The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 12

_THE TUNE._

The tender and appropriate choral in B flat, named "Rutherford" was composed by D'Urhan, a French musician, probably a hundred years ago. It was doubtless named by those who long afterwards fitted it to the words, and knew whose spiritual proxy the lady stood who indited the hymn. It is reprinted in Peloubet's _Select Songs_, and in the _Coronation Hymnal_. Naturally in the days of the hymn's more frequent use people became accustomed to calling "The sands of time are sinking,"

"Rutherford's Hymn." Rutherford's own words certainly furnished the memorable refrain with its immortal glow and gladness. One of his joyful exclamations as he lay dying of his lingering disease was, "Glory s.h.i.+neth in Immanuel's Land!"

Chretien (Christian) Urhan, or D'Urhan, was born at Montjoie, France, about 1788, and died, in Paris, 1845. He was a noted violin-player, and composer, also, of vocal and instrumental music.

Mrs. Anne Ross (Cundell) Cousin, daughter of David Ross Cundell, M.D., and widow of Rev. William Cousin of the Free church of Scotland, was born in Melrose (?), 1824. She wrote many poems, most of which are beautiful meditations rather than lyrics suitable for public song. Her "Rutherford Hymn" was first published in the _Christian Treasury_, 1857.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.

"_Verzage Nicht Du Hauflein Klein._"

The historian tells us that before the battle of Lutzen, during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), King Gustavus of Sweden, in the thick fog of an autumn morning, with the Bohemian and Austrian armies of Emperor Ferdinand in front of him, knelt before his troops, and his whole army knelt with him in prayer. Then ten thousand voices and the whole concert of regimental bands burst forth in this brave song:

Fear not, O little flock, the foe Who madly seeks your overthrow, Dread not his rage and power: What though your courage sometimes faints, His seeming triumph o'er G.o.d's saints Lasts but a little hour.

Be of good cheer, your cause belongs To Him who can avenge your wrongs; Leave it to Him, our Lord: Though hidden yet from all our eyes, He sees the Gideon who shall rise To save us and His word.

As true as G.o.d's own word is true, Nor earth nor h.e.l.l with all their crew, Against us shall prevail: A jest and by-word they are grown; G.o.d is with us, we are His own, Our victory cannot fail.

Amen, Lord Jesus, grant our prayer!

Great Captain, now Thine arm make bare, Fight for us once again: So shall Thy saints and martyrs raise A mighty chorus to Thy praise, World without end. Amen.

The army of Gustavus moved forward to victory as the fog lifted; but at the moment of triumph a riderless horse came galloping back to the camp.

It was the horse of the martyred King.

The battle song just quoted--next to Luther's "Ein feste Burg" the most famous German hymn--has always since that day been called "Gustavus Adolphus' Hymn"; and the mingled sorrow and joy of the event at Lutzen named it also "King Gustavus' Swan Song." Gustavus Adolphus did not write hymns. He could sing them, and he could make them historic--and it was this connection that identified him with the famous battle song. Its author was the Rev. Johan Michael Altenburg, a Lutheran clergyman, who composed apparently both hymn and tune on receiving news of the king's victory at Leipsic a year before.

Gustavus Adolphus was born in 1594. His death on the battlefield occurred Nov. 5, 1632--when he was in the prime of his manhood. He was one of the greatest military commanders in history, besides being a great ruler and administrator, and a devout Christian. He was, during the Thirty Years' War (until his untimely death), the leading champion of Protestantism in Europe.

The English translator of the battle song was Miss Catherine Winkworth, born in London, Sept. 13, 1827. She was an industrious and successful translator of German hymns, contributing many results of her work to two English editions of the _Lyra Germania_, to the _Church Book of England_, and to _Christian Singers of Germany_. She died in 1878.

The tune of "Ravendale" by Walter Stokes (born 1847) is the best modern rendering of the celebrated hymn.

PAUL GERHARDT.

