The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 33

Dr. Newman was created a Cardinal of the Church of Rome in the Catholic Cathedral of London, 1879. Died Aug. 11, 1890.

_THE TUNE._

"Lux Benigna," by Dr. d.y.k.es, was composed in Aug. 1865, and was the tune chosen for this hymn by a committee preparing the Appendix to _Hymns Ancient and Modern_. Dr. d.y.k.es' statement that the tune came into his head while walking through the Strand in London "presents a striking contrast with the solitary origin of the hymn itself" (Benson).

Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on.

The night is dark and I am far from home; Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene,--one step enough for me.

So long Thy power hath bless'd me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

"I HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS SAY."

Few if any Christian writers of his generation have possessed tuneful gifts in greater opulence or produced more vital and lasting treasures of spiritual verse than Horatius Bonar of Scotland. He inherited some of his poetic faculty from his grandfather, a clergyman who wrote several hymns, and it is told of Horatius that hymns used to "come to" him while riding on railroad trains. He was educated in the Edinburgh University and studied theology with Dr. Chalmers, and his life was greatly influenced by Dr. Guthrie, whom he followed in the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland.

Born in 1808 in Edinburgh, he was about forty years old when he came back from a successful pastorate at Kelso to the city of his home and Alma Mater, and became virtually Chalmers' successor as minister of the Chalmers Memorial Church.

The peculiar richness of Bonar's sacred songs very early created for them a warm welcome in the religious world, and any devout lyric or poem with his name attached to it is sure to be read.

Dr. Bonar died in Edinburgh, July 31, 1889. Writing of the hymn, "I heard the voice," etc., Dr. David Breed calls it "one of the most ingenious hymns in the language," referring to the fact that the invitation and response exactly halve each stanza between them--song followed by countersong. "Ingenious" seems hardly the right word for a division so obviously natural and almost automatic. It is a simple art beauty that a poet of culture makes by instinct. Bowring's "Watchman, tell us of the night," is not the only other instance of similar countersong structure, and the regularity in Thomas Scott's little hymn, "Hasten, sinner, to be wise," is only a simpler case of the way a poem plans itself by the compulsion of its subject.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest, Lay down, thou weary one, lay down Thy head upon My breast:

I came to Jesus as I was, Weary and worn and sad, I found in Him a resting-place, And He has made me glad.

_THE TUNE._

The old melody of "Evan," long a favorite; and since known everywhere through the currency given to it in the _Gospel Hymns_, has been in many collections connected with the words. It is good congregational psalmody, and not unsuited to the sentiment, taken line by line, but it divides the stanzas into quatrains, which breaks the happy continuity.

"Evan" was made by Dr. Mason in 1850 from a song written four years earlier by Rev. William Henry Havergal, Canon of Worcester Cathedral, Eng. He was the father of Frances Ridley Havergal.

The more ancient "Athens," by Felice Giardini (1716-1796), author of the "Italian Hymn," has clung, and still clings lovingly to Bonar's hymn in many communities. Its simplicity, and the involuntary accent of its s.e.xtuple time, exactly reproducing the easy iambic of the verses, inevitably made it popular, and thousands of older singers today will have no other music with "I heard the voice of Jesus say."

"Vox Jesu," from the andante in one of the quartets of Louis Spohr (1784-1859), is a psalm-tune of good harmony, but too little feeling.

An excellent tune for all the shades of expression in the hymn, is the arrangement by Hubert P. Main from Franz Abt--in A flat, triple time.

Gentle music through the first fifteen bars, in alternate duet and quartet, utters the Divine Voice with the true accent of the lines, and the second portion completes the harmony in glad, full chorus--the answer of the human heart.

"Vox Dilecti," by Dr. d.y.k.es, goes farther and writes the Voice in B flat _minor_--which seems a needless subst.i.tution of divine sadness for divine sweetness. It is a tune of striking chords, but its s.h.i.+ft of key to G natural (major) after the first four lines marks it rather for trained choir performance than for a.s.sembly song.

It is possible to make too much of a dramatic perfection or a supposed indication of structural design in a hymn. Textual equations, such as distinguish Dr. Bonar's beautiful stanzas, are not necessarily technical. To emphasize them as ingenious by an ingenious tune seems, somehow, a reflection on the spontaneity of the hymn.

Louis Spohr was Director of the Court Theatre Orchestra in Ca.s.sel, Prussia, in the first half of the last century. He was an eminent composer of both vocal and instrumental music, and one of the greatest violinists of Europe.

