The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 13

LADY HUNTINGDON.

"When Thou My Righteous Judge Shalt Come."

Selina Shirley, Countess of Huntingdon, born 1707, died 1791, is familiarly known as the t.i.tled friend and patroness of Whitefield and his fellow-preachers. She early consecrated herself to G.o.d, and in the great spiritual awakening under Whitefield and the Wesleys she was a punctual and sympathetic helper. Uniting with the Calvinistic Methodists, she nevertheless stood aloof from none who preached a personal Christ, and whose watchwords were the salvation of souls and the purification of the Church. For more than fifty years she devoted her wealth to benevolence and spiritual ministries, and died at the age of eighty-four. "I have done my work," was her last testimony. "I have nothing to do but to go to my Father."

At various times Lady Huntingdon expressed her religious experience in verse, and the manful vigor of her school of faith recalls the unbending confidence of Job, for she was not a stranger to affliction.

G.o.d's furnace doth in Zion stand, But Zion's G.o.d sits by, As the refiner views his gold, With an observant eye.

His thoughts are high, His love is wise, His wounds a cure intend; And, though He does not always smile, He loves unto the end.

Her great hymn, that keeps her memory green, has the old-fashioned flavor. "Ma.s.sa made G.o.d BIG!" was the comment on Dr. Bellany made by his old negro servant after that noted minister's death. In Puritan piety the sternest self-depreciation qualified every thought of the creature, while every allusion to the Creator was a magnificat. Lady Huntingdon's hymn has no flattering phrases for the human subject. "Worthless worm,"

and "vilest of them all" indicate the true Pauline or Oriental prostration of self before a superior being; but there is grandeur in the metre, the awful reverence, and the scene of judgment in the stanzas--always remembering the mighty choral that has so long given the lyric its voice in the church, and is ancillary to its fame:

When Thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come To take Thy ransomed people home, Shall I among them stand?

Shall such a worthless worm as I, Who sometimes am afraid to die, Be found at Thy right hand?

I love to meet Thy people now, Before Thy feet with them to bow, Though vilest of them all; But can I bear the piercing thought, What if my name should be left out, When Thou for them shalt call?

O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace: Be Thou my only hiding place, In this th' accepted day; Thy pardoning voice, oh let me hear, To still my unbelieving fear, Nor let me fall, I pray.

Among Thy saints let me be found, Whene'er the archangel's trump shall sound, To see Thy smiling face; Then loudest of the throng I'll sing, While heaven's resounding arches ring With shouts of sovereign grace.

_THE TUNE._

The tune of "Meribah," in which this hymn has been sung for the last sixty or more years, is one of Dr. Lowell Mason's masterpieces. An earlier German harmony attributed to Heinrich Isaac and named "Innsbruck" has in some few cases claimed a.s.sociation with the words, though composed two hundred years before Lady Huntingdon was born. It is strong and solemn, but its cold psalm-tune movement does not utter the deep emotion of the author's lines. "Meribah" was inspired by the hymn itself, and there is nothing invidious in saying it ill.u.s.trates the fact, memorable in all hymnology, of the natural obligation of a hymn to its tune.

Apropos of both, it is related that Mason was once presiding at choir service in a certain church where the minister gave out "When thou my righteous Judge shalt come" and by mistake directed the singers to "omit the second stanza." Mason sat at the organ, and while playing the last strain, "Be found at thy right hand," glanced ahead in the hymnbook and turned with a start just in time to command, "Sing the _next_ verse!"

The choir did so, and "O Lord, prevent it by Thy grace!" was saved from being a horrible prayer to be kept out of heaven.

ZINZENDORF.

"Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness."

Nicolaus Ludwig, Count Von Zinzendorf, was born at Dresden, May 26, 1700, and educated at Halle and Wittenberg. From his youth he evinced marked seriousness of mind, and deep religious sensibilities, and this character appeared in his sympathy with the persecuted Moravians, to whom he gave domicile and domain on his large estate. For eleven years he was Councillor to the Elector of Saxony, but subsequently, uniting with the Brethren's Church, he founded the settlement of Herrnhut, the first home and refuge of the reorganized sect, and became a Moravian minister and bishop.

Zinzendorf was a man of high culture, as well as profound and sincere piety and in his hymns (of which he wrote more than two thousand) he preached Christ as eloquently as with his voice. The real birth-moment of his religious life is said to have been simultaneous with his study of the "Ecce h.o.m.o" in the Dusseldorf Gallery, a wonderful painting of Jesus crowned with thorns. Visiting the gallery one day when a young man, he gazed on the sacred face and read the legend superscribed, "All this I have done for thee; What doest thou for me?" Ever afterwards his motto was "I have but one pa.s.sion, and that is He, and only He"--a version of Paul's "For me to live is Christ."

