HYMNS PROCEEDING FROM SUDDEN INSPIRATION
The Fruit of Pain
In the next chapter reference is made to the various imaginary stories of the writing by Charles Wesley of the hymn "Jesu, Lover of my soul," stories really based upon the language of the hymn itself. A similar instance of the play of imagination is connected with Dr. George Matheson's delightful verses, beginning "O Love, that wilt not let me go," a hymn which deserves a far wider use than it has at present attained, and to which Dr. A. L. Peace has set a most beautiful tune, adapted to the unusual meter of the lines.
The story has been repeated again and again of the author's marriage engagement, which was followed by the loss of his sight, with the result that his fiancée, on hearing of his blindness, broke off the compact, and that it was after receiving her letter announcing her decision that he sat down and wrote this hymn. Two of its verses would appear to exactly express his feeling under such circumstances:
O Love, that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee,
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee,
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
But here again the story is purely imaginary, inspired, no doubt, by the phraseology of the hymn, and by the knowledge that Dr. Matheson had lost his sight.
The writer has been recently assured by Dr. Matheson's sister that the story of these circumstances is entirely unfounded. As a matter of fact, Dr. Matheson became blind in his youth, while the hymn was not written until 1882, when he was forty years of age.
At that time, Miss Matheson says, he had sustained a sad bereavement, and that it was whilst alone and brooding over his sorrow that the words were suddenly suggested to him, and were, to use his own expression, "the inspiration of a moment.”
The lines were written on a summer evening, in the Manse at Innellan, Argyllshire, the parish of which Dr. Matheson was minister. The author himself said of his hymn: "It was composed with extreme rapidity; it seemed to me that its construction only occupied a few minutes, and I felt myself rather in the position of one who was being dictated to than of an original artist. I was suffering from extreme mental distress, and the hymn was the fruit of pain.”
In the School Playground
One December day in 1871, Frances Ridley Havergal, then visiting a friend, Mr. Snepp of Perry Barr (who the next year edited Songs of Grace and Glory) walked with him to the boys' school, and, while he went in, leaned against the playground wall to rest, as she was very tired.
When Mr. Snepp returned ten minutes later he found Miss Havergal busily scribbling on an old envelope. At his request she gave him the hymn which she had just written, and which has become very popular in America, though not so well-known in this country.
The first verse, composed amid such apparently inappropriate surroundings, runs thus:
Golden harps are sounding,
Angel voices sing,
Pearly gates are opened,
Opened for the King:
Jesus, King of Glory,
Jesus, King of Love,
Is gone up in triumph
To His throne above.
All His work is ended,
Joyfully we sing;
Jesus hath ascended!
Glory to our King!
For this hymn Miss Havergal afterward composed her stirring tune "Hermas," the tune which was on her lips when, eight years later, on June 3, 1879, the "pearly gates" opened for her, and she passed into the Presence of her King.
During the Epidemic
In the month of July, 1864, an epidemic was raging in the city of Brooklyn, which was then the home of Dr. Robert Lowry. One hot afternoon Dr. Lowry was seated in his study, his thought occupied with the reason for hymn writers saying so much about the river of death and so little about the river of the water of life which St. John saw flowing through the street of the New Jerusalem.
As he sat wrapt in thought, there suddenly came to him the words of a new hymn. These he hurriedly wrote down, and then, turning to the organ which stood in his room, he straightway composed the tune which probably is sung to his words in the great majority of the world's Sunday Schools. So came into being the hymn,
Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?
Dr. Lowry himself did not think very highly of his own musical composition, which he said owed its popularity to its lilt and swing rather than to its excellence.
It does not seem to have occurred to him to notice the inaccuracy of the last line of the above verse, which is repeated in the chorus.
The river, as described by St. John in Rev. 22:11And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. (Revelation 22:1), to which the hymn refers, does not flow "by" the throne of God, but "out of" it, a very different thing. It is really a symbolical description of the Holy Spirit "proceeding from the Father and the Son." But it is a common fault of hymn writers to treat the symbolical language of Scripture as if it were literal.
Completed in Thirty Minutes
In the village of Elkhorn, in Wisconsin, U.S.A., lived a musician and composer, Mr. J. P. Webster. Of an extremely sensitive nature, he was frequently attacked by fits of melancholy and depression. One of his friends, Mr. S. F. Bennett, who resided in the same village, found that these moods could often be dispelled by giving the musician a new hymn or song which needed music written for it.