Hubert Platt Main was born in Ridgefield, Ct., Aug. 17, 1839. He read music at sight when only ten years old, and at sixteen commenced writing hymn-tunes. Was a.s.sistant compiler with both Bradbury and Woodbury in their various publications, and in 1868 became connected with the firm of Biglow and Main, and has been their book-maker until the present time. As music editor in the partners.h.i.+p he has superintended the publication of more than five hundred music-books, services, etc.

"I LOVE TO STEAL AWHILE AWAY."

The burdened wife and mother who wrote this hymn would, at the time, have rated her history with "the short and simple annals of the poor."

But the poor who are "remembered for what they have done," may have a larger place in history than many rich who did nothing.

Phebe Hinsdale Brown, was born in Canaan, N.Y., in 1783. Her father, George Hinsdale, who died in her early childhood, must have been a man of good abilities and religious feeling, being the reputed composer of the psalm-tune, "Hinsdale," found in some long-ago collections.

Left an orphan at two years of age, Phebe "fell into the hands of a relative who kept the county jail," and her childhood knew little but the bitter fare and ceaseless drudgery of domestic slavery. She grew up with a crushed spirit, and was a timid, shrinking woman as long as she lived. She married Timothy H. Brown, a house-painter of Ellington, Ct., and pa.s.sed her days there and in Monson, Ma.s.s., where she lived some twenty-five years.

In her humble home in the former town her children were born, and it was while caring for her own little family of four, and a sick sister, that the incident occurred (August 1818), which called forth her tender hymn.

She was a devout Christian, and in pleasant weather, whenever she could find the leisure, she would "steal away" at sunset from her burdens a little while, to rest and commune with G.o.d. Her favorite place was a wealthy neighbor's large and beautiful flower garden. A servant reported her visits there to the mistress of the house, who called the "intruder"

to account.

"If you want anything, why don't you come in?" was the rude question, followed by a plain hint that no stealthy person was welcome.

Wounded by the ill-natured rebuff, the sensitive woman sat down the next evening with her baby in her lap, and half-blinded by her tears, wrote "An Apology for my Twilight Rambles," in the verses that have made her celebrated.

She sent the ma.n.u.script (nine stanzas) to her captious neighbor--with what result has never been told.

Crude and simple as the little rhyme was, it contained a germ of lyric beauty and life. The Rev. Dr. Charles Hyde of Ellington, who was a neighbor of Mrs. Brown, procured a copy. He was a.s.sisting Dr. Nettleton to compile the _Village Hymns_, and the humble bit of devotional verse was at once judged worthy of a place in the new book. Dr. Hyde and his daughter Emeline giving it some kind touches of rhythmic amendment,

I love to steal awhile away From little ones and care,

--became,--

I love to steal awhile away From _every c.u.mb'ring_ care.

In the last line of this stanza--

In grat.i.tude and prayer

--was changed to--

In humble, grateful prayer,

--and the few other defects in syllabic smoothness or literary grace were affectionately repaired, but the slight furbis.h.i.+ng it received did not alter the individuality of Mrs. Brown's work. It remained _hers_--and took its place among the immortals of its kind, another ill.u.s.tration of how little poetry it takes to make a good hymn. Only five stanzas were printed, the others being voted redundant by both author and editor. The second and third, as now sung, are--

I love in solitude to shed The penitential tear, And all His promises to plead Where none but G.o.d can hear.

I love to think on mercies past And future good implore, And all my cares and sorrows cast On Him whom I adore.

Phebe Brown died at Henry, Ill., in 1861; but she had made the church and the world her debtor not only for her little lyric of pious trust, but by rearing a son, the Rev. Samuel Brown, D.D., who became the pioneer American missionary to j.a.pan--to which Christian calling two of her grandchildren also consecrated themselves.

_THE TUNE._

Mrs. Brown's son Samuel, who, besides being a good minister, inherited his grandfather's musical gift, composed the tune of "Monson," (named in his mother's honor, after her late home), and it may have been the first music set to her hymn. It was the fate of his offering, however, to lose its filial place, and be succeeded by different melodies, though his own still survives in a few collections, sometimes with Collyer's "O Jesus in this solemn hour." It is good music for a hymn of _praise_ rather than for meditative verse. Many years the hymn has been sung to "Woodstock," an appropriate and still familiar tune by Deodatus Dutton.