant of Jesus Christ, who loved his Master, and His work, and after running on His errands many years was caught up to Avait on Him above. Reader ! art thou born again % (no salvation without a new birth). I was born in sin February 1716 ; remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730 : lived proudly on faith and works for salvation till 1754 ; admitted to Everton Vicarage 1755 ; fled to Jesus alone for refuge 1755 ; fell asleep in Christ 1793. 48 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS His Sion's Songs, 342 in number, were written to pre- vent a long sickness from preying on his spirits. Jesus, cast a look on me is from this collection. William Williams, 1717-1791. — Though ordained a deacon of the Church of England, he never received priest's Orders, being frowned upon by the ecclesiastical authorities of his day for associating with Whitfield and other Ke- vivalists. He laboured chiefly among the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales, where he was held in high esteem. At the request of the Countess of Huntingdon he prepared a small hymn-book for the use of Whitfield's Orphan Homes in America, in which his beautiful missionary hymn, O'er those gloomy hills of darkness, appeared. Guide me, Thou great Jehovah! is an English version of a hymn written by Williams in Welsh. John Cennick, 1718-1755. — After a frivolous youth he came under deep conviction of sin while walking along Cheapside, London, which issued, after many weary months of spiritual anxiety, in his conversion. For a time he was associated with John Wesley in his work, then with Whitfield, but latterly joined the Moravian Brethren, with whom he had hereditary ties, being the grandson of a Bohemian refugee. He composed Children of the heavenly King, and was part author of Lo I He comes with clouds descending. The well-known grace before meat beginning Be present at our table, Lord, and that for after meat, We bless Thee, Lord! for this our food, are also from his pen. John Bakewell, 1721-1819. — Author of Hail! Thou once despised Jesus, sometimes given in an abbreviated form as Faschal Lamb by God appointed. He was one of Wesley's local preachers, and an ardent evangelist. He ascribed his conversion to the influence on his mind of Boston's Fourfold State. His tomb, near that of John Wesley, records that "he adorned the doctrine of God LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 49 our Saviour eighty years, and preached His glorious Gospel about seventy years." Thomas Olivers, 1725-1799.— Like Hans Sachs of Nuremberg, he began life as a shoemaker, though he did not stick to his last. Early left an orphan, he lived a wild vagabond life until arrested by a sermon of Whit- field's at Bristol, from the text, "Is not this a brand plucked out pi the fire ? " After paying all the debts he had incurred in his unregenerate days, he became one of Wesley's evangelists, and visited Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Dundee. Later he was appointed Wesley's "corrector of press," but his " errata were insufferable," and he had to retire from the post. He was a vigorous controversialist, and entered the lists with Toplady among others. He was buried in Wesley's tomb. But it is as author of The God of Abraham praise, that he is remembered to-day ; a hymn of which James Mont- gomery declares, " There is not in our language a lyric of more majestic style." The measure is a difficult one, but handled with consummate skill. It is crowded with Scriptural allusions, yet not a single one is dragged in. Each seems just made for its niche. In Miller's Singers and Songs, the following account of its origin is given : — The son of a Wesley an minister said a few years ago, " I remember my father telling me that he was once standing in the aisle of City Road Chapel, during a conference in Wesley's time. Thomas Olivers, one of the preachers, came down to him and said, 'Look at this ; I have rendered it from the Hebrew, giving it, as far as I could, a Christian character, and I have called on Leoni the Jew, who has given me a synagogue melody to suit it ; here is the tune, and it is to be called Leoni." Dr. Julian, to verify this story, communicated with the late Rabbi Adler, and discovered that the hymn is really a free rendering with Christian colouring of the "Hebrew doxology which rehearses in metrical form the thirteen 4 50 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS articles of the Hebrew creed," drawn up by Maimonides (1130-1205). It is still chanted on Friday evening in every synagogue of the British Empire to the melody known to us as Leoni. John Newton, 1725-1807. — His epitaph, written by himself, contains these lines : — John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy. His career, therefore, resembles that of Augustine in illustrating " grace abounding to the chief of sinners." Two good women helped him : his mother by her teaching and prayers, though she died when he was only seven, and Mary Catlett, who became his wife. At eleven years of age his father took him to sea, where he served both in the Merchant and Koyal Navy. From the latter he deserted. When caught, he was flogged and degraded from the rank of midshipman to that of a common sailor. But even when serving before the mast he read his Horace, and in a slave plantation on the Gold Coast studied his Euclid, drawing diagrams on the sand. Nor was he wholly indifferent to religion. He tells us himself that he " took up and laid aside a religious pro- cession three or four times before he was sixteen." But the reading of Shaftesbury's Characteristics and the influence of a companion made an utter sceptic of him, till the study of Thomas a Kempis' Imitation, enforced by a terrible experience at sea, when death stared him in the face, brought him back to the faith which he kept thenceforth, " not disobedient to the heavenly vision." After his conversion he engaged for a time in the slave trade, apparently without any feeling of its incongruity, public opinion having not yet been educated to a sense of the iniquity of the trade. Strange to say, the chief instru- LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 51 raent in that education — William Wilberforce — owed his religions impressions to Xewton. After six years as a slaver lie found work on shore, came under the influence of Wesley and Whitfield, and had his thoughts turned to the ministry. The Archbishop of York looked askance at a candidate for Holy Orders with such a record behind him, but in the end he was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln as curate of Olney, Bucks. Here he laboured for eighteen years with untiring zeal. The famous Olney hymns, from his own and Cowpers pens, were written in great part for prayer meetings held in the " Great House, " lent for the purpose by the Earl of Dartmouth. The last years of his life were spent as Bector of St. Alary Woolnoth, London, where he was buried. 1 His genius and his devotion, together with his strange life history, made him a distinct power in the evangelical revival of the period, and he was greatly renowned as a Protestant director of consciences. Besides Wilberforce, Thomas Scott, the commentator, was his son in the faith, and Hannah 3 fore his friend. But the most romantic of his friendships was that with Cowper, to whom for many years he was as a Jonathan " strengthening his hand in God,*' though perhaps it had been better for the tender, sensitive poet had his friend's theology been sunnier, with more of the divine Father in it and less of the Judge. Xewton's hymns reveal a life not only earnest but terribly anxious. Few of them are frankly joyous. His muse is almost always under a shadow, as if he could never get quite away from memories of strife and fear of failure — witness such hymns as these — Though troubles assail ; Why 1 The remains of John Xewton and his wife were removed from the Church of St. Mary ^Yoolnoth, and reinterred at Olney on 25th January 1893. Reinterment was rendered necessary by excavations for an underground railway. 52 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS should I fear the darkest hour ; Quiet, Lord, my froward heart ; While with ceaseless course the sun. The most beautiful of them all, Row sweet the name of Jesus sounds, though glowing with love has a sad note in it. Edward Perronet, 1726-1792.— Author of All hail the power of Jesus' name. This hymn has been much altered. In the original version there are eight stanzas ; "high-born seraphs," the "morning stars of light," and the "heirs of David's line," as well as "sinners," " martyrs," and the " seed of Israel's chosen race," being called upon to crown Jesus "Lord of all." Perronet took a prominent part in the great evangelical revival of the eighteenth century. He was brought up in the National Church, but was keenly alive to her defects, and wrote a satire thereon, entitled The Mitre, so pungent, that John Wesley demanded its suppression. He worked with Wesley for a time, but being too self-willed to work harmoniously, he left the Methodists to become a minister of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, and finally pastor of a small Congregational Church in Canterbury. Joseph Grigg, 1728 (?)-1768. — For some time a Presby- terian minister in London. A curious sermon of his, on the threatened invasion of Great Britain by Louis the Great in 1756, from Neither shall any man desire thy land, Exodus xxxiv. 24, has been preserved. The follow- ing extract shows its pessimistic vein : " If we are not a worse people than formerly, God defend us from being worse than we are." He is the author of Behold a stranger at the door! and Jesus ! and shall it ever be (said to have been composed by him when he was only ten years old). The following verses by Grigg also deserve to be known. They have the quaintness of Quarle's Emblems : — Said Justice, "Man, I'd fain know what you weigh ; If weight, I spare you ; if too light, I slay." LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 53 Man leap'd the scale, it mounted ; "On my word," Said Justice, "less than nothing ! where's my sword V Virtue was there, and her small weight would try ; The scale sunk something ! but was still too high. Mercy, the whitest dove that ever flew, From Calvary fetched a twig of crimson hue ; Aloft it sent the scale on t'other side ; Man smiled, and Justice own'd ,; I'm satisfied." William Cowper, 1731-1800.— Dryden's line, "Great wits are sure to madness near allied," has passed into a proverb, but Cowper was not an illustration of this proverb, though an undoubted genius and often insane. The writings that reveal his genius have nothing of the " fine frenzy " usually associated with that word, but are of the simplest, sanest type. His madness had no relation to his genius, coming only as a dark interlude to cloud it. From boyhood he was subject to fits of depression, and though he fought bravely against them and had many loyal friends who sought by various devices to ward them otT, they too frequently recurred — sometimes in acute and painful forms — leading him to attempt his life more than once while under their mastery. But when the dark moods passed he was bright and gay — a genial companion, an eager student, an earnest Christian worker. It is indeed singularly pathetic to read of the sensitive, gentle, lovable poet, now the prey of remorse and depression, now visiting and comforting the sick or writing the hymns that have inspired so many with faith and hope ; now composing the poems that mark the passage from Artificialism to Xaturalism in English literature, now busy in his garden or playing with the pet hare he has immortalised : — I kept him for his humour's sake, For he would oft beguile My heart of thoughts that made it ache. And force me to a smile. Cowper was born at Berkhampstead, the birthplace 54 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS also of Bishop Ken. His mother died when he was only six ; and when sixty, he wrote, on receipt of her picture, the exquisite tribute to her memory beginning : — Oh that those lips had language ; life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last. 1 He was educated at Westminster School. One of his companions was Warren Hastings, to whom he addressed some kindly lines when great orators were crying for ven- geance on him as the oppressor of India. On leaving school he entered a solicitor's office, where he had as fellow-clerk the future Lord Thurlow. Cowper, recognis- ing his powers, said to him one day, "Thurlow, I am nobody, and shall always be nobody, and you will be Lord Chancellor. You shall provide for me when you are ! " Thurlow smiled and said, " I surely will ! " The prophecy was fulfilled, but not the promise. When little over thirty Cowper had the offer of an appointment as clerk to the House of Lords, but it involved an examina- tion, the dread of which brought on his first attack of insanity. Reference has been made to his many friends. Among these were the Unwins, with whom he lived for more than thirty years ; Lady Austen, to whose suggestion we owe the Task and the inimitable John Giljnn; his cousin, Lady Heskett, to whose sister Theodora he had at one time been engaged ; and John Newton, from whom for twelve years he was scarcely ever twelve hours apart. This was the happiest period of the poet's life. The Olney hymns, however, which he wrote in co-operation with Newton, are evidence that his friend's stern theology was dangerous for a man of Cowper's temperament, and tended to aggra- 1 In Tennyson's Memoir, F. T. Palgrave mentions that the Laureate when asked to read Cowper's " Lines on my Mother's Portrait " said in a faltering voice that he would do so if wished, but that "he knew he should break down." LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 55 vate the gloom of his despondent moods. Had Wesley been his spiritual counsellor, his hymns and life might have been brighter. As it is, his hymns are mostly plaintive, and never give us the idea of one singing out of pure gladness, as those of Watts and Wesley often do. Even in what is perhaps his brightest strain, Sometimes a light surprises, there is a subconsciousness of sadness, the poet, as it were, singing himself out of doubt into trust. We have the same minor note in Far from the world, Lord, I flee, and in for a closer walk with God I with its sad reminiscence — What peaceful hours I once enjoyed ! How sweet their memory still ! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill, while the loveliest of all his hymns, Hark, my soul ! it is the Lord, has the wail — Lord, it is my chief complaint That my love is weak and faint. But no doubt it is this very plaintiveness that gives his hymns their spell, especially over minds more sensitive to the shadows than to the brightness of life. The hymn which contains the verse which has cheered so many a sad soul — Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head is, strange to say, connected with one of his own darkest moods, having been written "in the twilight of departing reason." One would fain record that there was light at evening time : the end, however, came in a mood of "fixed despair" that found tragic expression in his last poem The Castaway. But a relative who loved him well says " that from the moment that his spirit passed until 56 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS the coffin was closed, the expression into which his countenance had settled was that of calmness and composure, mingled as it were with holy surprise." Two stanzas from Mrs. Browning's beautiful elegy on " Cowper's grave," may fitly close this sketch : — poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing ! Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging, men, this man, in brotherhood, your weary hearts beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling. With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him "With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him, Who suffered once the madness-cloud to his own love to blind him, But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him. Robert Robinson, 1735-1790. — A searching sermon by Whitfield on the "Wrath to come" led to his con- version. He had gone to hear the great evangelist, "pitying the poor deluded Methodists, but came away envying their happiness." He came to know the secret of that happiness, though not till after many a weary struggle. He Avas somewhat wayward in his ecclesiastical relations, having been first of all a Calvinistic Methodist, then a Congregationalist, and latterly a Baptist. He has even been claimed as a Unitarian from his friendship with Dr. Priestley, but on insufficient evidence. Kobert Hall, whom he preceded as Baptist minister in Cambridge, said of him, in illustration of his great oratorical power, that " he could say what he pleased, ivhen he pleased, hoiv he pleased." The hymn, Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, usually ascribed to him, was claimed for the Countess of Hunting- don by Daniel Sedgwick, the bookseller on the Sun Wharf, London, who did so much for hymnology. But LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 57 further researches by Mr. Miller and Dr. Julian have led to the conclusion that the balance of evidence is distinctly in favour of the view that the hymn is from Kobinson's pen. John Fawcett, 1739-1817. — ilnother of those whom Whitfield's preaching brought to the great decision. Like Doddridge and Wesley, he was in the habit of summing up the leading ideas of his sermon "in a few plain verses," to be sung after the service. Blest he the tie that binds is said to have been written to commemorate his decision to refuse a call to a London church, and to remain with his poor but attached country congregation, " passing rich " on £25 a year. Dr. Fawcett took a deep interest in the early missionary movements of the Baptist body, to which he belonged, and was one of Carey's helpers. Among the letters in his biography is one giving an account of Carey's sermon on Isaiah liv. 2, 3, memorable for its two illuminating heads — " Let us expect great things from God," "Let us attempt great things for God." Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-1778. — Author of Bock of Ages, the most widely-known and the best-loved hymn in the English language. Its popularity, however, is due, not to its poetic merits, but to its spiritual qualities, as a lofty, vivid expression of trust in Christ. It was originally published with the title "A Living and Dying- Prayer for the Holiest Believer in the World " ; and as a "living and dying prayer," it has been often used. From a literary point of view it is open to criticism, being full of mixed metaphors ; but when men are conscious of deep need, " weak and weary, helpless and defiled," when heart condemns and conscience accuses, these very metaphors, with their combined suggestion of shelter and cleansing, are strangely restful. 58 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS The leading image of the hymn was probably taken from the marginal rendering of Isaiah xxvi. 4 : "In the Lord Jehovah is the Rock of Ages " ; but the author may have had also in mind such verses as "I will put thee in a cleft of the rock " (Exodus xxxiii. 22) ; " Enter into the rock " (Isaiah ii. 10), and "They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them : and that Rock was Christ " (1 Corinthians x. 4). The hymn has been subjected to innumerable emendations, but in most modern hymnals it is given as Toplady wrote it, with the exception of the second line of the last verse, where the original runs, When my eye-strings break in death, referring to an old belief that when a person died, the eye-strings snapped. Rock of Ages first appeared in the Gospel Magazine of 1776 (of which Toplady was then editor), at the end of a curious article which, following one on the National Debt, was entitled, Spiritual Improvement of the fore- going. This article contained an elaborate calculation as to the number of a man's sins, the object being to emphasise the absolute need of an atonement. The hymn is said to have been written to controvert the Wesleyan doctrine of perfection. Would that all weapons of controversy had as happy an issue. For Rock of Ages is used as freely to-day by the followers of Wesley as by those of Toplady himself, so illustrating how the mood of worship makes for unity. Toplady was born at Farnham, educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin, and brought to Chris- tian decision under the preaching of an illiterate evangelist in an Irish barn. Having taken holy orders, he was ap- pointed vicar of Blagdon, but resigned the living when he found that the presentation to it had been purchased for him by friends. He never sought a parish, but waited for a call, holding (as he wrote to his mother) with the good man who said, " A believer never yet carved for LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 59 himself but he cut his own fingers." Most of his minis- terial career was spent at Broadhembury, Devonshire, but in later life he found the climate did not suit him, and went to reside in London, where, for upwards of two years, he preached in the Chapel of the French Calvinists, in Leicester Fields. His Diary, which reveals an active and eager spiritual life, and his Letters, which include corres- pondence with Dr. Priestley and the Countess of Hunting- don, are exceedingly interesting, and deserve to be better known. He was a vigorous controversialist, maintaining the Calvinistic position as against the Arminian views of Wesley and his followers with great vehemence. Par- tisans in these days smote and did not spare. One reads almost with amazement the angry epithets Toplady and Wesley allowed themselves to use of each other ; but the dust lies thick upon their tomes of controversy, and both are remembered to-day not as fierce polemics, but as faith- ful evangelists and singers of the same sweet song, for John Wesley might quite well have written Rock of Ages, and Toplady Thou hidden love of God. The account of Toplady's last illness is very moving. His death-bed was jubilant. "I enjoy heaven already in my soul," he said, "my prayers are all converted into praises." Though best known as author of Rock of Ages, he wrote several other hymns that are still in common use ; among these are, Object of my first desire, and Your harps, ye trembling saints. Alice Flowerdew (Mrs.), 1759-1830.— Authoress of the simple but genuinely poetical harvest hymn, Fountain of mercy ! God of love ! She says of her poems, " They were written at different periods of my life, some, indeed, at a very early age, and others under the severe pressure of misfortune, when my pen had frequently to give that 60 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS relief which could not be derived from other employ- ments." Joseph Swain, 1761-1796. — He worked for several years as an engraver until he came under deep religious convictions, which led to his entering the Baptist ministry. His ministerial career was short — five years — but much blessed. Before his conversion he had written songs and plays for amusement, afterwards he wrote hymns and religious poems for edification. His hymns were published for use in his own church at Walworth. One of them, Come, ye souls by sin afflicted, is in common use. Thomas Kelly, 1769-1855. — The son of an Irish judge, he was designed and had studied for the Bar, but having undergone a great spiritual change through reading the works of Romaine — which also powerfully affected New- man — he took orders. He was too evangelical, however, for the Archbishop of Dublin of the day, and, with his friend Rowland Hill, was inhibited from preaching in his diocese. This led Mr. Kelly to associate with the Irish Congregationalists, for whose use he built several churches, being possessed of ample means. He wrote a large number of hymns (over 700), some of exceptional power and beauty, such as — We sing the praise of Him who died, of which Lord Selborne has said, " I doubt whether Mont- gomery ever wrote anything quite equal to this " ; Look, ye saints/ the sight is glorious; The Head that once was crowned with thorns; Through the day Thy love has spared us; Who is this that comes from Ed 'om; Speed Thy servants, Saviour, speed them. In the preface to the last edition of his hymns, published in 1853, Mr. Kelly gives this inter- esting and valuable personal testimony : — ' It will be perceived by those who may read these hymns, that though there is an interval between the first and the last of near sixty years, both speak of the same great truths, and in the same way. In the course of that long period, the author lias seen much LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 61 and heard much ; but nothing that he has seen or heard has made the least change in his mind, that he is conscious of, as to the grand truths of the Gospel. "What pacified the conscience then does so now. "What gave hope then does so now. " Other founda- tion can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." James Montgomery, 1771-1854. — Born at Irvine, where his father, an Ulster Scot, had settled as Moravian minister a short time before, having joined the settle- ment of brethren formed at Gracehill, County Antrim, in 174G, by John Cennick, author of Children of the heavenly King and part author of Zo, He comes. In after years the poet used playfully to refer to having "narrowly escaped being an Irishman." In 1783 his parents went as missionaries to the "West Indies, where they died, leaving their son at a Moravian School in Yorkshire. Here secular poetry and fiction were banned, but James, nevertheless, found means of borrowing and reading a good deal of poetry including Burns' "Lines to a Mountain Daisy." He even began to write poetry himself, and planned, while still a boy, two epics in the Miltonic mode. The Brethren, not satisfied with his diligence as a scholar, apprenticed him to a baker. He ran away from the shop and got a situation in a store, but o/ this too he tired. All the while he was writing verses which he vainly tried to get some London publisher to print. At last he found his sphere in the office of a Sheffield newspaper, of which he soon became editor and later, pro- prietor. Writing in days when party feeling ran high, he was twice imprisoned for offending the "Powers that be," once for publishing a poem — not his own — on the Fall of the Bastille. His poems brought him considerable popularity, especially his Wanderer of Switzerland, which contains one of his most finished productions — the Grave. The Edinburgh Review, indeed, criticised it scathingly, but 62 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Blackwood favourably, while Byron wrote of it admiringly. But he did not take himself serioushj as a poet. Asked once, "Which of your poems will live 1 ?" he replied, "None, sir, nothing except perhaps a few of my hymns." He was a shrewd critic of others as well as of himself, and may be said in his Christian Psalmist to have laid the basis of modern scientific hymnology, when he discusses with no little insight and sagacity, and with perfect impartiality, the characteristics of the great English hymn-writers who had preceded him. He is generally kindly, but can be sarcastic, as in the following portrait of a hymn-writer at work, for which many might have sat : " They have begun apparently with the only idea in their mind at the time ; another with little relationship to the former has been forced upon them by a refractory rhyme ; a third, because necessary to eke out a verse ; a fourth, to begin one ; and so on." To do Montgomery justice this clever description does not apply to himself. We find in his hymns one " central creative thought, shaping for itself melodious utterance, and with every detail subordinate to its harmonious presentation." His prose writings and his longer poems are often rhetorical, but his hymn language is simple, almost severe. Take in illustration the familiar Hail to the Lord's Anointed; For ever with the Lord ; According to Thy gracious word ; Pour out Thy Spirit from on high. Always in sympathy with philanthropic and religious movements, Montgomery occupied himself greatly in his later years with their promotion, dying in a ripe old age amid universal tokens of esteem from his fellow-townsmen, among whom he had lived, and worked, and suog, and who knew that his life and his hymns had made one music. Harriet Auber, 1773-1862. — Authoress of a metrical LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 63 version of the Psalter, which she styled The Spirit of the Psalms. The same title was afterwards adopted by Lyte for his version. Miss Auber is best known by her beautiful Whitsuntide hymn, Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed, which has been translated into many languages, and is in use in all English-speaking countries. From an article by Mr. Cuthbert Hadden in The Young Woman (1894), we learn that Miss Auber had written some verses of this hymn upon a pane of glass in the house she occupied at Hoddesdon, but the pane of glass has disappeared. Richard Mant, 1776-1848. — Bishop of the Irish Epis- copal Church, and a voluminous writer of both prose and verse. Like Ephraem Syrus of the 4th century he seems to have versified even his sermons, one of his volumes being entitled, The Gospel Miracles : a Series of Poetical Sketches. He was among the first to bring the rich hymn-stores of the Roman Breviary within the reach of English readers. His translations, however, have, for the most part, been superseded by others. Round the Lord in glory seated and For all Thy saints, Lord, are selections from original compositions. John Buckworth, 1779-1835. — Vicar of Dewsbury, where, as the present incumbent informs us, he is still remembered as a "most pious and godly clergyman." He had much to do with the Church Missionary Society in its early days, and in his vicarage prepared men for the mission field, but he was specially interested in Sunday School work, and wrote several hymns for children, among others, Christ is mercijul and mild. There is also a very quaint production of his called " The Sunday Scholar," which has been sung at each Dewsbury Sunday School Festival since 1811. Kalph Wardlaw, 1779-1853. — A minister of the Congregational Church in Glasgow, and a man of mark in his day, more particularly as a controversialist. He 64 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS published a selection of hymns for the use of his congre gation and denomination, to which he contributed several of his own composition. His biographer, Dr. Lindsay- Alexander, held them to be among the "best that the language possesses." Few will go so far in encomium, but the hymn, Christ, of all my hopes the ground, is a general favourite, while Lift up to God the voice of praise and Lord, our God, arise (usually attributed to Dr. Wardlaw) are still in frequent use. Scottish readers will be interested in the description Dr. Wardlaw gives of the singing in John Newton's church, St. Mary Woolnoth, after a visit in 1805: — "As anti- quated singing as ever you heard in Scotland. Y r ou might have taken the clerk for an old woman from the pulpit- stair in Dunfermline dressed up a-purpose. He sung one of the oldest Scotch tunes, and in the oldest Scotch Presby- terian style, except that he read two lines at once." John Marriott, 1780-1825.