The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 11

"_O Deus, Ego Amo Te._"

Francis Xavier, the celebrated Jesuit missionary, called "The Apostle of the Indies," was a Spaniard, born in 1506. While a student in Paris he met Ignatius Loyola, and joined him in the formation of the new "Society for the Propagation of the Faith." He was sent out on a mission to the East Indies and j.a.pan, and gave himself to the work with a martyr's devotion. The stations he established in j.a.pan were maintained more than a hundred years. He died in China, Dec. 1552.

His hymn, some time out of use, is being revived in later singing-books as expressive of the purest and highest Christian sentiment:

O Deus, ego amo Te.

Nec amo Te, ut salves me, Aut quia non amantes Te aeterno punis igne.

My G.o.d, I love Thee--not because I hope for heaven thereby; Nor yet because who love Thee not Must burn eternally.

After recounting Christ's vicarious sufferings as the chief claim to His disciples' unselfish love, the hymn continues,--

Cur igitur non amem Te, O Jesu amantissime!

Non, ut in coelo salves me, Aut in aeternum d.a.m.nes me.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, Should I not love Thee well?

Not for the sake of winning heaven, Nor of escaping h.e.l.l;

Not with the hope of gaining aught, Nor seeking a reward, But as Thyself hast loved me, Oh, ever-loving Lord!

E'en so I love Thee, and will love, And in Thy praise will sing; Solely because Thou art my G.o.d And my eternal King.

The translation is by Rev. Edward Caswall, 1814-1878, a priest in the Church of Rome. Besides his translations, he published the _Lyra Catholica_, the _Masque of Mary_, and several other poetical works.

(Page 101.)

_THE TUNE._

"St. Bernard"--apparently so named because originally composed to Caswall's translation of one of Bernard of Clairvaux's hymns--is by John Richardson, born in Preston, Eng., Dec. 4, 1817, and died there April 13, 1879. He was an organist in Liverpool, and noted as a composer of glees, but was the author of several sacred tunes.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

"Give Me My Scallop-Sh.e.l.l of Quiet."

Few of the hymns of the Elizabethan era survive, though the Ambrosian Midnight Hymn, "Hark, 'tis the Midnight Cry," and the hymns of St.

Bernard and Bernard of Cluny, are still tones in the church, and the religious poetry of Sir Walter Raleigh comes down to us a.s.sociated with the history of his brilliant, though tragic career. The following poem has some fine lines in the quaint English style of the period, and was composed by Sir Walter during his first imprisonment:

Give me my scallop-sh.e.l.l of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy--immortal diet-- My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage-- And thus I take my pilgrimage.

Blood must be my body's balmer, While my soul, like faithful palmer, Travelleth toward the land of heaven; Other balm will not be given.

Over the silver mountains Where spring the nectar fountains, There will I kiss the bowl of bliss, And drink my everlasting fill, Upon every milken hill; My soul will be a-dry before, But after that will thirst no more.

The musings of the unfortunate but high-souled n.o.bleman in expectation of ignominious death are interesting and pathetic, but they have no claim to a tune, even if they were less rugged and unmetrical. But the poem stands notable among the pious witnesses.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.

"_O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te._"

This last pa.s.sionate prayer of the unhappy Mary Stuart just before her execution--in a language which perhaps flowed from her pen more easily than even her English or French--is another witness of supplicating faith that struggles out of darkness with a song. In her extremity the devoted Catholic forgets her pet.i.tions to the Virgin, and comes to Christ:

O Domine Deus, Speravi in Te; O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!

In dura catena, in misera poena Desidero Te!

Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo Adoro, imploro ut liberes me!

My Lord and my G.o.d! I have trusted in Thee; O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free: In rigorous chains, in piteous pains, I am longing for Thee!

In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling, I pray, I beseech Thee, O Lord, set me free!

One would, at first thought, judge this simple but eloquent cry worthy of an appropriate tone-expression--to be sung by prison evangelists like the Volunteers of America, to convicts in the jails and penitentiaries.

But its special errand and burden are voiced so literally that hardened hearers would probably misapply it--however sincerely the pet.i.tioner herself meant to invoke spiritual rather than temporal deliverance. The hymn, if we may call it so, is _too_ literal. Possibly at some time or other it may have been set to music but not for ordinary choir service.

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.

The sands of time are sinking,

But, glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's Land.

This hymn is biographical, but not autobiographical. Like the discourses in Herodotus and Plutarch, it is the voice of the dead speaking through the sympathetic genius of the living after long generations. The strong, stern Calvinist of 1636 in Aberdeen was not a poet, but he bequeathed his spirit and life to the verse of a poet of 1845 in Melrose. Anne Ross Cousin read his two hundred and twenty letters written during a two years' captivity for his fidelity to the purer faith, and studied his whole history and experience till her soul took his soul's place and felt what he felt. Her poem of nineteen stanzas (152 lines) is the voice of Rutherford the Covenanter, with the prolixity of his manner and age sweetened by his triumphant piety, and that is why it belongs with the _Hymns of Great Witnesses_. The three or four stanzas still occasionally printed and sung are only recalled to memory by the above three lines.

Samuel Rutherford was born in Nisbet Parish, Scotland, in 1600. His settled ministry was at Anworth, in Galloway--1630-1651--with a break between 1636 and 1638, when Charles I. angered by his anti-prelatical writings, silenced and banished him. Shut up in Aberdeen, but allowed, like Paul in Rome, to live "in his own hired house" and write letters, he poured out his heart's love in Epistles to his Anworth flock and to the Non-conformists of Scotland. When his countrymen rose against the attempted imposition of a new holy Romish service-book on their churches, he escaped to his people, and soon after appeared in Edinburgh and signed the covenant with the a.s.sembled ministers. Thirteen years later, after Cromwell's death and the accession of Charles II. the wrath of the prelates fell on him at St. Andrews, where the Presbytery had made him rector of the college. The King's decree indicted him for treason, stripped him of all his offices, and would have forced him to the block had he not been stricken with his last sickness. When the officers came to take him he said, "I am summoned before a higher Judge and Judicatory, and I am behooved to attend them." He died soon after, in the year 1661.

The first, and a few other of the choicest stanzas of the hymn inspired by his life and death are here given:

The sands of time are sinking, The dawn of heaven breaks, The summer morn I've sighed for-- The fair, sweet morn--awakes.

Dark, dark hath been the midnight, But dayspring is at hand; And glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

Oh! well it is for ever-- Oh! well for evermore: My nest hung in no forest Of all this death-doomed sh.o.r.e; Yea, let this vain world vanish, As from the ship the strand, While glory, glory dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

The little birds of Anworth-- I used to count them blest; Now beside happier altars I go to build my nest; O'er these there broods no silence No graves around them stand; For glory deathless dwelleth In Immanuel's land.

I have borne scorn and hatred, I have borne wrong and shame, Earth's proud ones have reproached me For Christ's thrice blessed name.

Where G.o.d's seals set the fairest, They've stamped their foulest brand; But judgment shines like noonday In Immanuel's land.

They've summoned me before them, But there I may not come; My Lord says, "Come up hither;"

My Lord says, "Welcome home;"

My King at His white throne My presence doth command, Where glory, glory dwelleth, In Immanuel's land.

A reminiscence of St. Paul in his second Epistle to Timothy (chap. 4) comes with the last two stanzas.