Hymns and Classical lovers

We are finally having a new set of hymns by next month. I f you have not downloaded the old ones, this is the last chance because as from next month, we would be having a new set of hymns on the site. Just click HERE

The Christian Church has many stirring rally hymns, but none that is more effective when sung by a large assembly than George Duffield’s “Stand up, stand up for Jesus.” Who has not been moved to the depths of his soul by the inspiring words and resounding music of this unusual hymn? A tragedy lies in its background. It was in the year 1858, and a great spiritual awakening was gripping the city of Philadelphia. Men referred to this revival afterwards as “the work of God in Philadelphia.” One of the most earnest and zealous leaders in the movement was a young pastor, Dudley A. Tyng, not quite thirty years old. Because of his evangelical convictions and his strong opposition to slavery he had shortly before been compelled to resign as rector of the Church of the Epiphany, and in 1857 he had organized a little congregation that met in a public hall. In the midst of the revival in 1858 he preached a powerful sermon at a noon-day meeting in Jayne’s Hall to a gathering of 5,000 men. His text...

“Saviour, sprinkle many nations” has been called the “loveliest of missionary hymns.” The praise is scarcely too great. All the elements that make a great hymn are present here. Scriptural in language and devotional in spirit, it is fervent and touching in its appeal and exquisitely beautiful in poetic expression. It was given to the Church by Arthur Cleveland Coxe, an American bishop, in 1851, and since that time it has made its victorious course around the world. A study of the hymn is interesting. The first stanza at once suggests the words of Jesus, uttered in the last week of His life, when Greek pilgrims in Jerusalem came seeking for Him: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” In the second stanza the author no doubt had in mind the immortal words of St. Augustine: “Thou, O Lord, hast made me for Thyself, and my heart can find no rest till it rest in Thee.” And in the final stanza we find almost an echo of the thought expressed by Paul in Romans: ...

While all the hymn-writers of Germany in the early part of the eighteenth century were more or less influenced by the Pietistic movement, there were some who nevertheless refused to be carried away by the emotional extravagances of which some of the Halle song-writers were often guilty. In the hymns of these more conservative psalmists we find a happy blending of objective teaching and a warm, personal faith that reminds us of the earlier hymns of Gerhardt. The chief representatives of this more typical Lutheran school were Benjamin Schmolck, a beloved pastor and a poet of rare ability, and Erdmann Neumeister, creator of the Church Cantata. It was the age in which John Sebastian Bach lived and wrought, and this prince of Lutheran organists, whose title of “high priest of church music” has never been disputed, gave of his musical genius to help make the hymns of Schmolck and Neumeister immortal. Next to Gerhardt, there is no German hymnist whose name is so frequently found in hymn-book...

While Isaac Watts was working on his immortal version of “Psalms of David,” a baby girl was born to a Baptist minister at Broughton, fifteen miles away. The baby was Anne Steele, destined to become England’s first woman hymn-writer. This was in 1716. Her father, who was a merchant as well as a minister, served the church at Broughton for sixty years, the greater part without pay. The mother died when Anne was only a babe of three years. From childhood the future hymnist was delicate in health, and in 1735 she suffered a hip injury which made her practically an invalid for life. The hardest blow, however, came in 1737, when her lover, Robert Elscourt, was drowned on the day before he and Anne were to have been married. The grief-stricken young woman with heroic faith nevertheless rose above her afflictions and found solace in sacred song. It is believed that her first hymn, a poem of beautiful resignation, was written at this time: Father, whate’er of earthly bliss Thy sovereign will d...

In one of England’s famous old churches there is a tablet marking the last resting-place of one of its rectors, and on the tablet this epitaph: “John Newton, clerk, once an Infidel and Libertine, a servant of slavers in Africa, was, by the rich Mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had long labored to destroy.” This inscription, written by Newton himself before his death, tells the strange story of the life of the man who wrote “How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds,” and scores of other beautiful hymns. Newton was born in London, July 24, 1725. His father was a sea captain. His mother, a deeply pious woman, though frail in health, found her greatest joy in teaching her boy Scripture passages and hymns. When he was only four years old he was able to read the Catechism. The faithful mother often expressed the hope to her son that he might become a minister. However, when the lad was only seven years of age, the moth...