— When his elder brother told the then Dean of Christ Church, who was somewhat of a character, that he had a younger brother coming up to matriculate who, he hoped, might be admitted to the college, the old man's answer was, " Glad of it. Like the breed." The younger brother did not disappoint the Dean, for he proved a distinguished student, taking First-class honours. He afterwards became tutor in the family of the Duke of Buccleuch, where he made the acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott, who dedicated to the young English clergyman the second canto of Marmion. The dedica- tion concludes with an allusion to his contributions to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border : — Marriott, thy harp, on Isis strung, To many a Border theme has rung. His stirring missionary hymn, Thou, ivhose Almighty word, was written about 1813, but not published until after his death in 1825, LATER ENGLISH HYMXS 65 William Bengo Collyer, 1782-1854. — Congregational minister at Peckham, and the most popular preacher of his day in London. He received his degree of D.D. from the University of Edinburgh when only twenty-six, at the instance, it is said, of the Duke of Kent. He was the author, in great part, of the solemn advent hymn, Great God! what do I see and hear? based on the translation of a verse of a German rendering of the Dies Irae by Ringwaldt. The hymn, as usually sung, has been much amended, notably by Cotterill in his Selections. Ann Taylor (Mrs. Gilbert), 1782-1866; Jane Taylor, 1783-1824.— Sisters of Isaac Taylor, author of The History of Enthusiasm. Their Hymns for Infant Minds maybe called the link between the children's hymns of Dr. Watts and those of Mrs. Alexander. They were very popular in their day, and are referred to in terms of warm com- mendation by Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and Archbishop Whately. The younger sister (to whom we owe Lord, I would own Thy tender care, and the charming nursery rhyme, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star") tells us that her method of composition "was to shut her eyes and imagine the presence of some pretty little mortal, and then endeavour to catch, as it were, the very language it would use on the subject before her." Mrs. Gilbert, the authoress of Great God ! and tvilt Thou condescend, does not tell us her method, but gives her ideal of what a hymn should be in counsel to her son who had been writing in a mournful strain — "Try something that shall fall like sunshine on the heart, something that Plato could not have written." SECTION VI B LATER ENGLISH HYMNS The great number of writers falling to be noted under the section " Later English Hymns " makes a division desir- able; and, as it happens, such a division seems to be called for on other grounds. A new development may be traced from the time of Heber. As we have seen, the hymns of the eighteenth century and of the early years of the nineteenth were for the most part Nonconformist in origin or in association ; but from the time of Heber onwards by far the greater number emanated from members of the Church of England, and chiefly from her clergy. The hymns of Horatius Bonar form the out- standing exception. This period is also noteworthy for the contributions made to hymnody by women — contributions increasing in number as the nineteenth century advances, and ever remarkable for sweetness, tenderness, and insight. Reginald Heber, 1783-1826. — He won the prize for English verse at Oxford by a poem entitled "Palestine," one of the few prize poems that have lived. Christopher North called it "a flight as upon an angel's wing over the Holy Land." Heber read it in his Oxford rooms to young Walter Scott who pointed out that he had omitted a striking circumstance in his account of the building of the temple, namely, that no tools were LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 67 used in its erection ; whereupon Heber at once added the lines — Xo hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung, Majestic silence ! In 1807 he became vicar of Hodnet near Crewe, where he was greatly beloved — "kneeling often at sick-beds at the risk of his life ; where there was strife, the peace- maker ; where there was want the free-giver." Heber had fine literary gifts ; he wrote for the Quarterly, and edited the works of Jeremy Taylor. In 1815 he was appointed Bampton Lecturer, and in 1823 Bishop of Calcutta with all India, Ceylon, and Australia for diocese. His epis- copate was brief, for he died after three years' work, but it was brilliant, and lasted long enough to show that he possessed great judgment and administrative capacity, as well as enthusiasm and boundless energy. He was gay, witty, yet of deep unaffected piety ; one of the most lov- able of men, making friends easily — losing them only by death. 1 Heber did much to encourage the free use of hymns in the Church of England, and was one of the first to arrange them in a series to suit the services of the Christian Year, Henry Hart Milman helping him. Before his time the Methodists and Independents had almost a monopoly of hymn-singing. His hymns are graceful and melodious, though often richer in imagery and more rhetorical than a severe taste approves. He may be said to have inaugurated the more flowing measures of the later hymnody. Many of his hymns were originally set to Scottish airs. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty is the stateliest of them all. 1 Thackeray, in his Four Georges, giving specimens of true English gentlemen in the reign of George IV., after naming Collingwood as type of the good soldier [sic), Walter Scott and Southey as types of good men of letters, names Heber as type of the good divine. 68 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS It is based on the great rhythm of the Apocalypse (Rev. iv. 8), and has the simplicity and the dignity of the best ancient examples. It has nothing of the subjective element in it, but is pure adoration. It is said that Tennyson considered this hymn one of the finest ever written. Its hold on the affections has been greatly strengthened, by its having been wedded to Dykes' noble tune Nicea — so named because of the dogmatic note by which the hymn is marked, especially in the last lines of vv. 1 and 4. The first great missionary hymn was Jesus shall reign, by Isaac Watts. From Greenland's icy mountains ranks second, and was written exactly 100 years later, and first sung on Whitsunday 1819. It was composed at Wrexham at the request of Heber's father-in-law, Dr. Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph's. Heber was to give a lecture on the Sunday evening, but the Dean was to preach at the missionary service in the morning. On the Saturday, being asked by his father-in-law to " write something for them to sing in the morning," he went to another part of the room and set to work. In a short time, when the Dean inquired, "What have you written?" he read over the three first verses. "That will do," said the Dean. "No, no, the sense is not complete," replied Heber, and sitting down again, he added the fourth verse, Waft, ivaft ye winds. The touching funeral hymn, He is gone to the grave, was composed after the death of his first child — a loss which he keenly felt. After his own death, one who loved him took up the same strain, and wrote these stanzas — Thou art gone to the grave ! and while nations bemoan thee Who drank from thy lips the glad tidings of peace ; Yet grateful, they still in their heart shall enthrone thee, And ne'er shall thy name from their memory cease. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 69 Thou art gone to the grave, but thy work shall not perish, That work which the spirit of wisdom hath blest ; His might shall support it, His mercy shall cherish, His love make it prosper tho' thou art at rest. In addition to those already mentioned, notable hymns from Heber's pen are, — Brightest and lest of the sons of the morning ; Lord of mercy and of might : By cool Siloanvs shady rill ; The Son of God goes forth to war. Bernard Barton, 1784-1849. — A Quaker of very catholic spirit, and a prolific writer of verse. Several of his hymns are in common use, the best known being Lamp of our feet, whereby ice trace taken from a series of verses on u The Bible,'*' and Walk in the Light. He was singu- larly happy in his friends. 1 Henry Kirke White, 1785-1806.— Xot alone by the Muses But by the Virtues loved, his soul in its youthful aspiring Sought the Holy Hill, and his thirst was for Siloah's waters. The son of a Nottingham butcher, he had often as a boy to carry the butcher's basket, but he was meant for better things. He gave early evidence of literary capacity. 1 One of his friends, Charles Lamb, wrote to him some of his most charming letters. Barton at one time, thinking of giving up his work as a bank clerk and taking to literature, consulted Lamb on the sub- ject. "Elia" at once replied, li Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ of book- sellers would afford you ! Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes.'' Barton had interesting correspondence also with Jeffrey. Southey, Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and the Ettrick Shepherd. The last-named asked him to try to get the manager of some London theatre to put a tragedy he had written upon the stage ! Sir Walter being requested by Barton, on behalf of a lady friend, for an autograph copy of some lines from one of his poems, confessed that " he had been guilty of sending persons a bat-hunting to see the ruins of Melrose by moonlight which he had never seen himself," but he sent the lines with this addition — Then go and meditate with awe, On scenes the author never saw. Who never wandered by the moon, To see what could be seen by noon. 70 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS When about eleven he wrote a separate theme for each of the boys in his class — some twelve in number — and at fifteen he delivered an extempore lecture on genius to the Literary Society of Nottingham, speaking brilliantly for two hours and three quarters ! His first situation was in a stocking factory. But he was miserable there. He wanted something to " occupy his brain." A lawyer's office was his next experience. This was better. He worked hard at law, but found time to study Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and some of the sciences as well. In 1803 he published a volume of poetry in the hope that by its sale he might obtain funds to enable him to go to Cambridge. But his poems were unfavourably reviewed, and had a very limited circulation until republished with a sympathetic memoir by Southey as Remains. Then they sold ! Through the influence of friends, however, who introduced him to Henry Martyn and Charles Simeon, Kirke White obtained a sizarship at Cambridge, but just as "every university honour was thought to be within his reach," he died. He had at one time been sceptically inclined, but the argu- ments and appeals of a faithful friend, Mr. Almond, led him to become an earnest Christian and to devote himself to the holy ministry. " Poetry in future will be my relaxation not my employment." Ten hymns are ascribed to Kirke White, but he is best known as a hymn- writer by a fragment — the first two verses, and the first two lines of the third verse of Much in sorrow oft in woe. The fragment was completed — quite in the spirit of the original — by Miss Fuller-Maitland, who, it is worthy of remark, was at that time only fourteen years of age. Sir Robert Grant, 1785-1838.— In 1826 M.P. for Inverness ; appointed Lieutenant - Governor of Bombay in 1834, a post which he held until his death. Striking testimony was borne to the excellence of his work as LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 71 Governor and to his high Christian character at a public meeting of the inhabitants of Bombay, held to arrange for a tribute to his memory, which has taken the form of a medical college bearing his name. His best- known hymns are — worship the King ; Saviour, when in dust to Thee ; and When gathering clouds around I view. Andrew Reed, 1787-1862. — Author of Spirit Divine/ attend our prayers, was a congregational minister in Lon- don ; a philanthropist of great administrative ability and resource ; the founder of an Asylum for Fatherless Children, an Asylum for Idiots, and a Hospital for Incurables. To his son who suggested that he should write his autobiography, he sent the following lines : — " To my saucy boy, who said he would write my life, and asked for materials. A. R. I was born yesterday, I shall die to-morrow, and I must not spend to-day in telling what I have done, but in doing what I may for Him who has done all for me." On another occasion he said : " Philanthropy is much to me, but theopathy more. The one offers a human motive, the other a divine. We never rise to the highest, nor are our moralities safe till we can say, Of Him,' and through Him, and to Him are all things." Charlotte Elliott, 1789-1871.— "A lover of nature, a lover of souls, a lover of Christ." The love of Christ which burned so brightly in Miss Elliott's own spirit she was privileged to kindle in many others by her beautiful hymns. More than a thousand letters, it is said, were found in her repositories after her death, giving thanks for light and blessing received from Just as I am. Among tributes that have been published is one of great interest, 72 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS which tells how it had comforted the poet Wordsworth's daughter on her death-bed. It first appeared in The Invalid's Hymn-Book^ a revised edition of a little volume originally prepared by a Miss Kiernan. After its publication, a young lady was so much struck by it she had it printed without the author's knowledge in the form of a leaflet and widely circulated. A copy of this leaflet came into the hands of Miss Elliott's doctor, who brought it to her one day, and said, quite unconscious that his patient had written it, "I am sure this will please you." The seventh verse was a later addition, but a good one, " It carries the soul aloft as upon a sunbeam." Miss Elliott's reputation rests chiefly on this hymn, but scarcely less beautiful and helpful are two others, My God and Father, while I stray, and Christian, seek not yet repose. Well might Miss Havergal say of her friend, " It is an honour from God to have had it given her to w T rite what she has written." Miss Elliott was the granddaughter of the Eev. Henry Venn, author of The Complete Duty of Man, and among her early friends were Mrs. Fry and Edward Irving. The friend, however, who most profoundly influenced her life, and with whom she corresponded for forty years, was the great Genevan evangelist, Cesar Malan. She kept the anniversary of their first meeting (May 9th) as a festal day; "the birthday of her soul." Miss Elliott was more or less of an invalid from child- hood, though she lived to the age of eighty-two. But she had a strong will and a strong faith, which enabled her, in spite of bodily weakness, to do a great deal of work, — not without effort and struggle however, as is evident from such words as these, " My heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is, day after day, hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion, to resolve, as He LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 73 enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the depression, the irritability such a body causes me to long to indulge, but to rise every morning determined on tak- ing this for my motto : ' If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me ! ' " Her favourite motto, which made part of her daily prayer and expressed the great longing of her life, was her own verse beginning — Oh, Jesus, make Thyself to me A living, bright reality. Josiah Conder, 1789-1855. — Editor of The Congrega- tional Hymn-Booh (1836), the first published under the auspices of the Union. Previous to this publication, editions of Watts' Psalms and Hymns, with supplements, were most commonly used by the denomination, though Collections by Rowland Hill, Dr. Collyer, Dr. Raffles and others, were adopted by individual congregations. Mr. Conder was a man of great literary ability and untiring industry. His largest work was the Modern Traveller, in thirty volumes — a marvellous achievement, especially considering that the author had never left his native shores. He was for many years proprietor and editor of the Eclectic Revieiv, and sometimes wrote the whole of it himself. In one of his earliest poetic ventures, The Associated Minstrels, published in 1810, he had as collaborateurs, Ann and Jane Taylor (q.v.). Though The Congregational Hymn-Book did much to oust the hymns of Dr. Watts from their unique position in the worship of the Congregational body, Mr. Conder had no lack of appreciation for that author, as is evident from The Poet of the Sanctuary, which is an eloquent tribute to Watts' genius. Mr. Conder's own hymns are numerous, but are chiefly confined to Congregational hymn-books, 74 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS with the exception of The Lord is King, lift up thy voice ; Hoiv shall I folloiv Him I serve ; and Bread of heaven I on Thee we feed, which are well known and widely used. James Edmeston, 1791-1867. — A London architect who wrote a great many volumes of verse, and one of whose pupils was Sir Gilbert Scott. The volume entitled The Cottage Minstrel, was written in response to an advertise- ment by Mr. Thomas Thompson, a Christian philanthropist, offering £20 for fifty simple hymns suited for cottage meetings. His children's hymn, Little travellers Zionward, was contributed to a missionary magazine edited by Mr. Thompson's daughter (Mrs. Luke), the authoress of / think, when I read that sweet story of old. Mrs. Luke writes that when she received these exquisite verses they "brought a rush of tears to my eyes, and I acknowledged them with no stinted praise." His beautiful evening hymn, Saviour, breathe an evening blessing, was suggested by a reference in Salte's Travels in Abyssinia to hymn- singing in the travellers' camp at night. Henry Hart Milman, 1791-1868. — As a student he won the Newdigate prize for English verse by a poem on the Apollo Belvidere, which was, according to Dean Stanley, "the most perfect of Oxford prize poems." Subsequently he wrote several dramatic pieces, some very popular in their day. But his fame rests on his History of the Jews and the History of Latin Christianity, works which made an era in ecclesiastical history. His last finished book was the Annals of St. Paul's, but he had other schemes on hand, for he was one of those who toil and plan and grow in strength, breadth, and insight to the end. As a boy he had witnessed the burial of Nelson at St. Paul's ; as its Dean he officiated at the funeral of Wellington. Bishop Heber was his "early friend," and it was to aid LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 75 him in arranging a series of hymns for the Christian Year that most of his hymns were written. Heber had expected help from other poets also, but when Milman sent him Ride on, ride on, he wrote, "A few more such hymns and I shall neither need nor wait for the aid of Scott and Southey." Of all his contributions to hymnody, however, the best known and best loved is When our heads are bowed with woe. It is a notable contribution to the literature of consolation as well. Felicia Dorothea (Browne) Hemans, 1793-1835. — A beautiful and gifted authoress, the friend of Words- worth and Scott, Heber and Whately. Wordsworth called her That holy spirit, Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep, and Scott said to her, after a visit that the poetess had paid to Abbotsford, " There are some whom we meet and should like ever after to claim as kith and kin, and you are one of them." Her life was not a happy one — as a lady once predicted in her hearing, " That child is not made for happiness, I know; her colour comes and goes too fast." But her life was one of untiring literary industry. Her longer poems are not now often read, but some of her lyrics have become classical. She did not write many hymns, but Lowly and solemn — a selection from a poem on " The Funeral Day of Sir Walter Scott," and He knelt; the Saviour knelt, a hymn introduced in her dramatic poem " The English Martyrs " — are in use. Her song, / hear thee speak of the better land, is also a great favourite. John Keble, 1792-1866. — The closing chapter of Lockhart's Life of Scott opens with these words: — "We read in Solomon ' the heart knoweth its own bitterness,' and a wise poet of our own time thus beautifully expands the saying : — 76 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Why should we faint, and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so heaven has willed, we die. Not even the tenderest heart and next our own Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh." In a footnote the name of the wise poet and the volume that has immortalised him are given. To many in Scotland, according to Principal Shairp, this was the earliest intima- tion of the existence of John Keble and The Christian Year. Keble was the son of a clergyman in Gloucestershire, and went straight from home and his father's tuition to Oxford. He took, when only eighteen, what was then counted a rare distinction, double first-class honours. Among his earliest friends were Arnold, afterwards of Rugby, Lord Coleridge, and later, when he became a Fellow of Oriel, Whately, Pusey, and Newman, but so shy and unassuming was he that Newman wrote of him he was "more like an undergraduate than first man in Oxford." In 1831 he was elected Professor of Poetry, his lectures being delivered in Latin, as was the custom till Matthew Arnold rebelled. He was offered several appointments in the Church, but declined them, not wishing to leave his father, but on his father's death he accepted the vicarage of Hursley, offered him for the second time by an old pupil. Hursley, separated by a few miles of characteristically English Downs from historic Win- chester, is an ideal village with an ideal vicarage and what is now — thanks to Keble and the Christian Year — an ideal country church. Here Keble spent the rest of his life, no further offer of preferment, it would seem, having ever been made to him. — and it was never sought. He was happily married to a lady whom he used to speak of play- fully as "his conscience, his memory, and his common sense," and "in death they were not divided," his wife following him to the grave after six weeks. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 77 This shy, modest, homely, unambitious man, who " made humility the one great study of his life," had a strong strain in him and was an acknowledged potency in a coterie that has left its mark on English history and on all the churches. In much he was childlike, but then "a man is never so much a man as when he becomes a little child." It was a profound grief to him when his friend New- man seceded to Rome. He had feared the step was coming, and when one day a letter came in Newman's handwriting, he carried it about with him for some time afraid to open it. At last, near a chalkpit in the Hursley fields, he forced himself to do so. Years afterwards, showing the spot to a friend, he said, " That is a sad place, connected with the most painful event of my life. It was there that I first knew for certain that Newman had left us." They still occasionally wrote each other, and once, shortly before his death, Newman, Keble, and by a strange coincidence, Pusey, met in Hursley. They had been so long separated that when they met at the door of the vicarage, though Newman's visit was by appointment, neither Newman nor Keble recognised each other. Newman tells us that he had a note from Keble shortly after, referring to this visit, and quoting the well-known lines from Macbeth : — When shall we three meet again ? "When the hurly-burly's done, When the battle's lost and won. They never met again on earth. All who knew Keble loved him, and one such wrote, "What I think remarkable was not how many people loved him, or how much they loved him, but that every- body seemed to love with the very best kind of love of which they were capable. It was like loving goodness itself." Perhaps the explanation of this wonderful charm 78 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS is to be found in his own beautiful lines, which tell of how his life was hid with Christ in God — I am weaker than a child, And Thou art more than mother dear, Without thee Heaven were hut a wild ; How can I live without Thee here ? He wrote and edited a good deal, but undoubtedly the work associated with his name is the Christian Year published in 1827, a volume of refined and lofty verse designed as a poetical companion to the English Prayer Book. His own wish was to delay publication until after his death, and go on improving it ; but friends who had seen some of the poems urged that they should be given to the world at once, Arnold of Rugby declaring, "Nothing equal to them exists in our language." He might have withstood his friends, but for his father's sake, who wished to see it published before he died, the Christian Year was given to the world. " It will be still- born, I know very well ; but it is only in obedience to my father's wishes that I publish it, and that is some comfort," so Keble said to his friend and pupil Isaac Williams, as he met him one day at the door of the printing office ; but instead it took the world by storm. The profits of the volume were spent in restoring the church at Hursley. It is told of William Wilberforce that one day in his old age he and his four gifted sons, planning a holiday together, agreed that each of them should bring to the meeting -place fixed upon some new book which might be read aloud to the rest ; when they met it was found that each of the five had brought the same book — the Christian Year} Keble himself never cared to speak of it, partly because of his innate modesty, partly because he looked on poetry as something sacred, 1 John Ellerton, His Life and Writings on Hipnnology, by Henry Housman, B.D. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 79 something sacramental. As St. Paul felt about preach- ing, he held that the true poet sang because he could not help it, because necessity was laid on him. The book has many faults. The poet Wordsworth indeed proposed to the author that they should "go over the work together with a view to correcting the English." But its beauties far outweigh its faults. It shows a singularly exact knowledge of Scripture ; a wonderful appreciation of the distinctive features of the Holy Land, though he never set foot on it ; great sympathy with nature, and great insight into the human heart. Its influence for at least a generation was widespread and profound. How many a thought of saintly act, How many a bravely dashed-off tear, Has strengthened into iron fact Or vanished at the Christian Year. Keble's best-known hymns are, — Sun of my soul; New every morning is the love; The voice that breathed o'er Eden ; There is a Look, who runs may read ; Lord, in Thy name Thy servants plead and Hail, gladdening Light (tr.). Sir John Bowring, LL.D., 1792-1872.— Pupil and literary executor of Jeremy Bentham. Editor of the Westminster Review and Governor of Hong-Kong. His linguistic accpiirements were extraordinary, and he had special knowledge of the song poetry of Europe, publishing several volumes of translations containing poetical speci- mens from more than twenty different languages. He was an active politician, and represented the Kilmarnock Burghs for two years. His original poetry was chiefly religious, and though some of it is distinctly Unitarian, the hymn, In the Cross of Christ I glory, might have been written by a Newton, a Wesley, or a Bernard. Henry Francis Lyte, 1793-1847. — Born at Ednam near Kelso, but of English parentage. Educated in 80 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Ireland, he entered the ministry of the Church of England in 1815. An experience at the death-bed of a brother clergyman in 1818 led him to look at "life and its issues with a different eye than before, and to study the Bible and preach in another manner than he had previously done." The greater part of his ministerial career was spent as incumbent of Lower Brixham, a fishing village on the Devonshire coast, where William of Orange landed in 1688. Here for twenty-five years, though far from robust, he laboured devotedly as a minister of Christ, winning by his faithfulness the deep love and reverence of his simple flock ; here, too, he " made hymns for his little ones, and hymns for his hardy fishermen, and hymns for sufferers like himself." In a poem entitled Declining Days, Lyte wrote — Might verse of mine inspire One virtuous aim, one high resolve impart — Light in one drooping soul a hallowed fire, Or bind one broken heart, Death would be sweeter then, More calm my slumber 'neath the silent sod ; Might I thus live to bless my fellow-men, Or glorify my God. 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. This pious wish was realised in his Abide with me. In September 1847, before going to winter in Nice, he determined to preach to his people once again, though his family tried to dissuade him. He preached on the Holy Communion " amid the breathless attention of his hearers," LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 81 and then assisted at the celebration of the Sacrament. "In the evening of the same day he placed in the hands of a near and dear relative the little hymn Abide with me, with an air of his own composing adapted to the words." It has proved a "song that may not die." It has helped to bind not "one," but many a "broken heart." He never returned from Nice, but died and was buried there. When he felt the end approaching, he asked that a clergy- man might be sent for. The clergyman who came was Henry Manning, then Archdeacon of Chichester in the Church of England, afterwards Cardinal of Home. Lyte published several volumes of verse, one of which drew from Christopher North in Blackwood the criticism, " That is the right kind of religious poetry, its style and spirit reminding one sometimes of Wordsworth, sometimes of Crabbe. ... He ought to give us another volume." Most of his hymns in common use are taken from his metrical version of the Psalter, entitled Spirit of the Psalms. They are not an exact rendering, but rather a para- phrase. that the Lord's salvation is founded on Ps. xiv. ; God of mercy, God of grace on Ps. lxvii. ; Pleasant are Thy courts above on Ps. lxxxiv. ; Praise, my soul, the King of heaven on Ps. ciii. ; Sweet is the solem?i voice that calls on Ps. cxxii. Jesus, I my cross have taken is another of Lyte's compositions, though it was in use for nearly ten years before it was known to be his. Thomas Bilby, 1794-1872. — Long actively engaged in infant schools, which he helped to develop by his writings and by training teachers for the work. His son informs us that Here ive suffer grief and pain was written in a pleasure-van on the occasion of a children's treat, and was sung for the first time that day. William Hiley Bathurst, 1796-1877. — For some years Rector of the parish of Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds, which he resigned in 1852 owing to conscientious diffi- 6 82 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS culties as to accepting the Prayer-Book, especially the Baptismal and Burial Services. His successor, the Rev. G. A. Hope, writes : " He was a good, kind, generous man, but shy and reserved, and had the peculiarity of becoming utterly silent if one asked him the most trivial question." for a faith that will not shrink is evidently the utterance of a spirit bracing itself for suffering, conflict, or decision, and has often helped many in like case. Mr. Bathurst's son tells of a boy in one of our public schools, who derived great comfort from having it constantly repeated to him when dying. Sir Edward Denny, Bart., 1796-1889. — Of Tralee Castle, Ireland. — A member of the sect usually known as " Plymouth Brethren." He wrote a large number of hymns characterised by genuine poetic feeling. Their use is chiefly confined to the hymn-books of "The Brethren," but the following have found a place in many Church hymnals: — Light of the lonely pilgrim's, heart; Sweet feast of love divine ; Sweet was the hour, Lord, to Thee. Thomas Binney, 1798-1874. — An eminent Congrega- tional minister who, for forty years, made " King's Weigh House Chapel," London, a centre of spiritual influence. He was a great and inspiring preacher, and did much to elevate the style and tone of worship in Nonconformist churches by the example he set and by his suggestive little volume on The Service of Song in the House of the Lord. A lecture by Dr. Binney on, Is it possible to make the best of both ivorlds ? made a great sensation in its day. His best-known hymn, Eternal Light I Eternal Light ! is fresh and striking. Its third stanza was often on his lips during his last illness. John Nelson Darby, 1800-1882. — Author of Rise, my sold, thy God directs thee. After a distinguished career at Trinity College, Dublin, he took orders in the Irish Episcopal LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 83 Church, but soon left it to become one of the founders of the sect commonly known as " Plymouth Brethren," which gained many adherents from among the churches of Great Britain, the Continent, and America. He was a man of considerable learning, and a voluminous author both in the field of controversial and of devotional litera- ture. John Henry Newman, 1801-1889. — One of the treasures of the Bodleian is a thin octavo volume which contains a short poem on St. Bartholomew, published in 1818-19, with MS. notes by Newman. From these notes we gather that this poem was written by his " dear and most intimate friend, John William Bowden," and himself, when they were undergraduates of Trinity College, Oxford. The treatment of the subject is ultra-Protestant, as the following lines will show : — Mistaken worship ! where the priestly plan In servile bondage rules degraded man. It seems to have been Newman's first literary venture, and reads curiously in the light of after years. But there is other evidence that in his early days he was strongly anti-Roman. Isaac Williams tells that when Pusey, Robert Wilberforce, Hurrell Froucle (the historian's brother) and Newman used to meet on Sunday evenings to study the Apocalypse, the future cardinal maintained the view that the Pope is Antichrist, and even so late as 1833, though by this time he was beginning to feel the glamour of the Romish Church, he could write of it, " Oh that thy creed were sound ! " From his earliest childhood New- man's mind was occupied with religion. At the age of fifteen, through the influence and teaching of the Rev. Walter Mayers, an earnest Evangelical, and the reading of a work of Romaine's inculcating the doctrine of Final Perseverance, and of Scott's Commentary, he was converted. 84 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Long afterwards, in 1864, when lie had become a Roman Catholic, he referred to the conversion of which he was then conscious, " and," he added, " of which I am still more certain than that I have hands and feet." Newman was ordained in 1824. He was then an Evangelical and so remained, at least in repute, for three or four years, when he began to gravitate to the High Church party under the influence of Pusey, Hurrell Froude, and Keble. As time went on, however, from being follower he became leader and initiated the famous series, culminating in Tract XC, which did so much to leaven the Church of England with High Church doctrine. In the end he went farther than his partners in the Tractarian Movement were prepared to go, and seceded, in 1845, to Rome. His ministry in the Church of England lasted for twenty-one years, during fifteen of which he was vicar of St. Mary's, and the central figure in Oxford. His preaching made a profound impression on men of the most diverse types. Manning spoke of being "led captive by his form and voice, and penetrating words ! " Dean Stanley expressed the opinion that there are " hardly any passages in English literature which have exceeded in beauty " certain descriptions in his sermons ; Principal Shairp described him as one who seemed to preach "as if the angels and the dead were his audience " ; Mr. Froude, the historian, said, "No one who heard his sermons in those days can forget them." They " fascinated " R. H. Hutton of the Spectator, who said that if called to suffer solitary confinement, and given a choice of books, but limited to one or two, " I should prefer some of Dr. Newman's to Shakespeare himself." The secret of his attraction as a preacher lay partly, no doubt, in his style (beside which, according to Matthew Arnold, Ruskin's is provincial), but chiefly in his moral and spiritual intensity. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 85 "I want to make you anxious about your souls," lie said once, and men felt this and were grateful. Strange to tell, this preacher, to Avhose power so many testify, was seldom heard in public after he became a Roman Catholic. And yet Rome is supposed to know how to use her men. Newman's secession roused intense and bitter feeling. Among those who animadverted severely on his action was Charles Kingsley, whose attack drew forth the famous Apologia pro vita sua. Newman, however, outlived the bitterness ; those who differed from him most coming to recognise that he was single-minded and sincere. When he died, generous tributes were paid by pulpit and press alike, to the author and the man — to his great literary genius, beautiful character, and devout life. As a hymn-writer, Newman is known as the author of Praise to the Holiest in the height ; Light of the anxious heart ; and Lead, kindly Light. The first-named is from The Dream of Gerontius, a powerful imaginative poem, which describes the visions of a disembodied soul. Newman thought so little of it that he consigned it to the waste-paper basket, but fortunately it was rescued by a friend. Lead, kindly Light marks an era in English history as well as in a memorable life. " It was one of the birth-pangs of the Oxford Movement." The leaven that wrought the change in Newman was acting, but secretly and unrecognised. He was still a devoted member of the Church in which he had been born. The hymn was written at sea when on his way back to England after his first visit to Italy. On the voyage he took ill. His servant thought he was dying, but he himself believed that he would live, for, he said, "I have a work to do in England." When the hymn appeared in the British Magazine (anonymously) Isaac Williams, who was at one time his curate, said to Newman, " Whose poem is that 1 John Keble's, is it not? It is not like you; but if it is 86 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS yours, I will tell you when it was written — it was when you were coming home ill." The meaning of the two closing lines of the hymn has been much discussed — And with the morn those angel-faces smile, "Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. In 1879 a correspondent asked Newman if he could explain them himself, when he wrote : " Y"ou flatter me by your questions, but I think it was Keble who, when asked it in his own case, answered that poets were not bound to be critics or to give a sense to what they had written, and though I am not, like him, a poet, at least I may plead that I am not bound to remember my own meaning — whatever it was — at the end of fifty years." In somewhat similar circumstances Browning is said to have referred his questioners to the members of the Browning Society. Tennyson (see Memoir) having had his attention called to this incident remarked, "I daresay Newman may have forgotten. It would be hard indeed to remember the 'atmosphere' of each thought. When young men ask me the interpretation of some of my early lines, I sometimes forget, and can only answer with Goethe, ' You probably know better than I do, being young.'" On the subject of the time "Lux Benigna," which was wedded to Cardinal Newman's beautiful words by Dr. Dykes, the latter's cousin (the Rev. George Huntington, rector of Tenby) gives the following details : — " I had been paying Cardinal Newman a visit. ... I happened to mention his well-known hymn, Lead, kindly Light — which he said he wTote when a very young man, as he was becalmed on the Mediterranean for a week in 1832. I ventured to say ' It must he a great pleasure to you to know that you have written a hymn treasured wherever English-speaking Christians are to be found ; and where are they not to he found?' He was silent for some LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 87 moments, and then said with emotion, ' Yes, deeply thankful, and more than thankful,' then after a pause, 'But you see it is not the hymn but the tune that has gained the popularity ! the tune is by Dykes, and Dykes was a great master.' " In contrast to the account which Cardinal Newman gives of the origin of his hymn, Dr. Dykes' friends remember his telling them that the tune to Lead, kindly Light, came into his head while walking through the Strand in London. This is not unlikely, as he had been in London, and, while there, to St. Paul's, before his visit to Leeds, — where he notes in his diary that he was writing the tune. Thus the hymn inspired while the poet was becalmed on the still waters of the Mediterranean Sea, became wedded to the melody rising from the heart of the musician, as he walked through the noisy, crowded thoroughfare of the great city. 1 John Hampden G-urney, 1802-1862. — For some time curate of Lutterworth, Wycliffe's parish, and afterwards rector of St. Mary's, Marylebone. While at Lutterworth he prepared a collection of hymns to which he contributed several, including Lord, as to Thy dear cross we flee, the national hymn Great King of nations, hear our prayer, and We saw Thee not when Thou didst come — an adaptation of a composition by Mrs. Richter. Mr. Gurney took a deep interest in the Religious Tract Society, and in the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. A tablet in St. Mary's bears the following tribute to his memory : — A man of great gifts. Eloquent in speech and writing, fear- less, unselfish, large-hearted, open-handed. He bore a noble and consistent testimony not ending with death to the reality of things unseen and to the power of a disinterested devotion to the cause of God and man. Isaac Williams, 1802-1865. — In early years he was so drilled in Latin that his ideas ran in that language, and he had to translate when he wished to express himself in English. While at Trinity College, Oxford, Keble came 1 Life and Letters of Dr. Dykes. 88 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS to his rooms one day and offered to assist him in looking over his prize poem before its public recitation. After the interview Williams said to his tutor, "Keble has more poetry in his little finger than Milman (then Professor of Poetry) in his whole body," to which the tutor replied, "John Keble may understand Aristotle, but he knows nothing of poetry. It is out of his line." Williams after- wards joined a reading party, of which Hurrell Froude and Robert Wilberforce were also members, under Keble's direction. The Vicar of Aberystwith, apprehensive of this intimacy when he heard of Keble's High Church views, told Williams he would like him to get to know (as a corrective !) a "most promising and excellent person," Mr. Newman, whom he had met and been impressed with at a missionary meeting. Williams wrote and translated many hymns, but like others of the Oxford school in his day (agreeing in this with Scotch Presbyterians of a very different school), he had a great horror of unauthorised hymns being sung in church, and so purposely put his translations into unrhythmical metres to prevent their being sung. Such hymns, how- ever, as the solemn penitential Lord, in this Thy mercy's day and Disposer Supreme are evidence that he could, when he chose, write what was admirably adapted for singing. He was the author of one of the " Tracts for the Times," that on Reserve in Communicating Religious Knoivledge, which roused keener feeling than any other of the series, with the exception of Tract XC. Personally he was held in great regard, and, as Mr. Ellerton writes, " impressed his friends and companions with the mark of sanctity more than any of his contemporaries, except John Keble." John Burton, jun., 1803-1877. — His first contributions to hymnody were made when deacon of the Congrega- tional Church of Plaistow, under the ministry of Mr. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 89 Curwen. He had a wonderful knowledge of Scripture. Woe to the minister who misquoted a text in his hearing ! During his last illness he had been revising his hymns with a view to publication. Some of them were in printed sheets, but many in MS. As it turned out that he was suffering from smallpox caught in visiting a poor sweep, all these papers were burned. One who knew him well writes : " He was a man of most saintly and child-like spirit." He is the author of Saviour, ivhile my heart is tender, a beautiful hymn of consecration for the young. George Jacque, 1804-1892. — A minister of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and author of two volumes of poetry entitled The Clouds and Hope, its Lights and Shadows. Mr. Jacque is the writer of the hymn Hark ! now heaven is calling, regarding which the Rev. Dr. Blair of Dunblane informs us that it was composed at the request of a friend who wanted appropriate words for a German tune. Sarah Fuller (Flower) Adams, 1805-1848. — Leigh Hunt called her " rare mistress of thought and tears." She and Robert Browning were great friends, corresponding and discussing their religious doubts and difficulties when he was a boy of fifteen. In later life the poet referred to her as a "very remarkable person," while her biographer declares " that if any woman inspired Pauline it was she." Mrs. Adams wrote several hymns, marked by pure devotional feeling and great literary grace. One of the most beautiful — ■ He sendeth sun, He sendeth shower, Alike they're needful for the flower was sung over her grave. Mrs. Adams was a Unitarian, but few of the millions who love and sing her hymns would imagine it. Her hymn, Nearer, my God, to Thee is based on Jacob's vision at Bethel. It sets forth with happy emphasis the 90 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS purest and loftiest of all aspirations, but wisely recognises that what sometimes seems to hinder may be made to help. Part in Peace, is taken from a dramatic poem of great beauty and intense feeling, founded on the story of a Christian martyr, Vivia Perpetua, who was put to death in the beginning of the third century in Carthage. It is sung first by Perpetua and a little company of Christians meeting in a cave sepulchre, just after they have heard that the edict had been issued for their arrest, and then again in prison after partaking of the Lord's Supper on the night before their martyrdom. Arthur Tozer Russell, 1806-1874. — In his earlier years he was "an extreme High Churchman," but was led, through the study of the writings of St. Augustine, to adopt moderate Calvinistic views, and became a sharp critic of the Tracts for the Times. He was equally tren- chant in his criticism of Essays and Reviews. His Memorials of Thomas Fuller and Bishop Andrewes are standard works. Mr. Russell's original hymns and trans- lations from the German are numerous. Of the former may be mentioned, Another year has fled. Thomas Rawson Taylor, 1807-1835. — A man of fine intellectual gifts and pure devout nature, but constitu- tionally delicate. He entered on the duties of the ministry in the Congregational Church with great ardour and pro- mise, but had to resign after six months' service. The hymn, Pm hut a stranger here appears in his Memoirs, with the title " Heaven is my Home," to the tune "Robin Adair." Christopher Wordsworth, 1807-1885.— Bishop of Lincoln, nephew of the poet, and one of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished prizemen at their uni- versities in the same year, a circumstance which led the Duke of Wellington to say of their father that he thought "he must be the happiest man in the kingdom." Wordsworth was athlete as well as scholar, and liked to LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 91 tell how, at a cricket match between Harrow and Win- chester, he " caiight-out Manning." He liked also to tell that when the Cardinal visited Lincoln Cathedral during his absence, he spoke to the verger who showed him round, of his early friendship with the bishop and remarked : "If we were to meet now he would call me Henry and I should call him Christopher." The bishop, in telling this incident, would humorously add, " But you know he would burn me if he could." Wordsworth's career at Cambridge was exceptionally brilliant, and while still under thirty he was elected Headmaster of Harrow. In 1844 he was appointed a canon of Westminster, and in 1869 Bishop of Lincoln. His working capacity was enormous; his Commentary on the Bible alone representing what might well have been a long life's labour. It is characterised by great learning, but its most striking feature is the manner in which it makes Scripture interpret Scripture. He was singularly fearless and outspoken, often standing alone on the un- popular side. But he was one who could differ with friends and yet remain friendly. As Canon of Westminster he set himself to arrange a series of hymns which he published under the title, The Holy Year, the larger half being of his own composition ; but as he was more anxious about doctrine than poetry, comparatively few of his hymns have passed into common use. His almsgiving hymn, however, Lord of heaven, and earth, and sea, is everywhere recognised as the finest we possess on that subject. In the recently- published memoir of Dr. Dykes, to whose genius we owe so many of our favourite tunes, there is some interesting correspondence about this hymn. Dr. Dykes, on behalf of the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern, had suggested an alteration in the third line of verse four, which originally read : 92 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS And e'en that gift thon didst outrun, whereupon the bishop wrote, "Your criticism on the word outrun in the hymn which you have honoured with a beautiful tune is just," and altered the line to read — And freely with that Blessed One. None of his other hymns can compare with this for popularity, but such pieces as Hark/ the sound of holy voices; Father of all from land and sea; The day is gently sinking to a close ; Hallelujah / Hallelujah ! Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost ; day of rest and gladness, are of much merit. With regard to the last-named a friend of the bishop writes, " I was with him in the library when he put his arm in mine saying, ' Come upstairs with me, the ladies are going to sing a hymn to encourage your labours for God's holy day.' We all then sang from MS. this hymn. I was in raptures with it. It was some days before I knew it was written by himself." We add this sympathetic note from a sketch by Mr. Ellerton : — ■ "Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, is one of whom we certainly do not just think as a writer of hymns, but as a great scholar, a diligent and careful expositor, an accurate theologian and controversialist, a great and wise ruler in the Church, and a most holy, humble, loving, self-denying man. And the man is reflected in his verse. To read one of his best hymns is like looking into a plain face, without one striking feature, but with an irresistible charm of honesty, intelligence, and affection." George Rawson, 1807-1889. — A solicitor in Leeds, who gave much of his leisure to the study of hymnology and assisted in the preparation of several hymn-books for use in Congregational and Baptist Churches. His Communion hymn, By Christ redeemed, in Christ restored, and one on LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 93 the Holy Spirit in litany form, Come to our poor nature's night, are best known. At first he refused to allow his name to be appended to his hymns, but in course of time their authorship could not be concealed. Andrew Young, 1807-1889. — It may be safely assumed that were Sunday School scholars invited to name their favourite hymn, a large proportion would name There is a happy land. But not the children only love it. It was one of the "bairns' hymns" that Dr. Guthrie asked to have sung to him on his death-bed, and it has cheered many others besides the great preacher -philan- thropist in the same solemn hour. " Its simple strains are among the first that infant voices learn to lisp, and they are often among the last whispered by dying saints." Mr. Young, in the Preface to his Poems, gives the following account of its origin : " Many years ago, I was spending an evening with a family of friends, and the lady of the house played several musical com- positions of great beauty. Among these was a sweet and tender air which charmed me exceedingly. On asking the name of it, I was told it was an 'Indian air called "Happy Land."' It immediately occurred to me that such a melody could not fail to be popular in Sunday Schools, if wedded to appropriate words. And, accordingly, I wrote the little hymn, which has since spread over all the world, and been translated into almost all languages. It was sung daily in my classes in the Niddry Street School ; and on a visit by Mr. James Gall (now Rev. James Gall), he was so delighted with the music and hymn, that he noted down the simple air, had it harmonised, set to the words, and published in his Sacred Songs. ... It was not until a year or two after my removal to Madras College, St. Andrews, in 1840 that I knew anything of the existence of the Indian song be- ginning — 94 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS " I have come from a happy land Where care is unknown." Mr. Young studied at Edinburgh University, and in the class of Professor Wilson ("Christopher North"), ob- tained a prize for a poem on " Parthia," and another for one on "The Scottish Highlands." In 1830 he became Headmaster of Niddry Street School, Edinburgh; in 1840, Head English Master of Madras College, St. Andrews, where he proved a most successful teacher. On retiring from this post he took up residence in Edinburgh, devoting much time to good works. He was an elder of Greenside Parish Church, and acted as superintendent of its Sunday School for more than thirty years. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Royal Geographical Society, besides being identified with other scientific and educational institutions. Mr. Young was a great lover of birds. One who knew him well has told the writer that as they walked together in the Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, quite a flock of birds would follow them, Mr. Y T oung being in the habit of feeding them daily. Numerous tributes to this " bairns' " hymn have been recorded. " One day the novelist, Thackeray, was passing through a London slum and heard a few ragged children in a gutter singing something. He stopped to listen. It was There is a happy land. The contrast between the squalor of the poor waifs and the splendour of the subject of their song struck him so forcibly that he burst into tears." This quotation is from a bright and sympathetic article on " The Happy Land and its Author," by the Rev. J. C. Carrick of Newbattle {Life and Work, 1890). In the same article Mr. Carrick mentions having had a letter from Mr. Young — only a week before his death — in which he said : " I have just noticed that in Paton's most inter- esting book on his missionary labours, there is a notice of LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 95 how a chief was converted through my hymn, Gloria in Excelsis Deo ! " Joseph Anstice (Professor), 1808-1836. — Author of Lord of the harvest, once again, and Lord, how happy should ive be. After taking a Double First at Oxford, he was appointed Professor of Classical Literature at King's College, London, and gave promise of a brilliant career, but had to resign his appointment in 1835 on account of failing health. From Miller's Singers and Songs of the Church we learn that his hymns (pub- lished after his death) were all "dictated to his wife during the last few weeks of his life, and were composed just at the period of the day (the afternoon) when he most felt the oppression of his illness — all his brighter morning hours being given to pupils up to the very day of his death." The volume closes with an ode, To my Hymn-hook, from which we quote some lines — Dear book, I close thee ! thou art fraught With tales of many anxious fears, Of love, and patience tried and taught, Of sinful murmurings, secret tears. Farewell again, my constant balm When thought and reading seemed to strain My listless nerves — and seeking calm I deemed once cherished learning vain. The hymns of Professor Anstice deserve to be better known, for, spite of blemishes due to want of revision, they are of great merit, freshly and vividly phrased, full of insight, and breathing a spirit of deep devotion, while the circumstances of their composition lend an exceptional interest to their message. Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889. — It is much to be regretted that there is no memoir of Dr. Bonar. The Church would gladly know all that is to be known of a personality 96 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS of so rare a type and of one who lived through stirring times in such close contact with many of those who, under God, have made the Churches of Scotland what they are to-day. Even such as took the other side in 1843 would read with deep interest what Bonar might have revealed as to the Disruption and After, while many would read with still deeper interest what his correspondence might have told of the evangelical revival movements of the century, and of such a work as the McAll Mission in France, which was so dear to his heart. Over all these materials, however, his own express directions drew a veil. Some verses headed The Everlasting Memorial may perhaps give the clue to this reserve : Needs there the praise of the love-written record, The name and the epitaph graved on the stone ? The things we have lived for, let them be our story, "We ourselves but remembered by what we have done. Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken, Not myself, but the seed that in life I have sown, Shall pass on to ages ; all about me forgotten, Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done, So let my living be, so be my dying ; So let my name lie, unblazoned, unknown ; Unpraised and unmissed, I shall still be remembered ; Yes, — but remembered by what I have done. Horatius Bonar was one of a family that has given many earnest workers to the Church. In one of his poems he says — I thank Thee for a holy ancestry, I bless Thee for a godly parentage ; For seeds of truth and light and purity Sown in this heart from childhood's earliest age. He was born in Edinburgh and was educated at its famous High School and University, one of his class-mates at school being Archbishop Tait, and one of his fellow- LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 97 students and intimates at the University, Robert Murray M'Cheyne. In 1837 he was ordained as a minister of the Church of Scotland at Kelso, and threw himself into his clerical duties with a devotion and enthusiasm that never flagged for fifty years. One said of him that he was "always visiting, " another that he was "always preaching/' another that he was "always writing," another that he was "always praying." At Kelso he often preached three times in church and once in the open air besides. " The Bonars are made of iron," a clerical friend used to say. Even as an old man in Edinburgh (he came to the metropolis as minister of the Grange Free Church in 1866) he used to preach in the open air, sometimes in the Meadows and sometimes in Parliament Square. In the earlier days of his ministry his preaching was somewhat stern in tone, but he mellowed with the years alike in his dogmatic, ecclesiastical, and personal relations. In later life he might have said as Richard Baxter said, "I am not so narrow in my principles of Church Communion as once I was." Almost all Dr. Bonars verse is of a religious character, though he occasionally wrote lines in a lighter vein. It was as assistant to the minister of South Leith and for his Sunday School that he first began to write hymns, one of his earliest being / lay my sins on Jesus, a hymn which, though perfectly simple in diction, goes deep into human need and deeper still into the divine remedy. When he went to Kelso he continued to write, but did not publish until 1843. In that year he issued in the form of a tract a series of thirteen hymns under the title of Songs for the Wilderness, of which he says in his Preface that they are "stray hymns written at different times chiefly for Sabbath Schools, which I have gathered together, that by 7 98 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS them perhaps the people of God may be cheered on their pilgrimage Zionward till they reach the city ' which hath foundations.' " The first series in book-form was published in 1856 under the title, Hymns, of Faith and Hope, being "meant to speak what may be thought and spoken by all to whom the Church's ancient faith and hope are dear." It was not, however, until many years after, that his hymns came into general circulation, and he gained the public ear, not by his hymns, but by his devotional works, such as The Night of Weeping and God's Way of Peace. No doubt one reason why they were so slow to make way was the prejudice that existed for long in Scotland against "Human Hymns." They were sung for years in the Church of England and in other Churches before they were authorised to be sung in public worship by the General Assembly of his own Free Church. Dr. Bonar was keenly interested in hymnology. His articles on " Hymns of the Early Church " in the Sunday at Home for 1878, and his treatise prefixed to The New Jerusalem, a Hymn of the Olden Time, are marked by no little learning and research. Like Dr. Neale, another great hymnist of his own generation, though delicately sensitive to the music of words he was no singer, and could distinguish only very familiar airs. Like Neale, too, and Keble, and Doddridge, he was pre-eminently a man of prayer, the voice of earnest pleading from behind the locked study door, pleading continued for hours, forming one of the most sacred memories of his home circle. A young servant in the house owed her conversion to this, for she said to herself, " If he needs to pray so much, what will become of me if I do not pray ? " In ordinary intercourse he seemed reserved, but he was deeply affectionate and very fond of children. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 99 Miserable when any of his own were away from home, he suffered intensely when they were removed by death. The great happiness of holiday times was just being- alone with them and no "callers." He was a father of whose relations with them his children could say that they were not, as is too often the case, a hindrance, but a help to the understanding of the opening words of the Lord's Prayer ; he was a minister of whom an elder of another communion, Lord Polwarth, could say, at his jubilee, " In this Border district his character is revered, his person beloved, and his words cherished.*'" But even the members of his own family tell us, that to know Dr. Bonar you had to take life, work, and verse together, so much was his poetry part of himself. His pen was his confidante, the lute with which he "sang his sadness when sadness like a cloud begirt his way ; the harp whose strings gave out his gladness when burst the sunshine of a happier day.*' In the Sunday Magazine for March 1897 there is a beautiful article on Dr. Bonar from the pen of his daughter, Mrs. Dodds, which deals with his poetry as autobio- graphical. When it appeared, a touching tribute was received from a lady in England, who wrote to thank the authoress, and to tell how for thirty-five years the hymns of Dr. Bonar had "nerved her when she was lagging in the race, cheered her in sorrow and trial, and kept her watching for the coming of the Lord." His own favourite was, When the weary seeking rest, but those most often sung or whispered over for solace or inspiration are — / heard the voice of Jesus say; Thy way, not mine, Lord : A few more years shall roll ; Go, labour on; I lay my sins on Jesus ; Here, my Lord, J see Thee face to face. After his death there was found among his papers a lyric of six verses with the refrain. Ln Me ye shall have 100 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS peace. It had been written for a sick friend ; this is the first verse — Long days and nights upon this restless bed Of daily, nightly weariness and pain ! Yet thou art here, my ever gracious Lord, Thy well-known voice speaks not to me in vain : "In Me ye shall have peace." Years before, in opening manhood, he had taught the children to rest the soul on Jesus. Now in old age he repeats the same message, fifty years' experience having but confirmed its wisdom and its truth. Elizabeth (Barrett) Browning, 1809-1861.— The most intellectual of all poetesses, " noble in ideas, magnifi- cent in diction." For pure poetic genius, indeed, many would rank her among the English poets of the century, second only to her great husband and Tennyson. Her union with Mr. Browning was singularly felicitous, though she was very fragile, and almost constantly an invalid, — "A soul of fire in a shell of pearl." Like her husband, she was profoundly religious, and had the loftiest aspira- tions for her art, writing once, "We want the touch of Christ's hand upon our literature as it touched other dead things ; we want the sense of the saturation of Christ's blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them . . . expounding agony into renovation." And again, addressing poets she says — Look up Godward ! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul ! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty ! Of all the thoughts of God that are, with the refrain, lie givcth His beloved sleep, is from her pen, and was sung at her husband's funeral in Westminster Abbey. John Stuart Blackie, 1809-1895.— Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh, and long one of the LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 101 most familiar and picturesque figures to be seen on the streets of the Scottish metropolis. He was a brilliant and versatile scholar, a man of marked individuality, and of great personal charm. An enthusiastic Celt, he was mainly instrumental in founding the Celtic Chair in the Edinburgh University. He published several volumes of original poetry, and translated Aeschylus and Goethe's Faust with remarkable success. Angels holy, high and lowly is a spirited rendering from his pen of a portion of the Benedicite which occurs in the Septuagint version of the Book of Daniel. It first appeared in Tail's Magazine (1840) set to a German Burschen melody. " Many of these melodies," Professor Blackie writes, " though used on con- vivial occasions, have a solemnity about them, in virtue of which they are well fitted for the service of the sanctuary." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892. — In the fascinating Memoir of the great poet recently published it is told, on his own authority, that Professor Jowett, who had liked the simple hymn for children in The Promise of May, Act III. Sc. 1, beginning, man, forgive thy mortal foe, asked him to write another. Mr. Warren, the President of Magdalen College, to whom he mentioned this, said, " Will you write the hymn ? " Tennyson replied, " A good hymn is the most difficult thing in the world to write. In a good hymn you have to be commonplace and poetical. The moment you cease to be commonplace and put in any expression at all out of the common it ceases to be a hymn." Here we have in a sentence the explanation of the fact which has often caused surprise, that so few of our really great poets have written hymns. Two of Lord Tennyson's sacred poems, however, have been adopted as hymns, Strong Son of God, immortal Love, a cento from the opening stanzas of In Memoriam, and Sunset and evening star. The last-named was written in his eighty-first year, and read at once to his son, who said to him, " That is 102 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS the crown of your life's work." He answered, " It came in a moment." He explained the "Pilot "as "that Divine and Unseen who is always guiding us." The present Lord Tennyson adds — "A few days before my father's death he said to me, ' Mind you put " Crossing the Bar " at the end of all editions of my poems.' " It is profoundly significant that Lord Tennyson should have deliberately selected these devout and solemn lines as his "swan song." Henry Alford, 1810-1871.— Dean of Canterbury. Best known as author of what, to the last generation, was the standard critical commentary on the Greek Testament for English readers. He had an extraordinary capacity for literary work. His pen was never idle. At six he wrote Travels of St. Paul, illustrated ; at eleven A Collection of Hymns for Sunday Occasions; and as a student he began a Greek Grammar, in the form of a series of letters to his betrothed. He was a man of wide sympathies, a member of the Evangelical Alliance, and maintained cordial relations with the Nonconformists of England during all his career. In making inquiries about a curate he wrote, "I want him to teach and preach Jesus Christ and not the Church, and to be fully prepared to recognise the pious dissenter as a brother in Christ, and as much a member of the Church as ourselves." He did all his work in a devout and prayerful spirit, and after a hard day's study would "stand up as at the end of a meal and thank God for what he had received." Dean Alford was deeply interested in hymnology, and compiled several hymn-books, for which he wrote and translated many hymns. Of these there have passed into most modern collections Forward! he our watchword; Coyne, ye thankful people, come ; and Ten thousand times ten thousand. To this last Bishop How would give "a very forward place among jubilant hymns," and yet it was called forth by bereavement — "Our thoughts have been LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 103 much turned of late to the eternal state. Half our children are there, and where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." John Samuel Bewley Monsell, 1811-1875. — An Irish- man by birth, and for some time chaplain to Bishop Mant ; but the last years of his life were spent as Rector of Guildford, Surrey. He died in consequence of a fall from the roof of his church while it was rebuilding. The opening lines of his last poem, Near home at last, written to raise funds for this rebuilding, indicate a mysterious prescience of his approaching fate — Dear body, thou and I must part, Thy busy head, thy throbbing heart, Must cease to work, and cease to play, For me at no far distant day. Dr. Monsell held the view that our hymns should be "more fervent and joyous. We are too distant and reserved in our praises ; we sing not as we should sing to Him and of Him who is Chief among ten thousand, the Altogether Lovely.'' His own compositions are, for the most part, of the type he desiderated — bright, warm, trustful — and, as such, the mirror of his own sunny and devout nature. One who knew his home at Guildford writes us : "It was quite an ideal household, full of the beauty of holiness, with genial brightness and gaiety playing like sunshine over all the troubles of life." Dr. Monsell's hymns are numerous, the best known being: — Worshi;j the Lord in the beauty of holiness ; Lord of the living harvest; Sing to the Lord a joyful song ; To Thee, dear, dear Saviour; Fight the good fight ; Best of the weary. Norman Macleod, 1812-1872. — Minister of the Barony Parish, Glasgow, first editor of Good Words ; still, after twenty-five years, known in Scotland significantly as "Xorman." He was a man of splendid presence and 10-i HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS extraordinary personal magnetism, a brilliant conversa- tionalist, and an orator who, as harpist on harp, could play on the emotions of almost any audience, inducing at will, laughter or tears. He was honoured with the special friendship of Queen Victoria, yet was claimed by the poorest of the poor in the Barony Parish as their friend too. There is probably no portrait so often found in the homes of the working classes of Scotland as his. He was one of the most genial of men, brimming over with humour ; his letters abound in playful sallies, and yet, behind the bonhomie that was so winning, there was a deep and earnest spiritual life. As Convener of the Church of Scotland's Foreign Mission he did much to promote the missionary revival of the century. His last speech was on this great topic. One sentence in it has become classical. He was pleading against insisting on the minutiae of doctrine in the mission field. By taking up this position he knew that he would lay himself open to the charge of being "broad," but he said, "I desire to be broad — broad as the charity of Almighty God, who maketh His sun to shine on the evil and the good. But while I long for breadth of charity, I desire to be narrow — narrow as God's righteousness, which as a sharp sword can separate between eternal right and eternal wrong." A few days after the delivery of this speech, he was seized with an illness which proved fatal. On the Thursday before his death he described a dream which seemed to fill him with happiness, "I have had such a glorious dream ! I thought the whole Punjaub was suddenly Christianised, and such noble fellows, with their native churches and clergy." The dream is not yet realised, but within the last decade the first-fruits of the harvest he so longed for have been gathered. The following appropriate tribute was written by the LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 105 Rev. J. S. B. Monsell, author of the favourite hymn Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Large fashioned and large hearted, life and love Found in him room for action. Men to move Onward and upward to a higher goal "Was the enduring passion of his soul, Unresting and untiring, on the road That leads through man's humanities to God. Not of his Sovereign only, friend and guide, But of ten thousand thousands, to his side Drawn by the attraction of his high intent ; "Good words " he spake, and left to cheer and teach, When he should be no longer within reach : His good works follow ; by that Friend best known, For "Whom and in "Whom they were done alone. The spirited verses, Courage, brother ! do not stumble, Mrs. Macleod informs us, were not originally written or published as a hymn, but were appended to a lecture delivered to young men in Exeter Hall in 1858, a lecture in the form, and under the title, of "A Life Story," the basis of which was the experience of a young lad with whom he had been intimately linked in very early college days. The verses were afterwards published by Hutchins Calcott, set to music by Mendelssohn. They have also had a tune expressly written for them by Sullivan. William Bruce, 1812-1882. — A distinguished minister of the L T nited Presbyterian Church of Scotland and Moderator of its Synod in 1869. A many-sided man, at once strong and gentle, metaphysical and practical, a clear-headed man of business and a seer of visions. Robertson of Irvine said of him, " I have known some men that did more, and many who dreamed more, but never any who united the doing and the dreaming as he did." He was the author of Holy Father, Thou hast given. William Josiah Irons, 1812-1883.— One of the successors of John Newton in the incumbency of St. 106 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Mary Woolnoth, London. He was a Bampton Lecturer of mark, his Christianity as taught by St. Paul being a notable contribution to the theological literature of his day. In his Psalms and Hymns for the Church Dr. Irons provided a complete series of original compositions adapted to the Book of Common Prayer, and illustrating the seasons of the Christian year. Many of these are of great excellence, but little known. Though an accomplished translator (his version of the Dies Irae is counted one of the best), he had no sympathy with those who would crowd our hymnals with translations from the Greek and Latin. He valued the "devout music" of the past, but thought that it should be used sparingly, and that each age should provide its own hymns, as it provides its own sermons. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, 1813-1843.— Thirty years ago, if one had been asked to make out a list of Scottish "Aids to the Devout Life," they would undoubtedly have put high in the list Andrew Bonar's Memoirs of M l Cheyne. There are few more impressive pictures of spiritual in- tensity ; few more inspiring records of ministerial devo- tion. As illustrating his passion for service, this little sentence about a Scottish manse is full of significance. "The manse is altogether too sweet; men could hardly live there without saying : ' This is my rest,' I don't think ministers' manses should ever be so beautiful." He was ordained to the ministry in 1836, his first and only charge being that of St. Peter's, Dundee. In 1839 he was one of a deputation sent to the Holy Land by the Church of Scotland to investigate the condition of the Jews, an investigation which led to the establishment of Jewish Missions by the Church of Scotland and by the Free Church. On his return to Scotland, St, Peter's, Dundee, became LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 107 the centre of an evangelical revival which profoundly influenced the religious history of the east of Scotland. M'Cheyne, as a preacher, excelled in exposition. Once asked if he was not afraid of running short of sermons, he replied : " Xo, I am just an interpreter of Scripture in my sermons ; and when the Bible runs dry, then I shall." It is told that a curate of the Church of England, having had a copy of M'Cheyne's sermons sent him, began to read them to his congregation, when he was amazed to find his people coining to ask questions they had never asked before. Of the several hymns he wrote, When this jiassing world is done is in most frequent use, though formerly a still greater favourite was, / once was a stranger to grace and to God, which had as title, Jehovah Tsidkenu (the Lord our Eighteousness) — the watchword of the Reformers. It does not, however, appear in any of the hymnals annotated. Christian Henry Bateman, 1813-1889. — For some time minister of a Congregational church in Edinburgh, he afterwards took orders in the Church of England, and from 1877-^1 was a curate in the neighbourhood of Hawarden. The best known of all Sunday School hymn- books is associated with his name, as he edited the collec- tion entitled Sacred Melodies for Sabbath School* and Families, published by Gall and Inglis. He is the author of the popular hymn, Come, children, join to sing. Jane Borthwick, 1813-1897.— In 1854 Miss Borthwick and her sister Mrs. Findlater published a volume of translations from the German entitled Hymns from the Land of Luther, which was received with great favour. Three other series followed. It was while spending some months in Switzerland that Miss Borthwick's attention was first directed to this study by Baron de Diesbach. 108 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS But it was at their father's prompting, who said to them one day, " Could you not translate for me some of these German hymns which you say are so good?" that the sisters began the translations that have done so much, with Miss Winkworth's and Miss Cox's work in the same field, to place the rich treasures of German hymnology within the reach of English readers. Jesus, still lead on, a spirited rendering of one of Zinzendorf 's hymns, appeared in the volume published in 1854, and speedily found its way into many hymn-books. From translation Miss Borthwick passed to original work, of which we have admirable specimens in such universal favourites as Best, weary soul ; Gome, labour on ; Still on the homeward journey; Thou knoivest, Lord, the weariness and sorrow. She wrote under the initials H. L. L. (Hymns from the Land of Luther), and was somewhat vexed when Dr. Charles Rogers, in his Lyra Britannica, revealed her identity to the world. Though there is a tinge of melancholy in many of her verses, Miss Borthwick was of a bright and cheerful temperament, delighting in the society of young people, who also delighted in hers. Like so many of our gifted women hymn-writers, Miss Havergal, Mrs. Alexander, Adelaide Procter, she was an active and zealous Christian worker. For many years she held large classes in the Edinburgh House of Refuge and in one of the Reformatories, and helped in the Home Mission work of the Free Church. She was also deeply interested in Foreign Missions, the C.M.S. Mission at Singapore and the Moravian Mission in Labrador receiving her warm support. Though dying at the advanced age of eighty-four, she retained her literary interests and her mental vigour to the end, which was painless and peaceful. " Gentlest, most unselfish of mortals that I have met during a LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 109 twenty-two years' ministry," is the tribute of one who knew her well. Miss Borthwick received many testimonies as to the help given by her hymns. The following and most striking came to her through the Rev. John Kelman of Leith : A student, anxiously seeking for light and peace, walking one day, pensive and sad, along a country road, saw a bit of printed paper lying in the mud. He struck at it, and it so adhered to his stick that he had to remove it with his hand, when he found it was the fragment of a tract, so mutilated that he could read only the verse with which it ended, a verse from one of Miss Borthwick's hymns — - Rest, weary soul ; The penalty is borne, the ransom paid ; For all thy sins full satisfaction made. Strive not to do thyself what Christ hath done : Claim the Free Gift, and make the joy thine own. No more by pangs of fear and guilt distressed, Rest, sweetly rest. The line printed in capitals was God's message of peace to his soul. He is now a minister of the Free Church. Mary (Lundie) Duncan, 1814- 1840. — Beautiful in person, with fine intellect and graceful imagination, of a most lovable disposition, and early consecrated to the Lord, this sweet singer exercised an extraordinary fascination on all who came within the range of her influence. Until her death, this was but the narrow circle of a Scottish country parish (her husband was minister of Cleish), but it became wide as the reach of English speech, when her mother gave her story to the world. If the Memoir of M'Cheyne was one of the " Aids to the Devout Life " of Scotland in the last 110 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS generation, the Memoir of Mary Lundie Duncan was another, unfolding as it did the aspirations of a soul so lofty and pure. Her hymn, Jesus, tender Shepherd hear me, is a great favourite with the little ones as an evening prayer. Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863. — Newdigate Prizeman at Oxford. The friend and admirer of Newman, whom, after a very brief experience of work in the Anglican Church, he followed into the Church of Rome. A volume of travel entitled Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign People, published before his secession, makes evident that his mind had been turning Homeward for some time. He was a man of great personal charm and had marvellous gifts as an orator. Even as a boy his persuasiveness was noticeable, and his brother tells us that when he and some comrades were caught trespassing by an angry farmer, Frederick pleaded so well for the party that the farmer's wife inter- posed, saying to her husband, "Ye mun let them gan, Maister, the young gentleman has sic a p ratty tongue." When Faber told Wordsworth that he intended to enter the Church Wordsworth made answer, "I do not say you are wrong, but England loses a poet." The hymns he has left us bear out this judgment, though these number only 150. Like Bardesanes, the Gnostic, he chose this number because it is the number of the psalms. His idea was to give to English Roman Catholics a volume of de- votional reading after the pattern of the Olney hymns, over which he had not unfrequently found " Catholics poring with a devout and unsuspecting delight," and which he owns acted like a spell upon himself " strong enough to be for long a counter influence to very grave convictions." That he in a measure attained his ideal is evidenced by the fact that a famous revivalist of the extreme evangelical school published a selection of his hymns, having found, LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 111 doubtless, that no others so well expressed the more fervid moods of an adoring faith. No modern hymnist shows so unmistakably the hall- mark of poetic genius. Xow and again, it is true, there are strained falsetto notes, but often on the other hand a spiritual vision, an intensity of fervour, and a lyric grace that charm heart and ear. The chief fault of his hymns was the fault of his life, a tendency to overstate. His own brother tells us that a friend speaking to him on the education of the young said significantly, "If I were a schoolmaster, there is no offence I should be inclined to punish more seriously than the use of maximus by a boy when magnus would answer every purpose he had in view.' - ' Faber was ready to allow his hymns to be used by any one, and did not object to omissions, though he did object to alterations that changed doctrine and sense. In the Preface to an edition of his Hymns published in 1862 he wrote, " That our blessed Lord has permitted these hymns to be of some trifling good to souls, and so in a very humble way to contribute to His glory, is to the author a source of profitable confusion as well as of unmerited consolation." The following are in common use, — My God, how wonderful Thou art; I bow to Hue, sweet will of God; Hark/ hark, my soul; come and mourn with me awhile; Souls of men/ why will ye scatter. Edward Caswall, 1811-1878. — Educated at Oxford, where his Art of Pluck, a satire on the idle and wasteful habits of the University of his day, is still popular. Father Caswall, originally a clergyman of the Church of England, in 1847 resigned his charge and with his wife entered the Romish Communion. On her sudden death from cholera in 1850 he was ordained priest, and joined Xewman in founding the Oratory at Birmingham. Of his original compositions the best known are See, amid flu winters snow or See, in yonder manger low, and Days l 112 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS moments quickly flying, but he chiefly served hymnology by his translations of Latin hymns, which rank next after Neale's, excelling them in faithfulness, rivalling them in melody. The sun is sinking fast (original lost) ; At the cross her station keeping ; Jesus, the very thought of Thee, are among the most perfect examples of his skill. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 1815-1881.— Dean of West- minster, the ideal Dean of that famous minster where England buries and commemorates her illustrious dead. Author of Sinai and Palestine, History of the Jewish Church, History of the Eastern Church, Lectures on the Church of Scotland, Memorials of Canterbury and Westminster, Life of Dr. Arnold, etc. He possessed, in a pre-eminent degree, the faculty of detecting historical parallels, showing how history repeats itself and how extremes meet. Educated at Rugby under Arnold, he is said to have been the original of "Arthur" in the classic Tom Brown's School Days. In the light of subsequent controversies, an extract from one of his Rugby letters, with reference to a school row, is curiously significant. "It is the only row I have ever been in where I have been in the right, and at the same time in the majority, which last makes a great difference in the comfort." His career at Rugby and Oxford was exceptionally brilliant. When competing for the Ireland Scholarship his examiners thought from the excellence of his English essay that he must somehow have had access to the papers ! Dean Stanley was the leading representative of the Broad Church Party in the Church of England, and, as such, was regarded with grave suspicion both by High Anglicans and Evangelicals ; but however much they dis- liked and combated his " views," no one could resist his personal fascination. He was singularly modest, trans- LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 113 parent, and lovable. His friends were legion in every civilised country and in every sphere of life. He wrote several hymns, but only that on the Ascension, He is gone beyond the skies, is in common use. Though a Newdigate Prizeman, he did not excel in verse. It has often been remarked, indeed, that while his prose reads like poetry, his poetry reads like prose. William Pennefather, 1816-1873. —Best known as the founder of the Mildmay Conferences, and as having introduced into England the Order of Deaconesses. He had great gifts of organisation, but the influence of his personal character was still greater. Frances Kidley Havergal refers to him as illustrating in a peculiar degree the power of holiness. Most of his hymns were written for the conferences which he arranged and directed. They are very simple but musical, and marked by deep devotional feeling. Jesus, stand among us is a good illustra- tion of these characteristics. John Ernest Bode, 1816-1874.— Hector of Castle Camps, Cambridgeshire; Bampton Lecturer 1855. His hymn, Jesus I have promised, in frequent use as a Confirmation or First Communion hymn, was written, his son informs us, for a service at which three of the family were confirmed. The original has this additional verse — Oh let me see Thy features, The look that once could make So many a true disciple Leave all things for Thy sake. The look that beamed on Peter, When he Thy name denied, The look that draws Thy lovers Close to Thy pierced side. John Curwen, 1816-1880. — A name honourably and inseparably connected with the Tonic Sol-fa movement, for though he always gave credit for the invention to 114 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Miss Glover of Norwich, it was he who developed and popularised the system. Strange to say, though he liked to hear good singing as a boy, he knew nothing of music up to the age of eighteen, when some of his fellow-students, in the "bravado of an after-supper discussion, set them- selves to compel him to master the gamut." They found it hard work, but succeeded at last, achieving thereby a good deal more than they had intended. Mr. Curwen for several years held a charge as an Independent minister, but latterly, as the Sol-fa movement grew on his hands, he gave his whole strength to its development, resigning his charge. He was a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm, somewhat Bismarckian in his methods, — as pioneers and founders have to be. The genesis of the hymn associated with his name I'm a little pilgrim, is somewhat curious. He had inserted a hymn with these words as the first line in a hymn-book he was preparing for the press, pending a reply for permission from the author. The reply came as the book was about to be printed — a peremptory refusal. To get out of the difficulty Mr. Curwen, taking the ungracious author's first line as keynote, wrote the hymn which is known and sung in countless Sunday Schools to-day, while the other, by a just destiny, is forgotten. William Dickson, 1817-1889. — For many years Con- vener of the Sabbath School Committee of the Free Church of Scotland and Editor of the Free Church Chil- dren's Record. He was deeply interested in the religious instruction of the young, and was privileged to see many of his pupils showing in after life the fruit of the good seed he sowed. He was in the regular habit of issuing a New Year's hymn for the young. One of these, Child- hood's years are passing o'er us, is much esteemed. John Mason Neale, 1818-1866. — It is difficult to credit these dates when one reads the record of his LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 115 work, but he lived strenuously. Archbishop Trench called him " the most profoundly learned hymnologist of our church " ; another " one of the most erudite scholars, one of the best linguists (he knew twenty languages), one of the most profound theologians, and the foremost liturgist of his time." And yet the Church of England gave him no preferment. He was offered the Provostship of St. Ninian's, Perth, by the Scotch Episcopal Church, but by the patrons of his own Church he was practically ignored. Even his D.D. degree came from America. The only office he held was that of Warden of Sackville College. The terms "Warden" and "College-" might lead us to suppose — taken in connexion with what has just been written as to his attainments — that this was an institution for liturgiological or hymnological research, but it was only an almshouse, and the Warden's salary averaged £27 a year ! As a boy of fourteen, he began a translation (published in 1833-34) of the poetical writings of Coelius Sedulius, who nourished about 430 a.d., and was counted among the founders of Christian hymnody. Here are two significant lines from one of his compositions — Great things are they I ask, Thou giv'st great things ; And more lie angers Thee, who trifles craves. As a student books were his passion ; he read at meals, read walking, read driving, read everything that came to hand, and what he read he never forgot. Simeon was still alive when Neale entered Cambridge, and he used to attend his sermons, feeling profound reverence for the great evangelical divine, though the bent of his own mind was already set towards another school. When Simeon was on his death-bed, Neale wrote in his journal, "I do think at this moment Mr. Simeon must be the happiest man in the world." And then when the end had come, 116 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS " What a meeting he and Henry Martyn must have had." While still an undergraduate Neale joined in founding the Cambridge Camden, afterwards the Ecclesiological Society, which exercised an immense influence on the architecture and ritual of the English Church. In 1842 he was presented to the small living of Crawley in Sussex, but after six weeks his health broke down and he had to go to Madeira. Fortunately for Neale and theology there was a fine library in con- nexion with the cathedral there, whence he drew materials for his History of the Eastern Church, and for his great Commentary on the Psalms, as well as for those liturgical studies for which he afterwards became so renowned. Here too, it was, he took St. Bernard into his "heart and head " so as to be able ever afterwards to quote his writings with facility. On returning to England with health restored he received in 1846 his appointment as Warden of Sackville College, which he held until his death. Some years later he founded the nursing sisterhood of St. Margaret's to "minister to the bodily, and then to the spiritual, needs of the sick and suffering poor — going to their homes whenever called for, living with them, sharing their discomforts, refusing no difficulty, and adapt- ing themselves to all circumstances." It was thought so wild and Utopian a scheme that one of its warmest pro- moters said of it, "It is a very interesting experiment, and I wonder whether Anglicanism can carry it out." But the result has abundantly justified the experiment, for the sisterhood has developed into a great and beneficent organisation, embracing various works of mercy, and having branches in Scotland, America, and Ceylon as well as many in England. Neale was very fond of children and wrote beauti- LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 117 ful tales for tlieir use. It is pleasant to read of his Sunday evenings at East Grimstead with his own little ones, telling them Bible stories, capping verses, and com- posing Scripture acrostics. In his Diary, 1st June 1846, lie notes, "First told Agnes," his eldest child, "about God." Over his study mantelpiece, adorned with fine icons which had been sent him by the Metropolitan of Moscow in recognition of his work in connexion with the History and Liturgies of the Eastern Church, he had as motto, " Per Augusta ad Augusta" "By the 'strait' to the ' great ' " ; and he lived up to it. He was passionately fond of music, and had an exquisite ear for melody in words, but "he had not a note in his voice." He had considerable original gifts as a poet, and won the Cambridge Seatonian prize for sacred poetry eleven times. But he was a translator of genius. He may be said to have revealed to the Church the treasures of Greek hymnody. In this field as he said himself he had neither "predecessor nor master." But some of the loveliest of mediaeval Latin hymns as well, for instance, those of Bernard of Morlaix, were known only to scholars until he took them and so translated them, with an art concealing art, that they are never thought of by those who sing them as having had birth in a foreign tongue. Of hymns from Greek sources which we owe to Neale, the following are probably best known : — The day is past and over ; The day of resurrection; happy hand of pilgrims ; Let our choir new anthems raise. And from the Latin these : — Christ is made the sure foundation ; Come take by faith the body of your Lord; The royal banners forward go; Of the Father's love begotten; The strain upraise of joy and praise ; Jerusalem the Golden; Brief life is here our portion; For thee, dear, dear country ; Jesus the very thought is sweet ; A 11 glory, laud, and honour. 118 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Some of his hymns, indeed, such as Those eternal bowers, man hath never trod and Art thou iveary, art thou languid? are adaptations rather than translations, but others are a very marvel in their faithful rendering of the Greek and Latin into graceful, spirited English. A little anecdote, which we owe to the Rev. Gerald Moultrie, illustrates amusingly his extraordinary mastery of Latin. The occasion was a visit to Hursley. Mr. Keble having to go to another room to find some papers was detained a short time. On his return Dr. Neale said, " Why, Keble, I thought you told me that the Christian Year was entirely original." "Yes," he answered, "it certainly is." "Then how comes this ? " and Dr. Neale placed before him the Latin of one of Keble's hymns. Keble professed himself utterly confounded. He protested that he had never seen this " original, " no, not in all his life. After a few minutes Neale relieved him by owning that he had just turned it into Latin in his absence. His last work — much of it done on his death -bed — was a volume of original hymns which opens with a beautiful prologue in "dear memory of John Keble." When the end drew near and he could neither write nor compose, they sang to him — as so many love to have sung to them in like case, since he showed the world their beauty — the hymns of Bernard of Morlaix. At his funeral they sang a quaint adaptation from St. Joseph the hymno- grapher, a special favourite with him for its music's sake : here is the first verse — Safe home, safe home in port ! Eent cordage, shatter'd deck, Torn sails, provisions short, And only not a wreck ; But oh ! the joy upon the shore, To tell our voyage -perils o'er ! On his coffin there was inscribed by his own direction : — J. M. Neale, miser et indignus sacerdos requiescens sub Sigko LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 119 Thau 1 (J. M. Xeale. Poor and unworthy priest resting under the sign of the cross). The full story of his life and work has not yet been given to the world. If it ever is, it will make plain that the Church of England in an age of strong men had few personalities of greater force, and none of more single-eyed devotion, than John Mason Xeale. His direct influence as a teacher, it is true, was felt but by a limited circle, save in so far as exerted through his hymns which appealed to all ; but his influence in that circle was potent, and is still working and leavening. It may be mentioned he held the view that a " hymn, whether original or translated, ought, the moment it is published, to become the common property of Christendom, the author retaining no private right in it whatever." " Of all his teachings, however," as one who knew him wrote, " the most edifying to my own soul was when I saw him in his last illness laying in the dust all his works and all his talents, and casting himself as a little child only on the atoning work of Jesus Christ." Thomas Toke Lynch, 1818-1871. — A Congregational minister of great originality and personal charm, but of such delicate health that when writing he was often inter- rupted by spasms of pain that compelled him to fling himself on the floor. But as soon as the spasm was over he was back at his desk again. To use his own felicitous phrase, he had a "bird's heart without a bird's wings," and, when dying, exclaimed, "Now I am going to begin to live." Though a preacher of rare gifts, he ministered to very small congregations, never really finding his sphere. His " Sermons for my Curates," sermons written to be read by friends at an evening service when he was not able to be present himself, are very fine, though " on the original 1 Ezekiel ix. 4 in the Vulgate reads : — Transi per mediam civitatem in medio Jerusalem et signa Thau super frontes visorum. 120 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS manuscripts there are pathetic marks of the agony he endured in their composition. . . . Here and there, espe- cially toward the close, his handwriting, ordinarily so neat and regular, grows large, straggles wildly across or down the page, and looks as though his hand must have been jerked and dragged by an alien force " (Preface by Dr. S. Cox). He published a good deal of verse marked by subtle insight and picturesque diction. One volume, The Rivulet, was fiercely attacked by certain newspapers as "wanting in vital religion," and led to a heated contro- versy in the denomination to which he belonged. In defence, under the pseudonym of "Silent Long," he wrote a clever series of Songs Controversial, and a brilliant satire on The Ethics of Quotation. His hymns are not in exten- sive use, perhaps because somewhat unconventional, but they are the compositions of a true poet. Lift up your heads, rejoice ; Dismiss me not Thy service, Lord ; Gracious Spirit, dwell with me ; All faded is the glowing light are among those given in the Congregational Church Hymnal. Henry Downton, 1818-1885. — For many years English Chaplain at Geneva, where he became familiar with the hymns of the French and Swiss churches, many of which he has rendered into English with great felicity in his Hymns and Verses : original and translated. Among his original compositions the best known are : — For Thy mercy and Thy grace, a solemn and tender New Year's hymn • and Lord, her watch Thy Church is keeping, one of the notes of the great missionary revival. John Ross Macduff, 1818-1895.— Widely and honour- ably known for his contributions to devotional literature, and in particular to the literature of consolation, his Faithful Promiser and Morning and Night Watches having had the extraordinary circulation of nearly a million copies. Dr. Macduff was for several years minister of LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 121 Sandyford Parish, Glasgow, where he was held in great esteem, both as a pastor and as a preacher ; but while still in his prime he resigned his charge, believing that he could better serve the Church as an author. Dr. Matheson, the blind poet-preacher of St. Bernard's, Edinburgh, who had sat in Sandyford Church as a boy, writes — " Dr. Macduff gave me my first sense of literary beauty, my first experience of oratory, my first idea of sanctity, my first real conviction of the beauty of Christianity." Dr. Macduff wrote chiefly in prose, but published two volumes of poems, Altar Stones in 1853, and The Gates of Praise in 187G, which contain several hymns. Of these, Christ is coming ! let creation, a second advent hymn, is the most popular, though he said himself, "I think I have written better ones." Anne Bronte, 1819-1849. — The youngest of a brilliant trio of sisters, each of whom gave early promise of enriching the literature of the century, though one only, Charlotte, lived to develop her powers to the full. Under the assumed names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the three sisters published in 1846 a volume of verse on secular and religious subjects, the religious poems being chiefly written by Acton (Anne Bronte), whom her sister Char- lotte describes as being "a sincere and practical Christian. with a tinge of melancholy . . . and nun -like reserve." One of her poems, addressed to Cowper, has these lines — Sweet are thy strains, Celestial Bard ; And oft, in childhood's years, I've read them o'er and o'er again, With floods of silent tears. The language of my inmost heart I traced in every line, My sins, my sorrows, hopes and fears, "Were there, and only mine. But though religious feeling was to her, as her sister 122 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS observes, "much like what it was to Cowper," the end, happily, was different. For her at evening time there was light. " Her dying hour was unclouded." "In the rude passage from Time to Eternity she threw the weight of her human weakness on God as Creator and Saviour, and so was enabled to bear what was to be borne, patiently, serenely, victoriously." This is shown by her last verses, from which we quote the opening stanza — I hoped that with the brave and strong My portioned task might lie ; To toil amid the busy throng With purpose pure and high, But God has fixed another part, And He has fixed it well. These verses appear in many hymnals, but the most widely known of her compositions is the plaintive hymn beginning, 0p2wessed with si?i and woe. Charles Kingsley, 1819-1875. — The ideal "country parson," who illustrated in his own person the " muscular Christianity " he taught. He was a man of large culture and wide sympathies, interested in sport, in science, in literature, and, above all, in the burning social questions of the time, as shown by his well-known novels, Yeast and Alton Locke, and by the part he took in the Christian Socialism Movement in conjunction with Frederick Denison Maurice. He was a man of vivid imagination. Some of his descriptions of scenery are held to be the " most brilliant pieces of word-painting in English prose," and are singularly truthful even when they are descriptions of scenery he never saw. The hymn, From Thee all skill and science flow, is thoroughly characteristic of his passionate sympathy with the suffering and the poor. John Campbell Shairp, 1819-1885, Principal of the University of St. Andrews, and Matthew Arnold's sue- LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 123 cessor as Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Few men of his generation were richer in friends, few whose friendship was so much esteemed. "Dear old Shairp," "a most lovable man,'' "that delightful self, which inspired such affection and so well deserved to inspire it " — thus Matthew Arnold wrote of him. Norman Macleod was one of his earliest friends ; others were Arthur Clough, Erskine of Linlathen, Coleridge Patteson (the martyred missionary-bishop), and Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a man of true culture and wide sympathies, yet retaining to the last a child's heart and a child's devout and simple faith. The following lines, written by him in 1872, set forth the ideal he ever sought to realise — So might I, toiling morn to eve, Some purpose in my life fulfil, And ere I pass some work achieve To live and move when I am still. I ask not with that work combined My name should down the ages move, But that my toil such end may find As man may bless and God approve. The secret of security against that unrest which is such a feature of modern life has seldom been more sympathetic- ally expressed than in his hymn, 'Tvrixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt. William Robertson, 1820-1864. — For many years minister of Monzievaird, Perthshire. Much interested in hymnody and in the history of Scottish psalmody. His metrical version of the Te Deum, — Thee God we praise, Thee Lord confess, is the best we possess, and is often used where the original is unknown. But in still more frequent use is Mr. Eobertson's simple, tender, baptismal hymn, A little child the Saviour came. Sir Henry Williams Baker, Bart., 1821-1877. — Vicar 124 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS of Monkland, Herefordshire, a hymn-writer of distinction, a hymnal editor of genius, having been chiefly instrumental in giving to the Church the famous collection known as Hymns Ancient and Modern. Sir Henry Baker seems to have possessed the royal gift of selecting the right men to work with him, for if inquiry be made as to the genesis of a number of our best hymns the answer comes, "Written at the request of Sir Henry Baker." It was to his prompting, for example, as Canon Twells informs us, we owe that universal favourite, At even, ere the sun teas set But he was a masterful editor and did not scruple to "improve" the hymns submitted to him. Dr. Mason Neale was one of his most capable contributors, yet a letter sent us from a quarter where this great hymn- writer was intimately known says, u Hymns Ancient and Modern adopted a very large number of Dr. Neale's hymns and altered, if I am not mistaken, every one of them." There seems, therefore, some little ground for rendering, as is sometimes done, the abbreviated title of Hymns Ancient and Modern (Hymns A. k M.) as "Hymns Asked for and Mutilated ! " But however contributors may have murmured, the result from the first was an amazing success, while in a great many cases his "improved" versions have been adopted by other hymnal editors and have become common use. The popularity of the collection was no doubt greatly helped by the musical settings arranged for it by Dr. Monk, and also by its title, which appeals alike to those who love the old and to those who love the new, but is chiefly due to the fact that its editor discerned the " signs of the times " and carefully adapted the book in its several editions to the dominant taste of the Anglican Church. Of Sir Henry Baker's contributions to hymnody may be mentioned, There is a blessed home ; x>erfect life of love ! God of God, and Light of Light ; God of love, King of LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 125 Fence; Lord Jesus, God and Man; We love the place, OGod; what, if we are Christ's; Shall ive not love thee, Mother dear, and The King of love my Shejjherd is. This last seldom appears in Scotch collections, though it is familiar in all musical circles as set to music by Gounod. Its omission is pro- bably owing to the circumstance that Scotch folk can brook no rival to their own beloved version of the 23rd Psalm. During Sir Henry's last illness Frances Ridley Havergal sent him, in expression of sympathy, a hymn containing these lines : — I take this pain, Lord Jesus, From Thine own hand ; The strength to bear it bravely Thou wilt command. He made this hymn his farewell to his people, sending it from his death-bed to be printed in his parish magazine. Jennette Threlfall, 1821-1880.