On one such occasion Mr. Bennett was sitting writing in his office, when Webster entered and walked to the fire, turning his back upon his friend without a word.
Bennett asked him what was the matter, and only received a curt and indefinite reply to the effect that "it would be all right by and by.”
Instantly the last three words of Webster's answer flashed the idea of a hymn into Bennett's mind.
“The sweet by and by" he said; "would not that make a good hymn?”
Webster answered in an uninterested tone that "it might," but Bennett, turning to his desk, wrote down, as fast as his pen could cover the paper, the first three verses and chorus of the world-famous hymn, best known by that title. When finished he handed the manuscript to Webster.
The musician's interest was awakened, his whole aspect changed; turning to the desk, he began, equally rapidly, to compose a melody for the stirring words. He then requested one of two other friends, who had come in, to lend him his violin, on which he played over the new melody.
Once more he turned to the desk, and wrote down the harmonies for the four parts of the chorus.
Within thirty minutes from the time Mr. Bennett wrote the first line the four friends were singing the hymn as it was afterward published.
During the singing a fifth friend entered, and, after listening, exclaimed with tears in his eyes, "That hymn is immortal!”
A true prophecy, for the world will never forget the touching lines and music thus rapidly put together in the little American village over fifty years ago:
There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar,
For the Father waits, over the way,
To prepare us a dwelling-place there.
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.
The Undergraduate and the School Girl
Rather more than a century ago a brilliant undergraduate of Cambridge University was sitting for his mathematical examination. Having finished all the problems which had been set, and having to remain in the examination room for the full period of time allowed, he occupied himself by writing on the back of his examination paper the first ten lines of the hymn now known by its opening words,
Oft in danger, oft in woe,
although these particular words were really an emendation of later times.
Some sixteen years afterward the paper, with Kirke White's lines still on the back, came into the possession of Mrs. Fuller-Maitland, who was compiling a hymn book.
She could not, of course, use an unfinished hymn, but she showed the paper to her daughter Frances, a schoolgirl of fourteen, remarking on the pity of its not being complete. The girl took the paper to her own room, and presently brought it back to her mother, with fourteen new lines added, thus making a perfect hymn.
Mrs. Fuller-Maitland published the hymn in her book, and it has now come into almost universal use.
Kirke White entitled his hymn "The Christian Soldier Encouraged," but Frances Fuller-Maitland attained this aim much more successfully than did the original author. The first verse, as the undergraduate wrote it, is decidedly depressing:
Much in sorrow, oft in woe,
Onward, Christians, onward go,
Fight the fight, and, worn with strife,
Steep with tears the bread of life.
It was the schoolgirl who wrote the stirring lines:
Let your drooping hearts be glad;
March in heavenly armor clad;
Fight, nor think the battle long,
Victory soon shall tune your song
From Theory to Practice
Both the words and music of the widely used hymn, "Yield not to temptation," are the work of Mr. H. R. Palmer. The author says that the hymn was an inspiration which came to him while he was studying the dry subject of "Theory"; the whole idea of both words and music came to him instantaneously, and putting aside his theoretical work, he wrote them both down as fast as his pen could move.
On the suggestion of a friend some slight changes were made in the third verse, and the tune was afterward transposed from the key of A flat to that of B fiat, otherwise the composition is exactly as it came that day from Mr. Palmer's pen.
The Steps of the Staircase
In the year 1872 two ladies were conversing together on the subject, dear to both their hearts, of the Return of Our Lord, and one of them quoted a line from the writings of Anna Shipton, "This may be the day of His Coming," adding her testimony to the joy and comfort she found in the thought.
Mr. P. P. Bliss, the well-known hymn writer, was sitting near, and overheard the conversation, which impressed him more deeply than ever before with the reality of the Second Advent.
A few days later the same thought was occupying his mind as he was slowly descending the stairs from his room, when he commenced singing, on the spur of the moment, the lines of his widely known hymn:
Down life's dark vale we wander
Till Jesus comes;
We watch, and wait, and wonder,
Till Jesus comes.
Oh, let my lamp be burning,
When Jesus comes;
For Him my soul be yearning,
When Jesus comes.
As Mr. Bliss took step after step down the staircase, so the words and music together were given him—indeed, one can almost hear the singer stepping slowly down the stairs as one repeats the lines.
He then wrote the hymn and music down, just as it appeared in the first collection of hymns published by Moody and Sankey.
For Medical Missions
Somewhere about 1898 I had a long train journey from London to the north of England.