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress: 'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay?

Fully absolved through these I am-- From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.

Lord, I believe were sinners more Than sands upon the ocean sh.o.r.e, Thou hast for all a ransom paid, For all a full atonement made.

Nearly all the hymns of the great Moravian are now out of general use, having accomplished their mission, like the forgotten ones of Gerhardt, and been superseded by others. More sung in Europe, probably, now than any of the survivors is, "Jesus, geh voran," ("Jesus, lead on,") which has been translated into English by Jane Borthwick[8] (1854). Two others, both translated by John Wesley, are with us, the one above quoted, and "Glory to G.o.d, whose witness train." "Jesus, Thy blood,"

which is the best known, frequently appears with the alteration--

Jesus, Thy _robe_ of righteousness My beauty _is_, my glorious dress.

[Footnote 8: Born in Edinburgh 1813.]

_THE TUNE._

"Malvern," and "Uxbridge" a pure Gregorian, both by Lowell Mason, are common expressions of the hymn--the latter, perhaps, generally preferred, being less plaintive and speaking with a surer and more restful emphasis.

ROBERT SEAGRAVE.

"Rise, My Soul, and Stretch Thy Wings."

This hymn was written early in the 18th century, by the Rev. Robert Seagrave, born at Twyford, Leicestershire, Eng., Nov. 22, 1693. Educated at Cambridge, he took holy orders in the Established Church, but espoused the cause of the great evangelistic movement, and became a hearty co-worker with the Wesleys. Judging by the lyric fire he could evidently put into his verses, one involuntarily asks if he would not have written more, and been in fact the song-leader of the spiritual reformation if there had been no Charles Wesley. There is not a hymn of Wesley's in use on the same subject equal to the one immortal hymn of Seagrave, and the only other near its time that approaches it in vigor and appealing power is Doddridge's "Awake my soul, stretch every nerve."

But Providence gave Wesley the harp and appointed to the elder poet a branch of possibly equal usefulness, where he was kept too busy to enter the singers' ranks.

For eleven years he was the Sunday-evening lecturer at Lorimer's Hall, London, and often preached in Whitefield's Tabernacle. His hymn is one of the most soul-stirring in the English language:

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. Huntingdon]

Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings; Thy better portion trace; Rise from transitory things Toward Heaven, thy native place; Sun and moon and stars decay, Time shall soon this earth remove; Rise, my soul and haste away To seats prepared above.

Rivers to the ocean run, Nor stay in all their course; Fire ascending seeks the sun; Both speed them to their source: So a soul that's born of G.o.d Pants to view His glorious face, Upward tends to His abode To rest in His embrace.

Cease, ye pilgrims, cease to mourn, Press onward to the prize; Soon your Saviour will return Triumphant in the skies.

Yet a season, and you know Happy entrance will be given; All our sorrows left below, And earth exchanged for heaven.

This hymn must have found its predestinated organ when it found--

_THE TUNE._

"Amsterdam," the work of James Nares, had its birth and baptism soon after the work of Seagrave; and they have been breath and bugle to the church of G.o.d ever since they became one song. In _The Great Musicians_, edited by Francis Huffer, is found this account of James Nares:

"He was born at Hanwell, Middles.e.x, in 1715; was admitted chorister at the Chapel Royal, under Bernard Gates, and when he was able to play the organ was appointed deputy for Pigott, of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and became organist at York Minster in 1734. He succeeded Greene as organist and composer to the Chapel Royal in 1756, and in the same year was made Doctor of Music at Cambridge. He was appointed master of the children of the Chapel Royal in 1757, on the death of Gates. This post he resigned in 1780, and he died in 1783, (February 10,) and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.

"He had the reputation of being an excellent trainer of boy's voices, many of his anthems having been written to exhibit the accomplishments of his young pupils. The degree of excellence the boys attained was not won in those days without the infliction of much corporal punishment."

Judging from the high pulse and action in the music of "Amsterdam," one would guess the energy of the man who made boy choirs--and made good ones. In the old time the rule was, "Birds that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing"; and the rule was sometimes enforced with the master's time-stick.

A tune ent.i.tled "Excelsius," written a hundred years later by John Henry Cornell, so nearly resembles "Amsterdam" as to suggest an intention to amend it. It changes the modal note from G to A, but while it marches at the same pace it lacks the jubilant modulations and the choral glory of the 18th-century piece.