The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 6

Children of grace have found Glory begun below: Celestial fruits on earthly ground From faith and hope may grow.

Mortality and immortality blend their charms in the next stanza. The unfailing beauty of the vision will be dwelt upon with delight so long as Christians sing on earth.

The hill of Sion yields A thousand sacred sweets, Before we reach the heavenly fields, Or walk the golden streets.

_THE TUNE._

"St. Thomas" has often been the interpreter of the hymn, and still clings to the words in the memory of thousands.

The Italian tune of "Ain" has more music. It is a fugue piece (simplified in some tune-books), and the joyful traverse of its notes along the staff in four-four time, with the momentum of a good choir, is exhilarating in the extreme.

Corelli, the composer, was a master violinist, the greatest of his day, and wrote a great deal of violin music; and the thought of his glad instrument may have influenced his work when harmonizing the four voices of "Ain."

Arcangelo Corelli was born at Fusignano, in 1653. He was a sensitive artist, and although faultless in Italian music, he was not sure of himself in playing French scores, and once while performing with Handel (who resented the slightest error), and once again with Scarlatti, leading an orchestra in Naples when the king was present, he made a mortifying mistake. He took the humiliation so much to heart that he brooded over it till he died, in Rome, Jan. 18, 1717.

For revival meetings the modern tune set to "Come we that love the Lord," by Robert Lowry, should be mentioned. A shouting chorus is appended to it, but it has melody and plenty of stimulating motion.

The Rev. Robert Lowry was born in Philadelphia, March 12, 1826, and educated at Lewisburg, Pa. From his 28th year till his death, 1899, he was a faithful and successful minister of Christ, but is more widely known as a composer of sacred music.

"BE THOU EXALTED, O MY G.o.d."

In this hymn the thought of Watts touches the eternal summits. Taken from the 57th and 108th Psalms--

Be Thou exalted, O my G.o.d, Above the heavens where angels dwell; Thy power on earth be known abroad And land to land Thy wonders tell.

High o'er the earth His mercy reigns, And reaches to the utmost sky; His truth to endless years remains When lower worlds dissolve and die.

_THE TUNE._

Haydn furnished it out of his chorus of morning stars, and it was christened "Creation," after the name of his great oratorio. It is a march of trumpets.

"BEFORE JEHOVAH'S AWFUL THRONE."

No one could mistake the style of Watts in this sublime ode. He begins with his foot on Sinai, but flies to Calvary with the angel preacher whom St. John saw in his Patmos vision:

Before Jehovah's awful throne Ye nations bow with sacred joy; Know that the Lord is G.o.d alone; He can create and He destroy.

His sovereign power without our aid Made us of clay and formed us men, And when like wandering sheep we stray, He brought us to His fold again.

We'll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs, High as the heaven our voices raise, And earth with her ten thousand tongues Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise.

_TUNE--OLD HUNDRED._

Martin Madan's four-page anthem, "Denmark," has some grand strains in it, but it is a tune of florid and difficult vocalization, and is now heard only in Old Folks' Concerts.

The Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D., was born at Southampton, Eng., in 1674. His father was a deacon of the Independent Church there, and though not an uncultured man himself, he is said to have had little patience with the incurable penchant of his boy for making rhymes and verses. We hear nothing of the lad's mother, but we can fancy her hand and spirit in the indulgence of his poetic tastes as well as in his religious training.

The tradition handed down from Dr. Price, a colleague of Watts, relates that at the age of eighteen Isaac became so irritated at the crabbed and untuneful hymns sung at the Nonconformist meetings that he complained bitterly of them to his father. The deacon may have felt something as Dr. Wayland did when a rather "fresh" student criticised the Proverbs, and hinted that making such things could not be "much of a job," and the Doctor remarked, "Suppose _you_ make a few." Possibly there was the same gentle sarcasm in the reply of Deacon Watts to his son, "Make some yourself, then."

Isaac was in just the mood to take his father at his word, and he retired and wrote the hymn--

Behold the glories of the Lamb.

There must have been a decent tune to carry it, for it pleased the wors.h.i.+ppers greatly, when it was sung in meeting--and that was the beginning of Isaac Watts' career as a hymnist.

So far as scholars.h.i.+p was an advantage, the young writer must have been well equipped already, for as early as the entering of his fifth year he was learning Latin, and at nine learning Greek; at eleven, French; and at thirteen, Hebrew. From the day of his first success he continued to indite hymns for the home church, until by the end of his twenty-second year he had written one hundred and ten, and in the two following years a hundred and forty-four more, besides preparing himself for the ministry. No. 7 in the edition of the first one hundred and ten, was that royal jewel of all his lyric work--

When I survey the wondrous cross.

Isaac Watts was ordained pastor of an Independent Church in Mark Lane, London, 1702, but repeated illness finally broke up his ministry, and he retired, an invalid, to the beautiful home of Sir Thomas Abney at Theobaldo, invited, as he supposed, to spend a week, but it was really to spend the rest of his life--thirty-six years.

Numbers of his hymns are cited as having biographical or reminiscent color. The stanza in--

When I can read my t.i.tle clear,

--which reads in the original copy,--

Should earth against my soul engage And _h.e.l.lish darts be hurled_, Then I can smile at _Satan's rage_ And face a frowning world,

--is said to have been an allusion to Voltaire and his attack upon the church, while the calm beauty of the harbor within view of his home is supposed to have been in his eye when he composed the last stanza,--

There shall I bathe my weary soul In seas of heavenly rest, And not a wave of trouble roll Across my peaceful breast.

According to the record,--

What shall the dying sinner do?

--was one of his "pulpit hymns," and followed a sermon preached from Rom. 1:16. Another,--

And is this life prolonged to you?

--after a sermon from 1 Cor. 3:22; and another,--

How vast a treasure we possess,

--enforced his text, "All things are yours." The hymn,--

Not all the blood of beasts On Jewish altars slain,