Alone in the carriage, towards the end of the journey, the thought occurred to me that a good hymn for Medical Missions abroad could be founded on the incident so well described in the opening verse of Canon Twells' beautiful hymn, "At even, ere the sun was set.”
Taking pencil and paper, I proceeded to set down verses to succeed that well-known first verse, but on this different subject. Being afterward submitted to competent judges, this new version was warmly approved, and Canon Twells having most generously and kindly allowed the use of his opening lines, the hymn was published in the Church Missionary Hymn Book, set to the usual tune "Angelus," and has been somewhat widely used.
It may be of interest to the readers of these pages if I venture to quote some of the verses, beginning with the second, which follows that of Canon Twells:
Fast falls the world's great eventide,
Her sun is sinking in the sky;
And still, O Lord, on every side
Her sick and suffering round Thee lie.
'Mid heathen ignorance and gloom,
By untold maladies oppressed,
They sink in anguish to the tomb,
Unhealed, uncomforted, unblest.
O Savior, Thou art with us still,
Through other hands Thy touch we feel,
Thou workest yet by human skill,
Thy power is present still to heal.
The last verse ends with the repetition of the original hymn's beautiful closing line:
Stretch forth, O Lord, Thy hand of power,
As o'er the world the shadows fall,
Hear, in this last and solemn hour,
And in Thy mercy heal us all.
All but Burnt
On January 10, 1858, Miss Frances Ridley Havergal, then staying with a German minister, came in tired and weary, and sat down in her host's study. On the wall opposite hung a picture of our Blessed Lord on the Cross, and underneath were the words "I did this for thee; what hast thou done for Me?”
As Miss Havergal sat there, the Savior's eyes seemed to rest upon her, and, on reading the words below the picture, her now well-known and beautiful hymn seemed to flash into her mind:
I gave My life for thee,
My precious Blood I shed,
That thou might'st ransomed be,
And quickened from the dead.
I gave My life for thee;
What hast thou given for Me?
Snatching up a piece of paper, Miss Havergal hurriedly scribbled down the above and following verses of the hymn, but, appealing as the words have been to many, they did not then appear so to her. On the contrary, she thought them so poor and unsatisfactory that she decided not to trouble to write them out properly, and tossed the paper on to the fire. Happily it fell from the grate to the hearth, undestroyed although crumpled and singed, whereupon the author changed her mind and put the verses aside.
Soon after, happening to visit an old woman in an almshouse, she thought she would see whether these verses would appeal to the simple old woman, feeling sure that no one else would be likely to care for them. But the old lady was so delighted with them, that Miss Havergal then copied them out afresh and eventually showed them to her father, the Rev. William Havergal, who not only persuaded her to keep them, but also wrote for them the tune Bap," to which they are so often sung. A year later they were published in leaflet form, and the next year appeared in Good Words.
In several hymn books the hymn has been recast, so as to be addressed by us to Christ instead of by Christ to us, probably being considered as more suitable for public worship in that form. So in this revision the first line reads,
Thy life was given for Me.
Miss Havergal made no objection to this alteration, inasmuch as the sentiment of the hymn remained unchanged, but she preferred her own original version as being the most appealing and effective, with which many will agree.
The Appeal of the Third Verse
When Prebendary W. St. Hill Bourne wrote his beautiful and widely used harvest hymn, "The Sower went forth sowing," he was a young clergyman, in charge of a church at South Ashford, Kent, with a congregation largely consisting of railway men and their families.
On the proprietors of Hymns Ancient and Modern obtaining permission to use this hymn in one of their new editions, and no special tune having been written for it, they sent it to Sir Frederick Bridge at Westminster Abbey, asking him to compose a suitable tune.
Sir Frederick received this request just at the time when his little daughter Beatrice lay dying, and it can be well understood how, under such circumstances, the words of the third verse would appeal to the father's heart:
Within a hallowed acre
He sows yet other grain,
Where peaceful earth receiveth
The dead He died to gain;
For, though the growth be hidden,
We know that they shall rise;
Yea, even now they ripen
In sunny Paradise.
O summer land of harvest!
O fields forever white
With souls that wear Christ's raiment,
With crowns of golden light.
Such was the effect of these lovely lines, that Sir Frederick himself declared the writing of his tune for them to be different from any other work which he had ever done. To that fact is due, no doubt, the exquisite beauty of the music, which, in memory of the beloved little daughter, the composer named "St. Beatrice.”
During the Haymaking
Few hymns for an after-meeting are more effective than that written by the Rev. W. E. Witter, with its tender and touching appeal,
While Jesus whispers to you,
Come, sinner, come!