— For long a confirmed invalid and lame owing to accidents, but, like Charlotte Elliott, Mary Shekleton and others, made able " to com- fort them which are in trouble, by the comfort wherewith she herself was comforted of God." The last years of her life were spent in Dean's Yard, "Westminster, and on her death Dean Stanley and Canon Farrar bore warm testimony to the beauty of her character. Hosanna ! loud hosanna from her pen holds a high place among children's hymns. When, from Egypt's house of bondage is another of her compositions. Edward Hayes Plumptre, 1821-1891, Dean of Wells. — A man of wide culture and ceaseless industry, — exegete, theologian, translator, biographer, and poet. His Life of the most famous Bishop of Wells, Thomas Ken, is the standard work on the subject. Mr. Garrett Horder, in The Poets of the Century, refers to his historical poems on Eoger Bacon, Milton. Bunyan and certain Scripture characters as 126 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS " biographical vignettes, studies wrought into poetic form and touched with the colours of an imagination guided by the knowledge of an accurate scholar." His best-known hymns are Rejoice, ye pure in heart, and Thine arm, Lord, in days of old. James Drummond Burns, 1823-1864. — For some time Free Church minister of Dunblane, where his memory is still cherished. Later he laboured in Madeira and Hamp- stead. Author of the Vision of Prophecy and other Poems, a volume which received a warm encomium from Hugh Miller. He was a man of genuine poetic feeling, with a vivid sense of beauty. He liked to have flowers in his room, but could not bear to see them withered, "Just because they were so beautiful I like to think of them as they were. Don't leave them there fading." The article on hymns in the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia Bri- tannica is from his pen. It is gracefully written, but very short, the whole great subject of hymnology being dealt with in two pages. Lord Selborne, in the ninth edition, needed eighteen pages, a fact which of itself shows what a distance we have travelled in hymnology, both as regards knowledge and interest, since 1856. In his biography by Dr. James Hamilton there is a poem of exquisite pathos (suggested by the experiences of his last winter at Mentone, which happened to be un- usually severe) entitled " The Snowflake and the Citron." The snowflake asks leave of the citron to rest on its branches. The citron had never seen anything of the sort before. Bird and bee and butterfly she knew, they nestled in her flowers and did no harm. Was the snow- flake as innocent ? The gauze-winged bee or the butterfly, Is not such a gentle creature as I. I'm but a rain-drop out at play. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 127 So leave was given, and one flake after another fell until There struck to the citron's heart a chill Never felt before — a foreboding of ill — And soon with the weight of the falling flakes, Its loveliest branch bends down and breaks. And its deep roots shivered under the ground, And its golden fruits dropped off all round ; And so the snowflake so small to see, Was the death of the beautiful citron tree. His best-known hymn is one for children, founded on Samuel's call, Hushed was the evening hymn. Cecil Frances (Humphreys) Alexander, 1823-1895. — Wife of Dr. Alexander, Archbishop of Armagh, who thus dedicated to her his Bampton Lectures, The Witness of the Psalms to Christ ; — " To Cecil Frances Alexander in remembrance of twenty-seven years of helpful love and example, with full assurance that his own estimate of her hymns and sacred songs is that of the Church and of English-speaking Christians generally." We have an indication of how high the Church's estimate is in the fact that no fewer than twelve of her hymns appear in the most recent Hymnal. Only five other hymn-writers are represented by a larger number — Charles Wesley, Horatius Bonar, John Mason Neale, James Montgomery, and Bishop How. That her poetry is esteemed by English-speaking- Christians generally is shown by the fact that her Hymns for Little Children, the first edition of which appeared in 1848, is now (1897) in its sixty-ninth edition. The volume contains hymns on Baptism, The Apostles' Creed, The Ten Commandments, and The Lord's Prayer. John Keble in the Preface expressed the opinion that the hymns contained in it would " win a high place for themselves in the estimation of all who know how to value true poetry and primitive devotion." The profits of 128 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS the publication were applied to the support of an Irish school for mutes. Certainly no writer for children has given us so many hymns that have " won their way to the hearts of the young and found a home there," such as : Do no sinful action; All things bright and beautiful; Once, in royal David's city ; Bay by day the little daisy ; There is a green hill far aivay ; We are but little children weak. Of hymns other than for the young, her best known are Jesus calls us o'er the tumult; Spirit of God, that moved of old; Forgive them, my Father ; His are the thousand sparkling rills. But it is not by English-speaking Christians and children only they are valued and loved. The Bishop of Tasmania and missionary bishops in South Africa and India bear testimony to their usefulness in the mission- field as teaching in a form easily remembered the elements of Christianity. Mrs. Alexander — unlike Dr. Neale who owned that some alterations in his hymns were alterations for the better — was impatient of supposed "improvements.*' "You see what I wanted to say is just so and so, not something else." " She disliked with an amusing intensity changes made in hymns to suit a fitful fancy or to humour party spirit," regarding this as " literary sacrilege — sacrilege against the dead in that which was best and noblest of them." Of her longer pieces the Burial of Moses is best known ; Lord Houghton calls it the "finest sacred lyric in the language." No one can read it without profound emotion, and once read it can never be forgotten ; it so fastens on the imagina- tion by its stately rhetoric, and on the heart by its deep pathos. It ends thus : — lonely grave in Moab's land ! dark Beth-Peor's hill ! Speak to these curious hearts of ours And teach them to be still. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 129 God hath His mysteries of grace, Ways that we cannot tell ; He hides them deep like the hidden sleep Of him he loved so well. This lyric probably represents Mrs. Alexander's highest literary reach, though little inferior to it is the hymn, There is a green hill far away, one of a series on the Apostles' Creed written to illustrate the clause "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified." The language here is childlike in its simplicity. " It is a hymn any one might have written," some one has said, yet only a poet of genius, in a moment of inspiration, could have composed it. In no other hymn for the young is the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God told so touchingly. Gounod has set it to music. Mrs. Alexander was deaf to applause, but when some one wrote to tell of a great change in heart and life that had come to a worldly man through hearing this hymn sung, she sprang from her chair exclaiming, " Thank God ! I do like to hear that." Those, however, who knew her best felt that, beautiful as her hymns are, her life was more beautiful still. Thomas Hughes, 1823-1896.— Author of Tom Brown's School Days, the most popular story for boys ever written. Mr. Hughes was a Rugby boy in Dr. Arnold's day, and an enthusiastic admirer of that greatest of headmasters. He was afterwards associated with Maurice and Kingsley in the Christian Socialism Movement. The hymn God of truth, whose living word was written for Lays of the Sanctuary, a volume of original poetry, — edited by Mr. George Stevenson De Rutherford, and published in aid of a Mrs. Good, — to which Keble, Walsham How, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, George Macdonald, Professor Blackie, and many others contributed. Mr. Ellerton writes : " The hymn is obviously suggested by Mr. Maurice's sermon on 'The 9 130 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Word of God conquering by Sacrifice ' in his volume on the 'Doctrine of Sacrifice.'" William Walsham How, 1823-1897.— Bishop of Wake- field, though probably best known as Bishop of Bedford. This is not a rural diocese, as it has sometimes been described, but one involving the spiritual oversight of the teeming millions of East London. Here he was known as the "Poor man's Bishop," "The People's Bishop," "The Omnibus Bishop," kindly titles which tell their own tale. Significant too in the same direction is the fact that among his favourite sayings (he had the words engraved on his pastoral staff) was that of St. Bernard, Pasce verbo, Pasce vita. His last charge had as its theme The Ideal Clergyman, The Ideal Layman. He opened his treatment of the first point by quoting a layman's test, " Is he the sort of man I would like to send for to visit me on my death-bed ? " According to the Times he was offered but refused the Bishopric of Durham, though it is counted among the great prizes of the English Church. Bishop How was the author of Pastor in Parochid, a wise and much valued manual for ministers, and of many other theological works. Of all recent hymnists his name appears most frequently in hymn-books, attached to hymns in constant use. In a paper on the question " What constitutes a good hymn ? " the Bishop gives this view : " A good hymn is something like a good prayer — simple, real, earnest, and reverent." His own certainly fulfil all these requirements. Some of them indeed are thrilling in their plaintive tenderness, as Jesus, Thou art standing. Others are at once tender and jubilant, as For all the saints, who from their labours rest and Summer suns are glowing, but their most characteristic feature is just the characteristic feature of his own mind ; they are practical, they serve LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 131 ends of edification. You see the Pastor in Parochid in them all. The last hymn he wrote was for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, King of Kings, whose reign of old. Dr. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, preaching in Wakefield Cathedral, just after How's death, said, " He who has given a hymn to the world that can be sung by multitudes or read in the quiet of one's own chamber, confers an enviable gift upon the church." Bishop How conferred many such, but best of all it is to know that the hymns he gave us were the expression of a nature as lovable and trustful as it was robust, the echo of a self- sacrificing and devoted life that never grew weary in well- doing. Adelaide Anne Procter, 1825-1864.— Daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, better known as " Barry Cornwall," poet, dramatist, and biographer. Her love for poetry developed very early. Among the family memorials there is preserved a tiny album into which her favourite passages were copied for her by her mother, before she herself could write. She acquired knowledge with great facility, not even mathematics coming amiss. When Charles Dickens was editor of Household Words, there came to him one day a poem signed " Mary Berwick." He inserted it in his magazine, and asked for more. Other poems were sent, published, and paid for. Dickens got interested in his contributor, and made a fancy sketch of her in his own mind, though he had never seen her, and had not the least idea who she was. But he knew the Procters well, " Barry Cornwall " having befriended him when himself an aspirant for literary fame. One day he brought to their house the Christmas number of Household Words, with the remark, "There is a pretty poem in this number by a Miss Berwick." Next day a letter from Mrs. Procter told him that his contributor was her daughter Adelaide. Dickens always regarded his having given Miss Procter's verses to 132 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS the world as one of the most pleasing of his editorial experiences. Miss Procter, however, is best known as a writer of songs ; some of which achieved a phenomenal popularity, such as Cleansing Fires, and The Lost Chord. Many of her songs, indeed, might almost pass for hymns, and in all her poetry there is a vein of deep seriousness. Favourite themes are the blessing that comes through trial, and the strength and comfort of trust — Wisdom and sight are well, but trust is best, and Bless the cleansing fire and the furnace of living pain. Her best-known hymns are My God, I thank Thee, who hast made, and / do not ash, Lord. William Whiting, 1825-1878.— Master of the Win- chester Choristers' School, and author of several hymns. His reputation rests chiefly on his hymn for those at sea, Eternal Father, strong to save, which is a universal favourite, and when sung in stormy weather, especially in seaboard districts, arrests and solemnises a congregation in a very remarkable way. It has been wedded to a beautiful tune by Dr. Dykes, appropriately named " Melita " in commemoration of the shipwreck of St. Paul. Lawrence Tuttiett, 1825-1897. — For sixteen years vicar of Lea Marston in Warwickshire. In 1870 he exchanged incumbencies with the Episcopal clergyman of St. Andrews, Fife, where he ministered for twenty -eight years, becoming "quite a Scotchman in heart." He was the author of several devotional works and of many valu- able hymns, of which one for the New Year, Father, here we dedicate, and another, for Advent, quickly come, dread Judge of all, are to be found in most modern hymnals. Jesu, ever present, and grant us light, that we may know, are also very beautiful, tender, and spiritual. Much LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 133 of his poetry was composed on returning home from the visitation of the sick and afflicted or from the burial of the dead, when he would weave into verse the main thoughts suggested by what he had seen and heard. John Ellerton, 1826-1893.— A clergyman of the Church of England, earnest, devoted, and much loved. Matthew Arnold termed him " the greatest of living hymnologists." He was certainly one of the " greatest " of his day, the studies in hymnology attached to his memoirs showing great judgment, while his biographical sketches of hymn- writers in the same volume are thoughtful, informing, bright and sympathetic. Mr. Ellerton studied at Cambridge, where he came under the influence of Frederick Denison Maurice. He did not, however, attach himself to any special school or party in the Church, and might have been called an Evangelical High Churchman of Liberal principles, ap- preciating alike the subjective fervour of the Evangelicals, the intellectual vigour of the Liberals, and the reverence for authority and love for an orderly and beautiful service which are characteristic of the High Church party. Church Hymns, of which he was joint editor, and for which he prepared an admirable series of notes and illustrations, is just such a selection as we might have expected from a man of this type. It is catholic in the best sense of the word. He wrote a large number of hymns, of which the following are of conspicuous merit — Saviour, again to Thy dear name ive raise ; The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,; In the Name which earth and heaven; Throned upon the aw fid tree; When the day of toil is done ; This is the day of light ; Now the labourer's task is o'er. The last- named, sympathetically set to music by Dr. Dykes, has become the great funeral hymn of the Church. It is associated with some of their saddest hours by nation, church, and family, but associated as balm with wound. 134 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Mr. Ellerton took no copyright in his hymns, holding that " if counted worthy to contribute to Christ's praise in the congregation, one ought to feel very thankful and very humble." Hymns, we are told, were his joy and delight, and when he was lying half unconscious on his death-bed they flowed from his lips in a never-ending stream. He was a man of wide culture, and of great personal charm, "always making the best of and doing the best for others, never thinking of himself." Mary Shekleton, 1827-1883. — Always delicate, and long a confirmed invalid ; but as Miss Havergal wrote of her : " She was one of the many faithful sofa workers who do what they can, and beyond that are content to wait." One of the things she did was to found The Invalids' Prayer Union, getting members for it in France, Germany, America, and Australia, as well as in Great Britain, and acting as its secretary for eleven years. Her hymn, It passeth knowledge, that dear love of Thine, is not perhaps adapted for congregational use, but it is of distinct value as a devout meditation. Edward White Benson, 1829-1896.— Archbishop of Canterbury. When Tait was appointed Bishop of London he consulted Arthur Stanley as to whom he should choose for chaplain. The Dean recommended Lightfoot, West- cott, and Benson, who were then comparatively unknown men, but whose calibre he rightly gauged. Like so many others called to rule in the Church of England, Benson had first to show his capacity by ruling a great public school. This he did well as headmaster of Wellington for fourteen years. In 1877 he was appointed first Bishop of Truro, and in 1883 transferred, to the surprise of every one, to the Primacy. But the wisdom of the appointment was amjny justified by the result. Coming into power at a very difficult juncture, he so bore LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 135 himself as to win the love and respect alike of his own Church and of all other denominations, and to be universally mourned when he died suddenly during morn- ing service in the church of Hawarden. He wrote several translations of Greek and Latin hymns, including one of the Dies Irae. throned ! crowned with all renown, is the best of his original compositions. Elizabeth Cecilia Douglas Clephane, 1830-1869.— Daughter of Andrew Clephane, Sheriff of Fife. As a child she was always fond of poetry, and when about fifteen years old began to confide to a younger sister what she had written. For years these two held what they called "literary seances." She had a vivid imagination, and used to improvise wonderful stories with hairbreadth escapes. The editress of a child's magazine, The Children's Hour, having asked her for a contribution, she wrote two or three hymns which she thought might suit, — among the rest The Ninety and Nine, published under the title of The Lost Sheep. Some years after, when she was dead, Moody and San key came on their first visit to Scotland (in 1874). While in the train, on their way to the Highlands, Mr. Sankey looking over his hymn-book in search of something that would suit shepherds, whom he expected they would have to address, could find nothing. Taking up a paper, The Christian Age, that had been left lying on the seat by some former passenger, and glancing over it idly he came upon The Ninety and Nine, copied out of the Children's Hour. And that evening he sang it, the tune coining to him as he went on. At the end of the meeting Mr. Moody said to him, "Wherever did you get that hymn ? " "I got it in answer to prayer," was the reply. It was republished, along with seven others, in the Family Treasury, 1872-74 (then edited by the Rev. 136 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS William Arnot) under the title Breathings on the Border. The following lines from one of the other hymns are interesting for the light they cast on the singer's own ideal of life and duty — The healing and the balm, The crown upon the brow, The trial o'er, the triumph won — Oh God ! to have this now. Not so, Lord ! not this, The boon I ask from Thee, But for Thy strength to do the work My God hath set for me. It is impossible to give all the instances of the use God made of Miss Clephane's beautiful hymn The Ninety and Nine — "very affecting and beautiful," Bishop How calls it— but one which Mr. Sankey told her sister may be given : Some time after their return to America the two evangelists were taking a tour "up country," where there were only rough men engaged in "lumber- ing." There was one man who would not listen to them nor come to their meeting, one man who would have nothing to do with them — an open scoffer. Judge of their surprise when next morning this very man came to them in extreme agitation with the jailer's cry, " What must I do to be saved ? " Then he told them that sitting outside his hut the evening before the breeze bore down to his ear the words of The Ninety and Nine, and the spirit of God sent it home to his soul with power. 1 Richard Frederick Littledale, 1833-1890.— A native of Dublin. After a distinguished University career he took orders in the Church of England, but never held a living, devoting himself to literature. He was the friend and collaborates of Dr. Neale, whose Commen- tary on the Psalms he completed and gave to the world. Like Neale, he was a man of tenacious memory, an " index to universal history," though specially interested in litur- gical and kindred studies. To hymnody he contributed translations from seven different languages and many 1 Much of the information given in this sketch was kindly supplied by Miss Clephane's sister. LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 137 original hymns, including some beautiful metrical litanies. Of the former may be mentioned, God, who metest in Thine hand, of the latter Thou who, leaving crown and throne. Edwin Hatch, 1835-1889.— One of the few English theologians who have won a European reputation for original research. Harnack, who translated his Bampton Lectures of 1880 into German, writes thus: — "In his learning that of England's great old theologians, Ussher and Pearson, lived to me again. He was a glorious man, whose loss I shall never cease to mourn." He was taken while in the very prime of mental vigour, ere yet his " pen had gleaned his teeming brain." His posthumous volume, Towards Fields of Light, from which the beautiful lyric, Breathe on me, breath of God, is taken, shows that the great critic was no "light, half believer of our casual creeds," but a man of deep, unaffected piety. Though not adapted for singing, the following lines on Heaven are very beautiful : — Some seek a Heaven of rest, And some an ample sphere For doing work they cannot do While they are prisoned here. Some seek a Heaven of song, And others fain would rise From an articulate utterance, To silent ecstacies. Some seek a home in Heaven, And some would pray to be Alone with God, beyond the reach Of other company. But in God's perfect Heaven, All aspirations meet, Each separate longing is fulfilled, Each separate soul complete. Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-1879.— Daughter of 138 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS the Kev. W. H. Havergal, honourably known for his efforts to improve the metrical psalmody of the Church, and composer of the simple but much-loved tune "Evan." Miss Havergal inherited her father's special gift, and at one time seems to have contemplated a musical career. That she possessed the literary instinct and a vivid appreciation of nature was shown at the age of eight, when, lighting one day on Cowper's beautiful line, My Father made them all, she exclaimed, " That was what I wanted to say." Like Keble she regarded her poetic gift as something sacred- Poetry is not a trifle Tis the essence of existence And the songs that echo longest Deepest, fullest, truest, strongest With your life blood you must write. Her writings in prose and in verse have a large circulation, as have also her biography and letters which reveal a very winning and sympathetic nature, and tell the story of an unusually eager spiritual life. Few have more faithfully acted out the aspiration she expressed in one of her hymns, Alivays, only for the King. Her favourite title , for our Lord is Master, "because it implies rule and submission and this is what love craves. Men may feel differently, but a true woman's submission is inseparable from deep love." The hymn, Thy life was given for me, which Bishop How calls " one of our few very delightful meditation hymns," was written in Germany. She had come in weary and sat down opposite a picture with the motto, / gave my life for thee — a copy, perhaps, of the picture which arrested Zinzendorf. The hymn founded on this motto came to her as by a flash. She wrote it in pencil on the back of a circular, but on reading it over LATER ENGLISH HYMNS 139 said to herself, " This is not poetry anyhow, I won't go to the trouble of copying this," and was about to put it in the fire, but a sudden impulse made her draw it back and put it " crumpled and singed " in her pocket. Visiting an old woman in an almshouse, some time after, she read the lines to her, and they so delighted her listener she thought they might prove helpful to others, as undoubtedly they have been. The version in common use is a recast by the compilers of Church Hymns, approved by the authoress. Miss Havergal's poetic range was limited, but within that range she is unsurpassed. In a very special sense she is the singer of consecration. One has only to quote the first lines of her best -known hymns as evidence of this — Take my life, and let it be ; Lord, speak to me, that I may speak ; Jesus, Master, whose I am; True-hearted, ivhole-hearted ; Who is on the Lord's side?; Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King. Her beautiful Advent hymn, Thou art coming, my Saviour, is in a somewhat different strain, expressive of pure direct adoration, but in every "complete" life consecration follows on adoration as "loyal response." Frederick William Goadby, 1845-1880.— A Baptist minister, of fine powers and great promise, early removed by death. Thou, whose hand has brought us was written for the opening services of a new chapel built in Walford during his ministry. Emily E. S. Elliott, 1897.— One of a family that has made many valuable contributions to hymnody. The most distinguished member was Miss Charlotte Elliott, author of Just as I am, whose niece is the subject of this notice. Miss Emily Elliott is best known as the writer of two beautiful children's hymns on the Nativity, There came a little child to earth, and, Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown. SECTION VII ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS Neale concludes his beautiful tribute to John Keble, where he pictures the " bards " of the past welcoming the singer of the Christian Year to the Courts of Da} 7 , by bidding those "called of God to seize His lyre," — So ask for that celestial fire, That ye may say, and He inspire, " And I too know to build the hymn." We venture to think that the perusal of this section will show that we have many still with us who would seem to have been so "called" and so "inspired." Jemima (Thompson) Luke (1813- ). — The follow- ing account (with one or two slight additions kindly furnished by Mrs. Luke herself) of the composition of / think ivhen I read that sweet story of old was written for Great Thoughts in 1892 :— " I went in the year 1841 to the Normal Infant School in Gray's Inn Road, to obtain some knowledge of the system. Mary Moffat, afterwards Mrs. Livingstone, was there at the time. . . . Among the marching pieces at Gray's Inn Road was a Greek air, the pathos of which took my fancy, and I searched Watts and Jane Taylor, and several Sunday School hymn-books for words to suit the measure, but in vain. "Having been recalled home, I went one day on some missionary business to the little town of Wellington, five miles from Taunton, in a stage-coach. It was a ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 141 beautiful spring morning ; it was an hour's ride, and there was no other inside passenger. On the back of an old envelope I wrote in pencil the first two of the verses now so well known, in order to teach the tune to the village school, supported by my stepmother, and which it was my province to visit. The third verse was added afterwards to make it a missionary hymn. My father superintended the Sunday School in which we taught, and used to let the children choose the first hymn. One Sunday the children started their new hymn. My father turned to his younger daughters, and said, 'Where did that come from 1 I never heard it before.' ' Oh, Jemima made it,' they replied. Next day he asked for a copy and sent it without my knowledge to the Sunday School Teachers' Magazine" In early life Mrs. Luke purposed entering the Mission Field in India. A serious illness how- ever prevented her, but she has done much by her pen to further the cause of Foreign Missions, and was for many years editor of a Missionary Magazine. Eliza Sibbald (Dykes) Alderson (1818- ).