The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 43

SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMNS.

_SHEPHERD OF TENDER YOUTH._

[Greek: Stomion polon adaon]

We are a.s.sured by repeated references in the patristic writings that the primitive years of the Christian Church were not only years of suffering but years of song. That the despised and often persecuted "Nazarenes,"

scattered in little colonies throughout the Roman Empire, did not forget to mingle tones of praise and rejoicing with their prayers could readily be believed from the much-quoted letter of a pagan lawyer, written about as long after Jesus' death, as from now back to the death of John Quincy Adams--the letter of Pliny the younger to the Emperor Trajan, in which he reports the Christians at their meetings singing "hymns to Christ as to a G.o.d."

Those disciples who spoke Greek seem to have been especially tuneful, and their land of poets was doubtless the cradle of Christian hymnody.

Believers taught their songs to their children, and it is as certain that the oldest Sunday-school hymn was written somewhere in the cla.s.sic East as that the Book of Revelation was written on the Isle of Patmos.

The one above indicated was found in an appendix to the _Tutor_, a book composed by t.i.tus Flavius Clemens of Alexandria, a Christian philosopher and instructor whose active life began late in the second century. It follows a treatise on Jesus as the Great Teacher, and, though his own words elsewhere imply a more ancient origin of the poem, it is always called "Clement's Hymn." The line quoted above is the first of an English version by the late Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D. It does not profess to be a translation, but aims to transfer to our common tongue the spirit and leading thoughts of the original.

Shepherd of tender youth, Guiding in love and truth Through devious ways; Christ, our triumphant King, We come Thy name to sing, Hither our children bring To shout Thy praise.

The last stanza of Dr. Dexter's version represents the sacred song spirit of both the earliest and the latest Christian centuries:

So now, and till we die Sound we Thy praises high, And joyful sing; Infants, and the glad throng Who to Thy church belong Unite to swell the song To Christ our King.

While they give us the sentiment and the religious tone of the old hymn, these verses, however, recognize the extreme difficulty of anything like verbal fidelity in translating a Greek hymn, and in this instance there are metaphors to avoid as being strange to modern taste. The first stanza, literally rendered and construed, is as follows:

Bridle of untaught foals, Wing of unwandering birds, Helm and Girdle of babes, Shepherd of royal lambs!

a.s.semble Thy simple children To praise holily, To hymn guilelessly With innocent mouths Christ, the Guide of children.

Figures like--

Catching the chaste fishes,

Heavenly milk, etc.

--are necessarily avoided in making good English of the lines, and the profusion of adoring epithets in the ancient poem (no less than twenty-one different t.i.tles of Christ) would embarra.s.s a modern song.

Dr. Dexter might have chosen an easier metre for his version, if (which is improbable) he intended it to be sung, since a tune written to sixes and fours takes naturally a more decided lyrical movement and emphasis than the hymn reveals in his stanzas, though the second and fifth possess much of the hymn quality and would sound well in Giardini's "Italian Hymn."

More nearly a translation, and more in the cantabile style, is the version of a Scotch Presbyterian minister, Rev. Hamilton M. Macgill, D.D., two of whose stanzas are these:

Thyself, Lord, be the Bridle These wayward wills to stay; Be Thine the Wing unwand'ring, To speed their upward way.

Let them with songs adoring Their artless homage bring To Christ the Lord, and crown Him The children's Guide and King.

The Dexter version is set to Monk's slow harmony of "St. Ambrose" in the _Plymouth Hymnal_ (Ed. Dr. Lyman Abbott, 1894) without the writer's name--which is curious, inasmuch as the hymn was published in the _Congregationalist_ in 1849, in _Hedge and Huntington's_ (Unitarian) _Hymn-book_ in 1853, in the _Hymnal of the Presbyterian Church_ in 1866, and in Dr. Schaff's _Christ in Song_ in 1869.

Clement died about A.D. 220.

Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D., for twenty-three years the editor of the _Congregationalist_, was born in Plymouth, Ma.s.s., Aug. 13, 1821. He was a graduate of Yale (1840) and Andover Divinity School (1844), a well-known antiquarian writer and church historian. Died Nov. 13, 1890.

"HOW HAPPY IS THE CHILD WHO HEARS."

This hymn was quite commonly heard in Sunday-schools during the eighteen-thirties and forties, and, though retained in few modern collections, its Sabbath echo lingers in the memory of the living generation. It was written by Michael Bruce, born at Kinneswood, Kinross-shire, Scotland, March 27, 1746. He was the son of a weaver, but obtained a good education, taught school, and studied for the ministry.

He died, however, while in preparation for his expected work, July 5, 1767, at the age of twenty-one years, three months and eight days.

Young Bruce wrote hymns, and several poems, but another person wore the honors of his work. John Logan, who was his literary executor, appropriated the youthful poet's Mss. verses, and the hymn above indicated--as well as the beautiful poem, "To the Cuckoo,"[27] still a cla.s.sic in English literature,--bore the name of Logan for more than a hundred years. In _Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology_ is told at length the story of the inquiry and discussion which finally exposed the long fraud upon the fame of the rising genius who sank, like Henry Kirke White, in his morning of promise.

[Footnote 27: Hail, beauteous stranger of the wood, Attendant on the Spring; Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat, And woods thy welcome ring.]

_THE TUNE._

Old "Balerma" was so long the musical mouth-piece of the pious boy-schoolmaster's verses that the two became one expression, and one could not be named without suggesting the other.

"Balerma" (Palermo) was ages away in style and sound from the later type of Sunday-school tunes, resembling rather one of Palestrina's chorals than the tripping melodies that took its place; but in its day juvenile voices enjoyed it, and it suited very well the grave but winning words.

How happy is the child who hears Instruction's warning voice, And who celestial Wisdom makes His early, only choice!

For she hath treasures greater far Than East and West unfold, And her rewards more precious are Than all their stores of gold.

She guides the young with innocence In pleasure's path to tread, A crown of glory she bestows Upon the h.o.a.ry head.

Robert Simpson, author of the old tune,[28] was a Scottish composer of psalmody; born, about 1722, in Glasgow; and died, in Greenock, June, 1838.

[Footnote 28: The tune was evidently reduced from the still older "Sardius" (or "Autumn")--_Hubert P. Main_.]

"O DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED."

Written about 1803, by the Rev. John A. Grenade, born in 1770; died 1806.

O do not be discouraged, } For Jesus is your Friend; } _bis_ He will give you grace to conquer, And keep you to the end.

Fight on, ye little soldiers, } The battle you shall win, } _bis_ For the Saviour is your Captain, And He has vanquished sin.

And when the conflict's over, } Before Him you shall stand, } _bis_ You shall sing His praise forever In Canaan's happy land.

_THE TUNE._

The hymn was made popular thirty or more years ago in a musical arrangement by Hubert P. Main, with a chorus,--

I'm glad I'm in this army, And I'll battle for the school.

Children took to the little song with a keen relish, and put their whole souls--and bodies--into it.

"LITTLE TRAVELLERS ZIONWARD"