While we are praying for you,
Come, sinner, come!
Now is the time to own Him,
Come, sinner, come!
Now is the time to know Him,
Come, sinner, come!
The author says that the hymn was written in the summer of 1877, when he was a student at college, but had returned home on account of his mother's serious illness. He had been reading the biography of Mr. P. P. Bliss, and the words of his sacred songs were constantly in Mr. Witter's mind, leading him to pray that he too might be inspired to write some hymn that would reach the hearts of men and help to lead them to Christ.
It was on a Saturday afternoon that the answer to the prayer was given. Along the roadside the grass had been cut for hay, and Mr. Witter was helping to fork it up into haycocks, when the words of this hymn seemed to sing themselves into his heart, to a melody very like the music afterward composed for them by Mr. H. R. Palmer.
Leaving the haymaking, he hurried to the house, and, kneeling beside the bed in his brother's room, began to write down on paper the words that were still in his mind. He did this, he says "with a strange consciousness that they were God-given, and that God would use them." It goes without saying that this feeling has been abundantly justified by the blessing brought through Mr. Witter's lines to many souls.
In the Stage-Coach
In the year 1841 a young lady, aged twenty-eight, by name Miss Jemima Thompson, began to attend the Normal Infant School in Gray's Inn Road, London, in order to obtain some knowledge of the system of teaching.
Among the pieces played when the children were marching was a Greek air, which pleased Miss Thompson very much, and which she felt would form an admirable tune for a children's hymn if she could only find words to fit it. But the rhythm of the music was very unusual, and although Miss Thompson searched through various Sunday School and other hymn books, she failed to find anything that would suit the measure of the melody.
After a time she was obliged to return to her home, and soon after traveled on some missionary business to the little town of Wellington, journeying in a stage-coach. It was an hour's ride, and a beautiful spring morning, and except herself there was no other inside passenger. Then there came to her mind once more the haunting strains of the marching tune, and taking an old envelope from her pocket she wrote in pencil, the first two verses of one of the most delightful children's hymns ever composed, intending them simply for the use of the children in the village school, but which—with an additional verse added later in order to give the hymn a missionary character—have become famous the world over, the first of them being,
I think when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men,
How He called little children as lambs to His fold,
I should like to have been with Him then.
I wish that His hands had been placed on my head,
That His arms had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen His kind look when He said,
“Let the little ones come unto Me.”
Mr. Thompson, the authoress's father, was superintendent of the Sunday School in the village, and his custom was to let the children choose the first hymn each Sunday. One Sunday they started "I think when I read that sweet story of old," which they had learned in the day school. Mr. Thompson turned to his younger daughters and said: “Where did that come from? I never heard it before.”
To which they replied, "Oh, Jemima made it.”
The next day he asked for a copy, and sent it, without Miss Thompson's knowledge, to The Sunday School Teachers' Magazine, except for which action it would probably never have appeared in print.
It will be observed that the hymn was originally written in three verses of eight lines each, though each verse is now usually divided into two verses of four lines. It is remarkable indeed that the writer of such a beautiful sacred lyric, who began her contributions to The Juvenile Magazine at the age of thirteen, and afterward published several works, yet never composed another hymn.
She herself says, however, regarding her hymn, “It was a little inspiration from above, and not ' in me,' for I have never written other verses worthy of preservation.”
The First English Hymn Writer
It may be of interest to my readers to know that the first hymn written in English, or rather in the Anglo-Saxon language of that age, was composed by a man named Cædmon towards the close of the seventh century.
The story of its origin is remarkable, for Cædmon until quite late in life was so ignorant of singing or music that when, at some entertainment, it was arranged that everyone should sing in turn, a harp being passed from one to another, he, when his turn was approaching, would leave the feast and return home.
On one such occasion, instead of going to his own house, he went to the stable, which had been placed under his charge for the night, and lay down to sleep.
During the night he had a dream of someone standing by him and calling him by his name, saying: “Cædmon, sing me something," to which he replied: “I know not how to sing; and for that reason I went out from the entertainment and retired hither, because I could not sing.”
“Yet you have something to sing to me," replied the one who had called him.
“What must I sing," inquired Cædmon, to which the reply was:
“Sing the beginning of created things," whereupon he, who had never sung in his life before, began to sing entirely original verses in praise of God the Creator.
On rising from sleep he found that he could remember all that he had sung in his dream, and from that time he continued to compose many such beautiful verses and hymns by the power thus remarkably given to him by God.