The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 79

"Why the one you have been singing."

The young man said he did not know what he had been singing. But when the older one repeated some of the lines, he said they were learned in the Sunday-school.

"Come, Harry," said the older one, "here's what I've won from you. As for me, as G.o.d sees me, I have played my last game, and drank my last bottle. I have misled you, Harry, and I am sorry for it. Give me your hand, my boy, and say that, for old America's sake, if for no other, you will quit this infernal business."

Col. Russel H. Conwell, of Boston, (now Rev. Dr. Conwell of Philadelphia) who was then visiting China, and was an eye-witness of the scene, says that the reformation was a permanent one for both.

"I WILL SING YOU A SONG OF THAT BEAUTIFUL LAND."

One day, in the year 1865, Mrs. Ellen M.H. Gates received a letter from Philip Phillips noting the pa.s.sage in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ which describes the joyful music of heaven when Christian and Hopeful enter on its shining sh.o.r.e beyond the river of death, and asking her to write a hymn in the spirit of the extract, as one of the numbers in his _Singing Pilgrim_. Mrs. Gates complied--and the sequel of the hymn she wrote is part of the modern song-history of the church. Mr. Phillips has related how, when he received it, he sat down with his little boy on his knee, read again the pa.s.sage in Bunyan, then the poem again, and, turning to his organ, pencil in hand, p.r.i.c.ked the notes of the melody. "The 'Home of the Soul,'" he says, "seems to have had G.o.d's blessing from the beginning, and has been a comfort to many a bereaved soul. Like many loved hymns, it has had a peculiar history, for its simple melody has flowed from the lips of High Churchmen, and has sought to make itself heard above the din of Salvation Army cymbals and drums. It has been sung in prisons and in jailyards, while the poor convict was waiting to be launched into eternity, and on hundreds of funeral occasions. One man writes me that he has led the singing of it at one hundred and twenty funerals. It was sung at my dear boy's funeral, who sat on my knee when I wrote it. It is my prayer that G.o.d may continue its solace and comfort. I have books containing the song now printed in seven different languages."

A writer in the _Golden Rule_ (now the _Christian Endeavor World_) calls attention to an incident on a night railroad train narrated in the late Benjamin F. Taylor's _World on Wheels_, in which "this hymn appears as a sort of Traveller's Psalm." Among the motley collection of pa.s.sengers, some talkative, some sleepy, some homesick and cross, all tired, sat two plain women who, "would make capital country aunts.... If they were mothers at all they were good ones." Suddenly in a dull silence, near twelve o'clock, a voice, sweet and flexible, struck up a tune. The singer was one of those women. "She sang on, one after another the good Methodist and Baptist melodies of long ago," and the growing interest of the pa.s.sengers became chained attention when she began--

"I will sing you a song of that beautiful land, The far-away home of the soul, Where no storms can beat on the glittering strand, While the years of eternity roll.

O, that home of the soul, in my visions and dreams, Its bright jasper walls I can see; Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenes Between the fair city and me."

"The car was a wakeful hush long before she had ended; it was as if a beautiful spirit were floating through the air. None that heard will ever forget. Philip Phillips can never bring that 'home of the soul' any nearer to anybody. And never, I think, was quite so sweet a voice lifted in a storm of a November night on the rolling plains of Iowa."

In an autograph copy of her hymn, sent to the editor, Mrs. Gates changes "harps" to "palms." Is it an improvement? "Palms" is a word of two meanings.

O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land, So free from all sorrow and pain, With songs on our lips and with harps in our hands To meet one another again.

"THERE'S A LAND THAT IS FAIRER THAN DAY."

This belongs rather with "Christian Ballads" than with genuine hymns, but the song has had and still has an uplifting mission among the lowly whom literary perfection and musical nicety could not touch--and the first two lines, at least, are good hymn-writing. Few of the best sacred lyrics have been sung with purer sentiment and more affectionate fervor than "The Sweet By-and-By." To any company keyed to sympathy by time, place, and condition, the feeling of the song brings unshed tears.

As nearly as can be ascertained it was in the year 1867 that a man about forty-eight years old, named Webster, entered the office of Dr. Bennett in Elkhorn. Wis., wearing a melancholy look, and was rallied good-naturedly by the doctor for being so blue--Webster and Bennett were friends, and the doctor was familiar with the other's frequent fits of gloom.

The two men had been working in a sort of partnership, Webster being a musician and Bennett a ready verse-writer, and together they had created and published a number of sheet-music songs. When Webster was in a fit of melancholy, it was the doctor's habit to give him a "dose" of new verses and cure him by putting him to work. Today the treatment turned out to be historic.

"What's the matter now," was the doctor's greeting when his "patient"

came with the tell-tale face.

"O, nothing," said Webster. "It'll be all right by and by."

"Why not make a song of the sweet by and by?" rejoined the doctor, cheerfully.

"I don't know," said Webster, after thinking a second or two. "If you'll make the words, I'll write the music."

The doctor went to his desk, and in a short time produced three stanzas and a chorus to which his friend soon set the notes of a lilting air, brightening up with enthusiasm as he wrote. Seizing his violin, which he had with him, he played the melody, and in a few minutes more he had filled in the counterpoint and made a complete hymn-tune. By that time two other friends, who could sing, had come in and the quartette tested the music on the spot. Here different accounts divide widely as to the immediate sequel of the new-born song.