— Authoress of And noiv, beloved Lord, Thy soul resign- ing, and Lord of glory, Who hast bought us. She is the sister of Dr. Dykes of Durham, who gave such valuable assistance to the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern, both as regards words and music. Mrs. Alderson 's almsgiving hymn, Lord of glory, was offered to the committee of Hymns Ancient and Modern, on the con- dition that an old friend of the authoress, Dr. Dykes, should compose a tune for it. When sent to Dr. Dykes, he found, to his surprise, it was written by his sister. The original hymn ended with the lines — Lest that face of Love and Pity Turn from us another day. This Dr. Dykes thought too sad for a hymn intended to encourage cheerful almsgiving, and suggested that a 142 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS fifth verse should be added by repeating the first half of the first verse and adding the following lines composed by himself — But, best of all Thy graces, Give us Thine own charity. 1 Thomas Hornblower Gill (1819- ).— The following autobiographical notes from Mr. Gill's pen will be read with interest, as illustrating a chapter in spiritual evolu- tion. Mr. Gill was brought up a Unitarian, but began to chafe under the yoke " through my exceeding delight in the hymns of Watts, and from the contrast between their native power and beauty, and their shrunken and dwindled plight when shorn of their inspiring theology by Unitarian mutilations. It seemed strange to me that the gain of truth should be the loss of glory, and I longed to appropriate the strains I so loved. The assiduous perusal of the Greek Testament showed me clearly that Unitarianism failed to interpret the Book of Life, and that there was much there which it gainsaid." "But I clung to the creed for which I had sacrificed something, even when I no longer held it." At this stage Mr. Gill made the acquaintance of Mr. George Dawson of Birmingham, and contributed some hymns to his collection. Dissatisfied with them afterwards " as vague, unsettling, and spiritually ener- vating," he "Christianised" them, a process which he describes as "an uplifting and glorifying process." Mr. Gill has written a large number of hymns, many of which, it is safe to predict, will find a place in the hymnals of the future. It is perhaps too much to say of him, as has been said, that he is "an equally tender, almost equally impassioned, and more intellectual Charles Wesley," but he is without question a true poet, and brings a fresh mind to bear on the old themes of Christian 1 Life and Letters of Dr. Dykes, edited by Rev. J. F. Fowler, D.C.L. ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 143 truth and Christian experience. He tells us himself that every step of his spiritual progress has a hymn as its record, but he adds, the " tides of sacred song are quite beyond our control." " I once made up my mind to write a hymn every week, and the result was very unsatisfactory. Half the hymns that were produced were good for nothing." " No day without its line " is evidently not a rule for hymnists. Among his best-known hymns are — We come unto our fathers' God ; The glory of the Spring hoiv sweet ; and 0, mean may seem this house of clay, of which he last writes : " The blessing that has gone with it is wonderful. It has given me the best friends that I possess." Samuel Reynolds Hole (1819- ). — Dean of Rochester. Known to lovers of flowers as the author of a charming book about roses; to those who are interested in the personal annals of their own time by his delightful Recollections ; and to the members of his own profession by his practical Hints to Preachers. Dean Hole is a persona grata in many circles — musical, artistic, literary, horticultural, as well as ecclesiastical, but he is in specially close touch with the working classes. His spirited hymn, Sons of labour, clear to Jesus, was written, as he himself informs us, for the Church of England Working Men's Society, his friend, Sir John Stainer, most kindly composing the tune. He adds : "I have only written one other hymn." Anna Laetitia Waring (1820- ). — A native of Wales, unknown as to her personal history, but known and to be remembered for what she has written, and in particular by the hymn Father, I know that all my life, which many would place in the front rank of those subjective hymns in which there is more of devout self-contemplation than of adoration. The element of adoration, indeed, is not wholly wanting in this composition, and it is instinct with trust ; but its chief charm lies in its singularly subtle analysis of the aspirations of a devout soul. It is a hymn that will 144 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS well repay careful study, for almost every verse has some illuminating sentence that flashes a great spiritual ideal before the mind. For example, " A heart at leisure from itself," " Content to fill a little space, if Thou be glorified," "A lowly heart that leans on Thee, is happy anywhere," "A life of self-renouncing love is a life of liberty." Samuel Childs Clarke (1821- ).— Vicar of Thorver- ton, Devonshire, author of a very solemn hymn on the passion of our Lord, dark and dreary day, which has been set to music by six different composers, including Dr. Dykes and Walter Macfarren. Mr. Clarke tells us that he regards it as the " greatest pleasure and the highest privilege of his life to be permitted to contribute to the service of song in the house of the Lord." He has written numerous hymns, including many for special occasions, such as the Diamond Jubilee and the anniversary of St. Columba. He has also composed services of song for the Church seasons and for missionary and flower services, which have been highly commended by Earl Nelson and others. • Henry T wells (1823- ).— Canon of Peterborough. No hymn of modern days. has met with more universal acceptance than At even ere the sun ivas set, and that in spite of its being wedded to a very unattractive tune. Its success is all the more extraordinary when we learn under what conditions it was composed. We quote a letter received from the author : — It was written in 1868, at the request of Sir Henry Baker, who said a new evening hymn was wanted for the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and being at that time headmaster of a large grammar school — the Godolphin School, Hammersmith — I wrote it one afternoon while the boys were under examination (paper work), and I was supposed to be seeing " all fair." I am afraid I could not have been very energetic or lynx-eyed in my duties that day, but I little anticipated the popularity the hymn would attain. I have been asked for leave to insert it in 147 ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 145 different hymnals in all parts of the English-speaking world, and many more have taken it without leave. Copies have been kindly sent to me in Greek, Latin, German. French, Welsh, and Irish. I like to think it may have brought souls nearer Christ, and if so, I heartily thank God for it. Froude, the historian, said of Xewman as a preacher : "He seemed to be addressing the most secret consciousness of each one of us, as the eyes of a portrait appear to look at every person in the room.'"' So with this hymn. Every one seems to be remembered. Canon Twells has written several other hymns, but as yet they are not so well known as they deserve to be. One of them, The voice of God's creation found me, which is cast in the novel form of a dramatic soliloquy, is exceedingly striking. Godfrey Thring (1823- ).— Prebendary of Wells, editor of The Church of England Hymn-Bool:, regarding which Dr. Julian writes — "Its literary standard is the highest amongst modern hymn-books, and its poetical merits are great. . . . For practical church use, from the doctrinal standpoint which it holds, it will be difficult to find its equal, and impossible to name its superior."' Dr. Julian is equally emphatic as to the excellence of Turing's own compositions, eulogising their " massive structure," their "tender plaintiveness," their "almost perfect rhythm." The best known is probably his evening hymn, The radiant morn hath passed away. Others of great beauty are — Thou to whom the sick and dying; Saviour, blessed Saviour ; Fierce raged the tempest o'er the deep. The following notes as to his hymns, with which Mr. Turing has supplied us, will be read with interest : What turned my thoughts to hymn- writing first of all was owing to my mother not being able to find any hymn which could be sung to an old tune, which she had known all her life {Cam- bridge New), without a repetition of the last line three times, to which she had a particular dislike, and I said that I would try and write one for her, and I wrote in consequence my first hymn, 146 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS We all had sinned and gone astray. I was at that time living rather a lonely life in a very small parish in Somersetshire, and was accustomed to wander about the fields. And during this time, either from reading the account of the storm in Mark iv. 36-41, or the thought having come into my head, I forget now which — I wrote Fierce raged the tempest, to picture to myself the scene on the Lake of Gennesareth, where I had been a few years previously, and it finally took the shape in which the hymn is now known, although in the first place I began it in a somewhat different metre, as follows : When the waves were wildly leaping, Whilst Thy servants watched weeping, On a pillow Thou wert sleeping Calm and still ; but the wish to preserve the line " Save, Lord, we perish," was their cry, with which I began the second verse, induced me to alter the first verse to that metre rather than alter the line to the metre of the first verse. The radiant morn was written as an afternoon or early evening hymn, as I had repeatedly, as a clergyman, felt the want of such a hymn, most of the so-called evening hymns being applicable only to services after sunset, and at the time I wrote it in most of the country parishes in England the second service on Sunday was usually in the afternoon. Anne Ross (Cundell) Cousin (1824- ). — Among hymns of Heaven, The sands of time are sinking, with its refrain In ImmanueVs land, takes high rank, and deservedly, for no other hymn on this theme brings out with such emphasis — as the secret of heaven's attraction for the Christian heart— the personal presence of the " Lamb that was slain." The hymn is a selection from a poem of nineteen verses, the fruit of a long and loving study of the Life and Letters of Samuel Rutherford, and founded on what are said to have been his last words, " Glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land." It was introduced to the public as a hymn by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, Barclay Free ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 147 Church, Edinburgh, in Songs of Zion. Since then it has passed into common use. In a letter to the authoress the Rev. John G. Paton of the New Hebrides tells of the profound impression it made upon his mind when sung by a large congregation in St. Kilda, Australia, as the old year was passing away and the new year coming in. Another of Mrs. Cousin's hymns, Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head, has been found of great value in "Mission" services. Mr. Sankey refers to it as a hymn "very much blessed," and the Rev. W. Hay Aitken, one of the great mission preachers of the Church of England, writes : "I must add my testimony to that of many others as to the wonderful power of that hymn after a solemn sermon on the Crucifixion. I have frequently felt the congregation, I may say, quite melted down, as we have sung that hymn very softly on our knees as before His Cross." Mrs. Cousin is the widow of the late Rev. William Cousin, minister of the Free Church, Melrose, and resides in Edinburgh. In 1876 she published a selection of her writings under the title, ImmanueVs Land and other pieces. The volume contains many devotional poems of great beauty. One of them entitled, What are these Wounds? is of extraordinary intensity and pathos. Mrs. Cousin, indeed, might well be termed a Scottish Christina Rossetti, with a more pronounced theology. William Bright (1824- ).— Professor of Ecclesias- tical History in Oxford University, and Canon of Christ Church. He has made valuable contributions to our knowledge of early Church history, and, by his Ancient Collects, to our knowledge of early liturgies. And now the ivants are told is his most popular hymn ; but there are others of great beauty in Hymns Ancient and Modern, such as At Thy feet, Christ, tee lay ; And now, Father, mindful of the love; We know Thee, ivho Thou art. Most of these were first published in his Hymns and other 148 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Poems, a volume of beautiful verse that deserves to be better known. Edward Henry Bickersteth (1825- ). — Bishop of Exeter. Son of the Re v. Edward Bickersteth, whose Christian Psalmody, published in 1833, was the best evangelical hymn collection of its day, and formed the basis of the Hymnal Companion which he edited. It is drawn chiefly from English sources, and has not nearly so many trans- lations from the Greek and Latin as Hymns Ancient and Modern. Peace, perfect peace, which is unrivalled as a hymn of consolation, was written, as we have learned from Dr. Bickersteth himself, "after hearing a sermon preached by Canon Gibbon at Harrogate in August 1875 on the text Isaiah xxvi. 3." In 1889 Mr. Ellerton wrote to the Bishop regarding it : " Beyond all your hymns I think it has brought blessing to many, and I know how it has helped the faith of some of God's sorely tried children. Our Essex poor folk love it dearly." Of his beautiful Communion hymn, Till He come, let the words, the author says that it is given in the Hymnal Companion as "presenting one aspect of the Lord's Supper which is passed over in many hymnals." " Ye do show the Lord's death till He come." William Dalrymple MacLagan (1826- ). — Arch- bishop of Y'ork. Dr. MacLagan is by birth a Scotchman, and the brother of the celebrated Edinburgh physician, Sir Douglas MacLagan, an esteemed elder of the Church of Scotland and a familiar figure in her General Assembly. The Archbishop was for several years in the army, and served in India as a lieutenant, but in 1856 he took orders in the Church of England. In 1875 he was ap- pointed Vicar of Kensington, in 1878 consecrated Bishop of Lichfield, and in 1891 preferred to the Archbishopric of York. We have been informed by Dr. MacLagan, in answer to a letter of inquiry, that his hymns — Lord, xohen ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 149 Thy kingdom comes, remember me, and What thanks and praise to Thee we owe "were written by request of the editors of Hymns Ancient and Modern at the time of the issue of their revised edition in 1875," and that his hymns — It is finished ! blessed Jesus, and The saints of God! their conflict past "were composed for the use of my own parishioners in St. Mary, Newington . . . with special reference to the service on the evening of Good Friday and the festival of All Saints respectively." Abel Gerard Wilson Blunt (1827- ).— Rector of St. Luke's, Chelsea. Author of the deservedly popular hymn, Here, Lord, we offer Thee all that is fairest. Mr. Blunt tells us he wrote it for his children's flower service in 1879 to suit a particular tune set in Chope's Congregational Hymn Book to Heber's Brightest and best of the sons of the morning ! Henry Arthur Martin (1831- ). — Vicar of Laxton, who informs us that the metre of his hymn, Sound aloud Jehovah's praises, was adapted to a German tune arranged and harmonised by Mr. S. Beay, organist of Newark. As originally written it had eight stanzas. The author regrets the omission of the last, which, he thinks, is " wanted as the proper completion of the hymn, which otherwise comes to a conclusion for no sufficient reason." The omitted verse is as follows : Still Thy name o'er earth and ocean Shall be carried, "God is Love," Whisper'd by the soul's devotion, Echo'd by the choirs above, Hallow'd thro' all worlds for ever, Lord, of life the only Giver, Blessed, glorious Trinity. Frederic William Farrar (1831- ).— Dean of Canterbury. The name of no other clergyman of the Church of England still living is so well known among all 150 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS classes as that of Dean Farrar. This unique position has been won by his Life of Christ, which has had an enormous circulation. Dr. Farrar's literary industry is marvellous. No modern English theologian has produced so many works characterised at once by scholarship and eloquence. Hardly a year passes in which he does not give to the world some volume weighty with learning, while sermons, bright stories for boys, and magazine articles flow from his pen. " No day without a line " in his case reads "No day without its pages." As a preacher, moreover, Dr. Farrar stands in the first rank. His con- tributions to hymnody are, Father, before Thy throne of light; and a Christmas Carol, In the fields ivith their flocks abiding. In a letter received from Dean Farrar he informs us that this Carol was written, when he was a master at Harrow, for Dr. Farmer, " who placed it at the beginning of his beautiful little simple oratorio of ' Christ and His Soldiers.' " Sabine Baring - Gould (1834- ). — The versatile squire - rector of Lew Trenchard (a beautiful parish in Devonshire), author of Lives of the Saints; Curious Myths of the Middle Ages ; The Origin and Development of Religious Belief and one of the most popular novelists of the day. Three of his hymns are to be found in almost every modern hymnal — Through the night of doubt and sorrow (a rendering from the Danish of Ingemann) ; the spirited processional Onward ! Christian soldiers ; and one of our brightest children's hymns, Daily, daily sing the praises. Others not so well known, but also very beautiful are Now the day is over, and On the Resurrection morning. Mr. Baring - Gould writes us as follows with reference to the first : " Dr. Littledale asked me to look through the Danish hymnal and see if any merited translation. This was when he was editing ' The People's Hymnal.' ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 151 I did three or four from the Danish, among these Ingemann's hymn." The next three "were written to tunes I wanted to popularise for my Mission at Horbury Bridge in 1865, Daily, daily to a French tune; On- ward ! Christian soldiers to one by Haydn ; Now the day is over to one I fancied was original (of my own), but afterwards discovered it was a mere reminiscence of a German air I had heard as a child." Thomas Benson Pollock (1836- ). — The metrical litany of which Heber's Lord of mercy and of might was an early example, has had in Mr. Pollock one of its most successful exponents, another being Dr. Littledale. These litanies constitute a very valuable addition to our modern hymnals by reason of their simple and succinct statements of the great Christian verities. Few of our hymns do more to solemnise and kindle devotional feeling. Among Mr. Pollock's happiest achievements may be mentioned, Father, hear Thy children's call ; Spirit blest, who art adored; Jesus, with Thy Church abide ; Jesus, ive are far away ; Jesus, from Thy throne on high, and a series on the Seven Words from the Cross. Archibald Hamilton Charteris (1837- ). — Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Edinburgh, author of Canonicity ; The New Testament Scriptures ; and bio- grapher of Professor James Robertson, D.D. Professor Charteris was the creator and long the chief director of the " Christian Life and Work Committee " of the Church of Scotland, which originated and still conducts such organisations as The Young Men's Guild; The Woman's Guild; The Order of Deaconesses; and has charge of the publication of Life and Work, a Parish Magazine ; the Guild Text-Books and the Guild Library Series. Dr. Charteris, while best known as an unrivalled 152 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS organiser in the Home Field of the Church, has always been in full sympathy with Foreign Missions, and has of late years taken a prominent part in promoting a forward movement on their behalf with remarkable results. The hymn, Believing fathers oft have told, was written for the Young Men's Guild of the Church of Scotland. To hear it sung — as set to music by Dr. Peace — at the great annual conferences of the Guild, is an experience not to be forgotten. It was composed when the author was travelling in Italy for his health, in the course of a long day's sail from Como to Cadenabbia, but the refrain had been in his head for some days before. " The first verse has been much altered. It originally began with a statement of our union with Christ, and then advanced to our union with each other in Him, but a friend having objected to the mysticism of this basis, the author altered it into the present historical one." William Chatterton Dix (1837- ). — Among English laymen of this generation there are none whose contri- butions are so well known and so valuable as those of Mr. Chatterton Dix, who for more than thirty years has been a writer of sacred verse. To Thee, Lord, our hearts ive raise has been termed " the best and most inspiring harvest carol in our language"; and the late Lord Selborne, in a paper on "English Church Hymnody," read at a Church Congress, quoted his Epiphany hymn As with gladness men of old, in evidence that "the most favourable hopes maybe entertained of the future prospects of British Hymnody." The tune to which it is usually sung, and which bears his name, is a German chorale. Mr. Dix writes us : " I dislike it, but now nothing will displace it. / did not christen it," Come unto me, ye weary is worthy to rank with Bonar's / heard the voice of Jesus say, and Neale's Art thou wear;/, art thou languid. ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 153 Samuel John Stone (1839- ).— Rector of All-Hallows- on-the-Wall, London. In our brief sketch of Mrs. Alexander, it is noted that her exquisite hymn for children, There is a green kill far aivay, was from a series on the Apostles' Creed. To the inspiration of the same great formula we owe two hymns, of very different character, by Mr. Stone, The Church's one foundation and Weary of earth, and laden with my sin. The first, based on the ninth article of the Creed, "The Holy Catholic Church,"— " The Com- munion of Saints," is stately and triumphant, as befits a hymn that gives voice to the aspirations of the Universal Church. The second, based on the tenth article, "The Forgiveness of Sins," is wistful and pathetic, as befits one whose aim is to give voice to the trembling life of a con- science-stricken soul. Mr. Stone has furnished the author with the following account of their composition— They were written at "Windsor when I was curate there in 1866, and finished off immediately after, during a holiday at Margate, and a few months after published with ten others (the twelve making one each on the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed) in a little volume called Lyra Fidelium. I wrote them all in behalf of the poorer people in my country district, who I found in many cases used the Creed in their prayers with but little comprehension of it. When I wrote The Church's one foundation, the steadfast defence of the Faith made by Bishop Gray of Cape Town against the heresies of Colenso some time before was much in my mind. I am personally most thankful about Weary of earth, because of the private testimonies I have had of its use in bringing home to individual souls the doctrine of the atonement. One such was to this effect, "a poor dying woman told a lady who visited her daily that her favourite verse, ' the lines that comfort me and make me ready and happy to go,' was the fourth, beginning It is the voice of Jesus that I hear." Mr. Stone's poetical works are numerous, his last published volume having as title Lays of Zona. John Julian (1839- ). — Vicar of Wincobank, Sheffield. 154 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Author of two fresh and striking hymns, Father of all, to Thee and Hark ! the voice eternal, but best known as editor of that magnum opus, the Dictionary of Hymnology, a volume exhibiting extraordinary research, marvellous accuracy in detail, great critical acumen, and fine catholic taste. Dr. Julian was assisted by many competent writers? among whom the assistant editor, the Rev. James Mearns, deserves special recognition ; but the unique excellence of the work must be credited to Dr. Julian himself, now everywhere recognised as the greatest hymnologist of the day. The number of authors and translators dealt with in the dictionary is over 5000 ; of languages and dialects over 200. More than 10,000 MSS. were consulted, while the number of hymns annotated is about 30,000. George Matheson (1842- ). Though deprived of his eyesight in youth, Dr. Matheson had a brilliant career as a student. He is known and esteemed by the people of Edinburgh as her most original preacher ; by scientific theologians, as the author of The Psalmist and the Scientist; Can the Old Faith live ivith the New ? Growth of the Spirit of Christianity and Aids to the Study of German Theology; by students of the devout life, as the author of Moments on the Mount, and Voices of the Spirit; and by hymn lovers, as the writer of O Love, that ivilt not let me go ! Dr. Matheson has furnished us with the following interesting account of its genesis : " My hymn was composed in the manse of Innellan on the evening of 6th June 1882. I was at that time alone. It was the day of my sister's marriage, and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something had happened to me which was known only to myself, and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression rather of having it dictated to me by some ENGLISH HYMNS BY LIVING WRITERS 155 inward voice than of working it out myself. I am quite sure the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any re- touching or correction. The Hymnal Committee (of the Church of Scotland) desired the change of one word. I had written originally ' I climb the rainbow in the rain.' They objected to the word 'climb,' and I put 'trace.'" The hymn first appeared in Life and Work. Dr. Mathe- son adds that it has been " greatly indebted to the music written for it by Dr. Peace." Theodore Monod.