"_Befiehl Du Deine Wege._"

Paul Gerhardt was one of those minstrels of experience who are--

"Cradled into poetry by wrong, And learn in suffering what they teach in song."

He was a graduate of that school when he wrote his "Hymn of Trust:"

Commit thou all thy griefs And ways into His hands; To His sure trust and tender care Who earth and heaven commands.

Thou on the Lord rely, So, safe, shalt thou go on; Fix on His work thy steadfast eye, So shall thy work be done.

Give to the winds thy fears; Hope, and be undismayed; G.o.d hears thy sighs and counts thy tears, He shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and storms He gently clears thy way; Wait thou His time, so shall this night Soon end in joyous day.

Gerhardt was born at Grafenheinchen, Saxony, 1606. Through the first and best years of manhood's strength (during the Thirty Years' War), a wandering preacher tossed from place to place, he was without a parish and without a home.

After the peace of Westphalia he settled in the little village of Mittenwalde. He was then forty-four years old. Four years later he married and removed to a Berlin church. During his residence there he buried his wife, and four of his children, was deposed from the ministry because his Lutheran doctrines offended the Elector Frederick, and finally retired as a simple arch-deacon to a small parish in Lubben, where he preached, toiled, and suffered amid a rough and uncongenial people till he died, Jan. 16, 1676.

Few men have ever lived whose case more needed a "Hymn of Trust"--and fewer still could have written it themselves. Through all those trial years he was pouring forth his soul in devout verses, making in all no less than a hundred and twenty-five hymns--every one of them a comfort to others as well as to himself.

He became a favorite, and for a time _the_ favorite, hymn-writer of all the German-speaking people. Among these tones of calm faith and joy we recognize today (in the English tongue),--

Since Jesus is my Friend,

Thee, O Immanuel, we praise,

All my heart this night rejoices,

How shall I meet Thee,

--and the English translation of his "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,"

turned into German by himself from St. Bernard Clairvaux's "Salve caput cruentatum," and made dear to us in Rev. James Alexander's beautiful lines--

O sacred head now wounded, With grief and shame weighed down, Now scornfully surrounded With thorns, Thine only crown.

_THE TUNE._

A plain-song by Alexander Reinagle is used by some congregations, but is not remarkably expressive. Reinagle, Alexander Robert, (1799-1877) of Kidlington, Eng., was organist to the church of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford.

The great "Hymn of Trust" could have found no more sympathetic interpreter than the musician of Gerhardt's own land and language, Schumann, the gentle genius of Zwickau. It bears the name "Schumann,"

appropriately enough, and its elocution makes a volume of each quatrain, notably the one--

Who points the clouds their course, Whom wind and seas obey; He shall direct thy wandering feet, He shall prepare thy way.

Robert Schumann, Ph.D., was born in Zwickau, Saxony, June 8, 1810. He was a music director and conservatory teacher, and the master-mind of the pre-Wagnerian period. His compositions became popular, having a character of their own, combining the intellectual and beautiful in art.

He published in Leipsic a journal promotive of his school of music, and founded a choral society in Dresden. Happy in the cooperation of his wife, herself a skilled musician, he extended his work to Vienna and the Netherlands; but his zeal wore him out, and he died at the age of forty-six, universally lamented as "the eminent man who had done so much for the happiness of others."

Gerhardt's Hymn (ten quatrains) is rarely printed entire, and where six are printed only four are usually sung. Different collections choose portions according to the compiler's taste, the stanza beginning--

Give to the winds thy fears,

--being with some a favorite first verse.

The translation of the hymn from the German is John Wesley's.

Purely legendary is the beautiful story of the composition of the hymn, "Commit thou all thy griefs"; how, after his exile from Berlin, traveling on foot with his weeping wife, Gerhardt stopped at a wayside inn and wrote the lines while he rested; and how a messenger from Duke Christian found him there, and offered him a home in Meresburg. But the most ordinary imagination can fill in the possible incidents in a life of vicissitudes such as Gerhardt's was.