A Western paper in telling its story a year or two ago, stated that Webster took the "Sweet By and By" (in sheet-music form), with a batch of other pieces, to Chicago, and that it was the only song of the lot that Root and Cady would not buy; and finally, after he had tried in vain to sell it, Lyon and Healy took it "out of pity," and paid him twenty dollars. They sold eight or ten copies (the story continued) and stowed it away with dead goods, and it was not till apparently a long time after, when a Sunday-school hymn-book reprinted it, and began to sell rapidly on its account, that the "Sweet By and By" started on its career round the world.

This seems circ.u.mstantial enough, and the author of the hymn in his own story of it might have chosen to omit some early particulars, but, untrustworthy as the chronology of mere memory is, he would hardly record immediate popularity of a song that lay in obscurity for years.

Dr. Bennett's words are, "I think it was used in public shortly after [its production], for within two weeks children on the street were singing it."

The explanation may be partly the different method and order of the statements, partly lapses of memory (after thirty years) and partly in collateral facts. The Sunday-school hymn-book was evidently _The Signet Ring_, which Bennett and Webster were at work upon and into which first went the "Sweet By and By"--whatever efforts may have been made to dispose of it elsewhere or whatever copyright arrangement could have warranted Mr. Healy in purchasing a song already printed. The _Signet Ring_ did not begin to profit by the song until the next year, after a copy of it appeared in the publishers' circulars, and started a demand; so that the _immediate_ popularity implied in Doctor Bennett's account was limited to the children of Elkhorn village.

The piece had its run, but with no exceptional result as to its hold on the public, until in 1873 Ira D. Sankey took it up as one of his working hymns. Modified from its first form in the "_Signet Ring_" with pianoforte accompaniment and chorus, it appeared that year in _Winnowed Hymns_ as arranged by Hubert P. Main, and it has so been sung ever since.

Sanford Filmore Bennett, born in 1836, appears to have been a native of the West, or, at least, removed there when a young man. In 1861 he settled in Elkhorn to practice his profession. Died Oct., 1898.

Joseph Philbrick Webster was born in Manchester, N.H. March 22, 1819. He was an active member of the Handel and Haydn Society, and various other musical a.s.sociations. Removed to Madison, Ind. 1851, Racine, Wis. 1856, and Elkhorn, Wis., 1857, where he died Jan. 18, 1875. His _Signet Ring_ was published in 1868.

There's a land that is fairer than day, And by faith I can see it afar For the Father waits over the way To prepare us a dwelling-place there.

CHORUS In the sweet by and by We shall meet on that beautiful sh.o.r.e.

We shall sing on that beautiful sh.o.r.e The melodious songs of the blest, And our spirits shall sorrow no more, Nor sigh for the blessing of rest.

In the sweet by and by, etc.

"SUNSET AND EVENING STAR."

Was it only a poet's imagination that made Alfred Tennyson approach perhaps nearest of all great Protestants to a sense of the real "Presence," every time he took the Holy Communion at the altar? Whatever the feeling was, it characterized all his maturer life, so far as its spiritual side was known. His remark to a niece expressed it, while walking with her one day on the seash.o.r.e, "G.o.d is with us now, on this down, just as truly as Jesus was with his two disciples on the way to Emmaus."

Such a man's faith would make no room for dying terrors.

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me, And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as, moving, seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark, And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark.

For though from out our bourne of time and place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.

Tennyson lived three years after penning this sublime prayer. But it was his swan-song. Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, Aug. 63 1809, dying at Farringford, Oct. 6, 1892, he filled out the measure of a good old age.

And his prayer was answered, for his death was serene and dreadless. His unseen Pilot guided him gently "across the bar"--and then _he saw Him_.

_THE TUNE._

Joseph Barnby's "Crossing the Bar" has supplied a n.o.ble choral to this poem. It will go far to make it an accepted tone in church worship, among the more lyrical strains of verse that sing hope and euthanasia.

"SAFE IN THE ARMS OF JESUS."

If Tennyson had the mistaken feeling (as Dr. Benson intimates) "that hymns were expected to be commonplace," it was owing both to his mental breeding and his mental stature. Genius in a colossal frame cannot otherwise than walk in strides. What is technically a hymn he never wrote, but it is significant that as he neared the Sh.o.r.eless Sea, and looked into the Infinite, his sense of the Divine presence instilled something of the hymn spirit into his last verses.

Between Alfred Tennyson singing trustfully of his Pilot and f.a.n.n.y Crosby singing "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," is only the width of the choir. The organ tone and the flute-note breathe the same song. The stately poem and the sweet one, the masculine and the feminine, both have wings, but while the one is lifted in anthem and solemn chant in the great sanctuaries, the other is echoing Isaiah's tender text[48] in prayer meeting and Sunday-school and murmuring it at the humble firesides like a mother's lullaby.

[Footnote 48: Isa. 40:11.]

Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast, There by His love o'ershaded Sweetly my soul shall rest.

Hark! 'tis the voice of angels Borne in a song to me Over the fields of glory, Over the jasper sea.