— One of a family that for three generations has been intimately and honourably associated with the history and progress of French Protestantism. Mons. Monod was educated in America for the ministry, but for many years he has been one of the pastors of the French Reformed Church in Paris, held in high esteem as an eloquent preacher and lecturer and devoted pastor. His sympathies are with the evangelical section of the French Church, and he has given such movements as the McAll Mission loyal and generous support. As M. Monod is a perfect master of English, he has frequently appeared on religious platforms in Great Britain. It is a rare treat to hear him translating the speech of a French orator to an English, or that of an English orator to a French, audience. the bitter shame and sorroiv, was written by him (in English) during a series of " Consecration " meetings, held at Broadlands, the seat of Lord Mount- Temple, in July 1874. M. Monod has also written a number of hymns in French, many of which appear in the C antiques Populaires of the McAll Mission. Sarah Doudney. — A name familiar in magazine litera- ture as that of a writer of bright, healthy fiction, much of it specially adapted for girls. In America she is best known by a little poem, The Lessons of the Water Jlil/, with its memorable refrain, which she is said to have found 156 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS in a tattered old scrap-book under the picture of a mill. It runs : — The mill cannot grind With the water that is past. One of her happiest efforts as a writer of religions verse is the beautiful hymn often used as a funeral hymn, Sleep on, beloved, sleep, and take thy rest. It has the heading, "The Christian's 'Good -night,'" and this note, " The early Christians were accustomed to bid their dying friends 'Good-night,' so sure were they of their awaking at the Resurrection morning." SECTION VIII HYMNS FROM GERMAN SOURCES No country has a richer hymnology than Germany. There are said to be more than 100,000 German hymns, but a comparatively small number of these have been naturalised in Great Britain. Hymns Ancient and Modern, for example, a volume which contains 161 hymns from Latin sources, has only fifteen of German origin. Thanks, however, to the labours of such competent translators as Miss Winkworth, Miss Cox, Miss Jane Borthwick and her sister — Mrs. Findlater, Rev. Richard Massie, and Rev. A. Tozer Russell, an ever -increasing proportion of the contents of modern English hymnals is composed of hymns of German authorship. As a rule they are of a more subjective cast than those of Latin origin, the Teutonic temperament being more disposed to intro- spection, while as regards form they are more diffuse and involved, and so more difficult to render into measures grateful to the English ear. The first and greatest name in German hymnology is that of Martin Luther, .1483-1546. It is true there were hymn-writers before his day, for though the Roman Catholic clergy were inclined to look on hymn -singing in the vernacular with more or less suspicion, the natural genius of the people for music demanded outlet : Miss 158 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Winkworth 1 tells us that, in a Life of St. Bernard "it is expressly mentioned that in the Cathedral at Cologne the people broke out into hymns of praise in the German tongue at every miracle wrought by the saint." But Luther was the first to give hymn-singing a recognised place in the service of the Church, and the first to provide hymns that the whole nation were proud to adopt. "It is my intention," he wrote to his friend Spalatin, " to make German psalms for the people ; that is, spiritual songs whereby the Word of God may be kept alive among them by singing ; we seek therefore every- where for poets." He himself wrote thirty-seven hymns, of which twelve were translations from the Latin. His most-renowned composition is founded on the forty-sixth Psalm, A safe stronghold our God is still (Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott), which Heine called " the Marseillaise of the Keformation," while Carlyle, who translated it, compares it to the "sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes." It has become the national hymn of Germany. From the occurrence in the third verse of the phrase, And were this world all devils o'er, it has been commonly supposed to have been written when Luther was on his way to the Diet of Worms, as this line corresponds with his well-known words to Spalatin on that occasion, " If there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roof, I would go and not be afraid." Heine held this view. D'Aubigne, on the other hand, connected it with the Diet of Augsburg ; but, according to recent investigation, it was more probably written for the Diet of Spires in 1529. The stirring chorale to which it is set is introduced by Meyerbeer in The Huguenots, and by Mendelssohn in his Reformation Symphony. Another 1 The Christian Singers of Germany. Much of the information given in this chapter is gathered from this interesting volume in The Sunday Library series. HYMNS FROM GERMAN SOURCES 159 of Luther's best-known compositions has been translated by Richard Massie as From depths of woe I raise to Thee. It has been recorded that when Luther's " dead body was borne through Halle, on its way to its last resting-place at Wittenberg, his countrymen thronged into the church where it was laid, and, amidst their tears and sobs, sang this hymn beside it." Philipp Nicolai, 1556-1608. — Author of the great hymn which, as Sleepers wake, a voice is calling, appears in the English version of Mendelssohn's St. Paid. In hymn- books the favourite rendering is either Miss Winkworth's or Canon Cooke's. They have the same first line, Wake, awake, for night is flying. Nicolai was a Lutheran pastor — a noted controversialist in his time, contending now with Roman Catholics, now with Calvinists, but best remembered to-day by this hymn. It is said to have been composed while he was pastor in Unna, Westphalia, when a terrible pestilence was raging. As the parsonage overlooked the graveyard, he saw all the funerals pass, sometimes thirty in one day. "From these scenes of death he turned to the study of St. Augustine's City of God, and the contemplation of the Eternal Life," and so kept himself " comforted in heart, joyful in spirit, and truly content." He published the fruit of his meditations under the title, The Joyous Mirror of Life Eternal, appending this hymn and another, a bridal song, " O morning star, how bright." The opening lines of Wake, aivake are probably borrowed from one of the mediaeval " watch songs " ; but whereas in these "the voice of the watchman from his turret summons the workers of darkness to flee from discovery, with Nicolai it is a summons to the children of light to awaken to their promised reward and full felicity." The tune to which the hymn is usually sung is also 160 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS ascribed to Nicolai, and has been termed " the king of chorales." Johann Michael Altenburg, 1584-1640. — Author of Fear not, little flock, the foe, a hymn formerly ascribed to Gustavus Adolphus, and called his Battle Hymn. The only foundation for this ascription, however, seems to be that it was sung at the religious service ordered by this pious king on the morning of the battle of Liitzen, where he met his death. Altenburg was a Lutheran pastor at Erfurt. Martin Rinkart, 1586-1649.— Author of Now thank we all our God (tr. Winkworth), which has been called the Te Deum of Germany, and is probably more often sung in Great Britain than any other German hymn. It is supposed to have been written in celebration of the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia, which brought to an end the memorable struggle between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism known as the Thirty Years' War (1608-48). It is based on a passage in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (cap. 1. 22-24) begin- ning, "And now bless ye the God of all, who doeth wondrous things everywhere. . . . May he grant us joyfulness of heart, and that peace may be in our day in Israel as in time past." Regimental chaplains were commanded to preach from this text at the thanksgiving services held to celebrate the peace. Rinkart was archdeacon of the Lutheran Church at Eilenburg in Saxony for thirty years. In 1637 the plague visited the town with extraordinary severity, and as it carried off many of the clergy, Rinkart was for some time the only clergyman in the place, and officiated at more than 4000 funerals. He is also said to have been the means of saving the town from an excessive tribute imposed upon it by the Swedish general. Paul Gerhardt, 1607-1676.— "The typical poet of the HYMNS FROM GERMAN SOURCES 161 Lutheran Church," and as a hymn-writer second only to Luther in popular esteem. He is the author of Jesus, Thy boundless love to me and Commit thou all thy griefs, both translated by John Wesley. For six years he was the minister of a country parish, where most of his hynms were composed. He was then called to Berlin, and soon became the favourite preacher of the German capital. He fell, however, under the ban of the " Great Elector," Frederick William, who, having set his heart on compelling the Calvinists and Lutherans within his borders to avoid recriminations and live at peace, issued a stringent edict for this end. Many of the Lutheran clergy, Gerhardt among the rest, while sympathising with the Elector's aims, resented his methods as fatal to liberty, and Ger- hardt in consequence was deprived of his charge. Peti- tions were addressed to the Elector for his reinstatement. The Elector was willing to do this on certain terms, but they were such as Gerhardt would not accept. Later on he received an appointment at Liibben, where he remained until his death. A portrait of Gerhardt bears the in- scription : "Theologus in cribro Satanae versatus," "a divine sifted in Satan's sieve." Georg Neumark, 1621-1681. — Court poet and librarian at Weimar, author of If thou but suffer God to guide thee (tr. Winkworth), a hymn which ranks with Newman's Lead, kindly light, and Bonar's Thy way, not mine, Lord, as one of our most helpful calls to trust. It is based on Ps. lv. 22 : "Cast thy burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain thee," and was written on being relieved from grave anxiety as to employment. The melody to which it is usually sung, also by Neumark, is the founda- tion of a cantata by Bach, and was introduced by Mendelssohn into his St. Paul. Johann Freylinghausen, 1670-1739. — The "Charles Wesley" of the Pietistic Movement, which did for Ger- 162 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS many what Methodism did for England, with this differ- ence that those whom it affected remained within the National Church. Spener and Francke together made the "John Wesley" of Pietism, the former being the spiritual, the latter the organising, genius of the revival. Freylinghausen was the author of Jesu, source of calm repose. Gerhard Tersteegen, 1697-1769. — The chief singer of the German mystics, who in their teaching laid little stress on the ordinary means of grace, holding that each individual soul may have direct communion with the Highest, and so possess an inner light, an illumination of the spirit, apart from and independent of Revelation. Tersteegen was intensely religious from boyhood, though he had long experience of doubt and struggle ere he found peace in self-renunciation and surrender to God in Christ. His covenant of dedication is said to have been written with his blood. He worked for some time as a weaver of silk ribbons, but latterly devoted himself entirely to religious teaching and to caring for the sick and the poor, Christian friends providing an income for his support. His home at Mulheim came to be known as " The Pilgrim's Cottage," a retreat for men seeking the way of life. Tersteegen was consulted in spiritual difficulties not only by his own countrymen but by many outside Germany, and had a vast correspondence. He was fond of solitude. "I love most to be with the Father, but," he added, "I am glad to be with the children." Miss Cox calls him " a gentle, heaven- inspired soul, whose hymns are the reflection of a heavenly happy life." To English readers he is best known by Thou hidden love of God, a free rendering by John Wesley of a hymn entitled, " The longing of the soul quietly to maintain the secret drawing of the love of God." Count Zinzendorf, 1700-1760.— One of a family that had made many sacrifices for the faith, and so, just because HYMNS FROM GERMAN SOURCES 163 a Zinzenclorf, he felt that he was " not worthy to live if he did not spend his life in a good cause." As a boy he founded the " Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed," whose members pledged themselves to the service of Jesus Christ and to work for the conversion of the heathen, taking as motto " Xone of us liveth to himself." The boyish purpose received fresh impulse when in the Dusseldorf picture gallery he read beneath an " Ecce Homo " the words " This have I done for thee, what doest thou for Me ? " Henceforth he tells us " I had but one passion, and that was He, only He." Zinzenclorf had friends in all the churches, his principle being to " set himself to discover the good there is in each religion, for he knew that in every nation the Saviour has those who love Him." His most notable achievement was the reorganisation of the Bohemian or Moravian Brethren, for whom he made a home on his estate at Herrnhut, a name signifying " The Lord's Watch or Guard," given to the settlement from the custom of having a certain number set apart to "mount guard" each night in prayer. In 1731 he began to arrange missionary expeditions to the West Indies, Greenland, and the Xorth American Indians. The Moravians have marched in the van of missionary enterprise ever since. Zinzendorf's hymns — he wrote more than 2000 — are characterised by great fervour and de- votion to the person of Christ, though sometimes "dis- figured by excess in the application of the language and imagery of human affection to divine objects." Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness, translated by John Wesley, and Jesus, still lead on, translated by Miss Borthwick, are examples of his compositions. The latter is a great favourite in Germany and one of the first taught to children. But Zinzendorf's influence on English hymn- ody is not to be measured by the number of his hymns in common use. As one of the Wesleys' teachers, and by the 164 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS part he played in the evangelical and missionary revival of the eighteenth century, that influence may be said to be greater than that of any other German, Luther alone excepted. Christian Gellert, 1715-1769. — As Lecturer on Poetry and Moral Philosophy at Leipzic he had an extraordinary influence over his students, due partly to his genius, learning, and eloquence, but still more to his goodness : " the great honoured him, the poor blessed him." Lessing and Goethe were among his pupils, and the latter wrote of him : " The reverence and affection which Gellert received from all the young men was extraordinary. His lecture- room was always crowded to the utmost, and Gellert's beautiful soul, purity of will, his admonitions, warnings, and entreaties, delivered in a somewhat hollow and sad voice, produced a deep impression." He had studied for the ministry, but his memory having failed him when preaching his first sermon, he gave up the idea of entering the Church and turned to literature. A charming little story, entitled The Adventures of a Hymn, relates how one of his lyrics, "I have had my days of blessing," had been used to stir hearts and bring help in need. He is best known to English readers by his Easter hymn, Jesus lives ! no longer now. Gellert regarded his gift of writing hymns as a sacred trust. " He prepared himself for their composition by prayer, and selected the moments when his mental horizon was most unclouded." Albert Knapp, 1798-1864. — A Lutheran pastor, author of the baptismal hymn translated by Miss Wink- worth, Father, Thou who hast created all. German hymnology owes much to this writer, both for his own com- positions, which are extremely popular in Germany though little known in Great Britain, and for his collection of hymns with biographical notices, which is said to have no rival in German. HYMNS FROM GERMAN SOURCES 165 Other German hymn -writers represented in many modern English hymnals are — Michael Weiss, 1480-1534.— Author of Christ the Lord is risen again, a monk whom Luther's teach- ing led to leave his convent and join the Bohemian Brethren. Petrus Herbert, -1571. — One of the Unitas Fratrum or Brothers in Unity who formed the seed of Bohemian Protestantism, author of the beautiful evening hymn, Now God be ivith us, for the night is closing. Rodigast, 1649-1708. — Rector of the Greyfriars Gym- nasium, Berlin. Author of a beautiful hymn of consolation, Whatever my God ordains is right. Schmolck, 1672-1737. — A Lutheran pastor in Siberia, who wrote Blessed Jesus here we stand. SECTION IX AMERICAN HYMNS One interesting feature in American hymnody is the number of notable poets who have made substantial contributions to its stores. First in chronological order, however, come two great theologians — Samuel Davies, 1723-1761.— Author of Great God of wonders ! all thy ways. President of Princeton College, America, in succession to Jonathan Edwards. Dr. Duffield, in his English Hymns, gives two curious instances of unconscious prophecy in connexion with sermons preached by Dr. Davies: one in 1755, when he spoke of young George Washington as divinely preserved " for some important service to his country," and another in 1761, the year of his own death, when he preached on the first Sunday of January from the text, " This year shalt thou die." Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817. — President of Yale College, one of the greatest of American theologians of his generation. His System of Theology had a wide circulation in Great Britain as well as in America. He was a man of vast acquirements, though for nearly forty years, owing to defective eyesight, the result of smallpox, he was not able to read consecutively for more than fifteen minutes in the day. In early youth he published a poem on The Conquest of Canaan, which was favourably AMERICAN HYMNS 167 reviewed by William Cowper. His hymn, / love Thy kingdom, Lord, is a valuable addition to the class of hymns on public worship. Thomas Hastings, Mus. Doc, 1784-1872. — A musical enthusiast, who did much for the improvement of Ameri- can psalmody in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was long regarded as the prince of choir-masters, and had constant invitations to assist in the training of choirs. He wrote some 600 hymns, many of which are popular in America, though only one is in common use in Great Britain, — the tender, appealing Return, wanderer, to thy home. William Cullen Bryant, 1794-1878.— Whittier's first poetic impulse came from Robert Burns, Bryant's from the hymns of Isaac Watts. Few writers have published at so early an age, and continued publishing so long. His first poem appeared when he was ten years of age, his last when eighty-three. An advertisement prefixed to a volume published at the age of fourteen says : " Some doubts having been expressed as to the authorship, the printer, if required, would give the names of friends who could vouch that the poems were written by a youth of thirteen." The poem that made his reputation, Thana- topsis, a Meditation on Death, of which Christopher North wrote : " It alone is sufficient to establish the author's claim to the honours of genius," was composed when he was nineteen. Printed in the North American Review, to which his father had sent it without the knowledge of the author, it at once attracted attention, one critic remarking: "That was never written on this side of the water." Bryant's work may be regarded as the firstfruits of American poetic genius. He was trained as a lawyer, but betook himself very soon to journalism, editing the Evening Post for more than fifty years with conspicuous success. Bryant may 168 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS be said to have boxed the religious compass. Brought up as a Congregationalist, he afterwards connected himself with the Unitarians ; then with the Episcopal Church while resident in New York ; with the Presbyterian when he lived in the country ; and at sixty years of age he was " baptised " in the course of a visit to Naples. Two of his missionary hymns are best known : Look from the sphere of endless day, and North, with all thy vales of green ! George Washington Bethune, 1805-1862. — An eminent divine of the Dutch Reformed Church of America, of Scottish descent. He was one of the most popular preachers of the day and a man of wide culture. He was offered but refused the Chancellorship of the University of New York. His translation of a hymn by Cesar Malan, beginning It is not death to die, appears in several hymnals. John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807-1892. — America's greatest lyrical and most distinctively religious poet. He was a Quaker, wearing the quaint garb of the Society of Friends and using to the last their quaint forms of speech. The son of a farmer in Massachusetts, where books were scarce, he received his first literary impulse from the poems of Burns, lent him by his schoolmaster, when he was fourteen : How oft that day, with fond delay, I sought the maple's shadow ; And sang with Burns the hours away, Forgetful of the meadow. Encouraged by his elder sister, he then began to write verses himself, some of which she sent to a newspaper, edited by William Lloyd Garrison, who was so struck by their quality that he rode fifteen miles to make the ac- quaintance of his young contributor — an acquaintance which ripened into firm friendship and led to Whittier's AMERICAN HYMNS 169 adopting journalism as his profession. He became an ardent abolitionist, and did much by his pen to promote the anti-slavery crusade, which brought him at first no little persecution, but in the end applause and fame. He was a great admirer of General Gordon, and it was at his suggestion that Tennyson wrote Gordon's epitaph. The impression made upon his contemporaries by the poet's character may be gathered from Phoebe Cary's beautiful lines — But not thy strains with courage rife, Nor holiest hymns, shall rank above The rhythmic beauty of thy life, Itself a canticle of love. Whittier did not write directly for public worship, as in Quaker meeting-houses there used to be no singing ; but many beautiful hymns have been culled from his poems, such as Dear Lord and Father of mankind; Lord and Master of us all; We may not climb the heavenly steeps; When on my day of life the night is falling. Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-1895. — An American Baptist minister, author of My country, 'tis of thee. Written in 1832 for a Fourth of July Celebration, it may be regarded in some sense as the American national hymn. To-day the Saviour calls is another of his com- positions. Ray Palmer, 1808-1887. — A distinguished minister of the Congregational Church in America, known alike in America and in Great Britain as the author of My faith looks up to Thee. This hymn was written in 1830, before he had entered the ministry, and is said to have been suggested by some German verses describing a suppliant before the Cross. Dr. Ray Palmer believed it brought comfort to Christian hearts "chiefly because it expresses in a simple way that act which is the most 170 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS central in all true Christian life — the act of trust in the atoning Lamb." He tells us he wrote the stanzas with little effort, but with " very tender emotion, and ended the last line with tears." Some time afterwards Dr. Lowell Mason asked him for a contribution to a new hymn-book he and Dr. Hastings were preparing, whereupon Palmer produced this hymn. Mason was so much struck with it that he at once set it to music, to the tune " Olivet," and when next he met the author said to him : " Mr. 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." Dr. Ray Palmer, how- ever, has made other valuable contributions to hymnody, such as his rendering of St. Bernard's great hymn, Jesu chdcis memoria, — Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts (more popular even than Xeale's or Caswall's versions), and the beautiful original hymn, Jesus, these eyes have never seen, a verse of which was the last heard from his lips : — When death these mortal eyes shall seal, And still this throbbing heart, The rending veil shall Thee reveal All glorious as Thou art. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894. — An American physician of brilliant literary gifts, and one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, in which the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and its successors, The Poet and The Professor, appeared. These are a series of wise and witty essays on questions of the day, couched in conversational or quasi -dramatic form. 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C — T* -— +5 y. ■— r — ^ / -_ -_s ~~ ■=■ .- ~ J'- — r -~ * — _= J; — > - ^ < |j I H H "^ i >f-5j h s --••-;= = .- p:\ • - - = £ .5ffig 5 — - — - -^-- z — 'Ji — v- 1 ^ d = a = = c - o IS 'S 43 fl >- r^- ££££££ ■? i; =: is ^ is > > > INDEX OF AUTHORS The last figure in each entry refers to the biography Adam of St. Victor, 20 Adams, Mrs. Sarah, 89 Addison, Joseph, 35 Aldersou, Mrs. Eliza S., 141 Alexander, Mrs. C. F., 65, 127 Alford, Henry, 102 Altenbnrg, 160 Ambrose, St., 2, 3, 12 Andrew, St., of Crete, 7 Anstice, Joseph, 95 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 22 Auber, Harriet, 62 Austin, John, 30 Austin, William, 29 Baker, Sir H. W., Bart., 14, 123 Bakewell, John, 48 Barton, Bernard, 69 Bateman, C. Henry, 107 Bathurst, William" Hiley, 81 Baxter, Richard, 32, 30 Bede (the Venerable), 16 Benson, Archbishop, 134 Bernard of Clairvaux, 116, 18 Bernard of Cluny, 117, 118, 19 Berridge, John, 46 Bethune, G-. W., 168 Bickersteth, Bishop, 148 Bilby, Thomas, 81 Binney, Thomas, 82 Blackie, John Stuart, 100 Bliss, Phillipp, 176 Blunt, A. G. Wilson, 149 Bode, John Ernest, 113 Bonar, Horatius, 4, 66, 127, 95 Borthwick, Jane, 163, 107 Bo wring, Sir John, 79 Bright, William, 147 Bronte, Anne, 121 Brooks, Phillips, 175 Browne, Simon, 39 Browning, E. B., 4, 6, 56, 100 Bruce, William, 105 Bryant, W. Cullen, 167 Buckworth, J., 63 Burns, J. JJrummond, 126 Burton, John, 88 Byrom, John, 40 Gary, Alice, 173 Gary, Phoebe, 173 Caswall, Edward, 24, 111 Gennick. John, 48 Charteris, A. H., 151 Clarke, Samuel Childs, 144 Clement of Alexandria, 4 Clephane, Elizabeth C, 135 Coffin, Charles, 23 Collyer, Wm. Bengo, 65 Conder, Josiah, 73 Cosin, Bishop, 29 Cosmas, St., 8, 7 Cousin, Mrs. A. R., 146 Cowper, William, 28, 45, 51, 121, 138, 167, 53 Coxe, Arthur Cleveland, 171 Curwen, John, 113 Darby, J. N., 82 Davies, Samuel, 166 T 3 194 HYMNS AND HYMN MAKERS Denny, Sir Edward, 82 Dickson, William, 114 Dix, W. C. 152 Doddridge, Philip, 57, 98, 40 Doudney, Sarah, 155 Downton, Henry, 120 Duffield, George, 172 Duncan, Mrs. Mary L., 109 D wight, Timothy, 166 Edmeston, James, 74 Ellerton, John, 88, 92, 129, 148, 177, 133 Elliott, Charlotte, 125, 71 Elliott, Emily E. S., 139 Faber, Frederick William, 110 Farrar, Frederic William, 149 Fawcett, John, 57 Flowerdew, Mrs. Alice, 59 Fortunatus, Venantius, 15 Freylinghausen, J. A., 161 Gellert, Christian F., 164 Gerhardt, Paul, 160 Gilbert, Mrs., 65 Gill, Thomas H., 142 Goadby, F. W., 139 Gould, S. Baring-, 150 Grant, Sir Robert, 70 Gregory the Great, 15 Grigg, Joseph, 52 Gurney, J. Hampden, 87 Hart, Joseph, 45 Hastings, Thomas, 167 Hatch, Edwin, 137 Havergal, Frances R., 46, 72, 113, 125, 134, 137 Heber, Bishop, 74, 66 Hemans, Mrs. Felicia Dorothea, 75 Herbert, George, 27 Herbert, Peter, 165 Hilary, St., 11 Hole, S. R, 143 Holmes, O. Wendell, 170 How, Bishop, 102, 127, 136, 130 Hughes, Thomas, 129 Irons, Win. Josiah, 21, 105 Jacque, George, 89 John Damascene, St., 7, 8 Joseph, St., the Hymnographer, 9 Julian, John, 24, 49, 57, 145, 172, 153 Keble, John, 6, 34, 84, 85, 86, 88, 98, 118, 127, 138, 75 Kelly, Thomas, 60 Ken, Bishop, 54, 32 Kingsley, Charles, 6, 85, 122 Knapp, Albrecht, 164 Littledale, R. F., 136 Lowry, Robt., 175 Luke, Mrs. Jemima, 74, 140 Luther, 19, 157 Lynch, T. Toke, 119 Lyte, Henry F., 79 M'Cheyne, Robert Murray, 106 Macduff, J. R., 120 Mackellar, Thomas, 171 MacLagan, Archbishop, 148 Macleod, Norman, 123, 103 Mant, Bishop, 63 Marriott, John, 64 Martin, H. A., 149 Mason, John, 32 Matheson, George, 121, 154 Milman, Henry Hart, 67, 74 Milton, John, 30 Monod, Theodore, 155 Monsell, J. S. B., 105, 103 Montgomery, James, 60, 127, 61 Neale, John Mason, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 20, 22, 98, 112, 124, 127, 128, 136, 140, 114 Neumark, Georg, 161 Newman, Cardinal, 76, 77, 83 Newton, John, 54. 64. 50 Nicolai, Philip, 159 Olivers, Thomas, 49 Palmer, Ray, 169 Pennefather, Wm., 113 IXDEX OF AUTHORS 195 Perronet, Edward, 52 Plumptre, Edward Hayes, 125 Pollock, Thomas Benson, 151 Prentiss, Mrs. Elizabeth, 172 Procter, Adelaide Anne, 131 Prudentins, 14 Rawson, George, 92 Reed, Andrew, 71 Rinkart, Martin, 162 Robertson, Wm., 123 Robinson, Robert, 56 Rodigast, S., 165 Russell, Arthur T., 90 Santeuil, Jean Baptiste, 22 Schmolck, D., 165 Scott, Sir Walter, 21, 64, 66, 69, 75 Sears, Edmund H., 170 Sedulius, Coelius, 15 Shairp, J. Campbell, 76, 84, 122 Shekleton, Mary, li>5, 134 Smith, Samuel F., 169 Stanley, Arthur P., 112 Steele, Anne, 46 Stone, Samuel John, 153 Swain, Joseph, 60 Syuesius, 6 Taylor, Jane, 73, 65 Taylor, Thomas R., 90 Tennyson, Lord, 86, 101 Tersteegen, Gerhardt, 162 Theodulph of Orleans, 18 Thomas of Celano, 21 Threlfall, Jennette, 125 Thring, Godfrey, 145 Toplady, Augustus M., 28, 49, 59, 57 Tuttiett, Lawrence. 132 Twells, Henry, 124, 144 Van Alstyue, Mrs. Fanny J., 174 Wardlaw, Ralph, 63 Waring, Anna L., 143 Warner, Anna, 174 Watts, Dr., 32, 36, 41, 42, 55, 65, 73, 37 Weiss, Michael, 165 Wesley. Charles, 28, 37, 49, 51, 127, 42 Wesley, John, 40, 47, 48, 52, 57, 59, 161, 162, 163, 42 White, Henry Kirke, 69 Whiting, Wm., 132 Whittier, John G. , 168 Williams, Isaac, 87 Williams, Wm., 48 Wither, George, 26 Wordsworth, Christopher, 90 Young, Andrew, 93 Zinzendorf, Count, 162 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. H H mi