The Story of the Hymns and Tunes Part 42

No other hymn better expresses the outreaching of ardent faith. Its very repet.i.tions emphasize and sweeten the vision of longed-for fruition.

I can tarry, I can tarry but a night, Do not detain me, for I am going.

There the sunbeams are ever s.h.i.+ning, O my longing heart, my longing heart is there.

Of that country to which I'm going, My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light.

There is no sorrow, nor any sighing, Nor any sin there, nor any dying, I'm a pilgrim, etc.

The same devout poetess also wrote (1840) the once popular consolatory hymn,--

O sing to me of heaven When I'm about to die,

--sung to the familiar tune by Rev. E.W. Dunbar; also to a melody composed 1854 by Dr. William Miller.

The line was first written--

When _I am called_ to die,

--in the author's copy. The hymn (occasioned by the death of a pious friend) was written Jan. 15, 1840.

Mrs. Dana (s.h.i.+ndler) died in Texas, Feb. 8, 1883.

"JOYFULLY, JOYFULLY ONWARD I MOVE."

The maker of this hymn has been confounded with the maker of its tune--partly, perhaps, from the fact that the real composer of the tune also wrote hymns. The author of the words was the Rev. William Hunter, D.D., an Irish-American, and a Methodist minister. He was born near Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ire., May, 1811, and was brought to America when a child six years old. He received his education in the common schools and at Madison College, Hamilton, N.Y., (now Madison University), and was successively a pastor, editor and Hebrew professor.

Besides his work in these different callings, he wrote many helpful hymns--in all one hundred and twenty-five--of which "Joyfully, Joyfully," dated 1842, is the best. It began originally with the line--

Friends fondly cherished have pa.s.sed on before,

--and the line,--

Home to the land of delight I will go.

--was written,--

Home to the land of bright spirits I'll go.

Dr. Hunter died in Ohio, 1877.

_THE TUNE._

Rev. Abraham Dow Merrill, the author of the music to this triumphal death-song, was born in Salem, N.H., 1796, and died April 29, 1878. He also was a Methodist minister, and is still everywhere remembered by the denomination to which he belonged in New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont. He rode over these states mingling in revival scenes many years. His picture bears a close resemblance to that of Was.h.i.+ngton, and he was somewhat famous for this resemblance. His work was everywhere blessed, and he left an imperishable influence in New England. The tune, linked with Dr.

Hunter's hymn, formed the favorite melody which has been the dying song of many who learned to sing it amid the old revival scenes:

Death, with thy weapons of war lay me low; Strike, king of terrors; I fear not the blow.

Jesus has broken the bars of the tomb, Joyfully, joyfully haste to thy home.

"TIS THE OLD s.h.i.+P OF ZION, HALLELUJAH!"

This may be found, vocalized with full harmony, in the _American Vocalist_. With all the parts together (more or less) it must have made a vociferous song-service, but the hymn was oftener sung simply in soprano unison; and there was sound enough in the single melody to satisfy the most zealous.

All her pa.s.sengers will land on the bright eternal sh.o.r.e, O, glory hallelujah!

She has landed many thousands, and will land as many more, O, glory hallelujah!

Both hymn and tune have lost their creators' names, and, like many another "voice crying in the wilderness," they have left no record of their beginning of days.

"MY BROTHER, I WISH YOU WELL."

My brother, I wish you well, My brother, I wish you well; When my Lord calls I trust you will Be mentioned in the Promised Land.

Echoes that remain to us of those fervid and affectionate, as well as resolute and vehement, expressions of religious life as sung in the early revivals of New England, in parts of the South, and especially in the Middle West, are suggestive of spontaneous melody forest-born, and as unconscious of scale, clef or tempo as the song of a bird. The above "hand-shaking" ditty at the altar gatherings apparently took its tune self-made, inspired in its first singer's soul by the feeling of the moment--and the strain was so simple that the convert could join in at once and chant--

When my Lord comes I trust _I shall_

--through all the loving rotations of the crude hymn-tune. Such song-births of spiritual enthusiasm are beyond enumeration--and it is useless to hunt for author or composer. Under the momentum of a wrestling hour or a common rapture of experience, counterpoint was unthought of, and the same notes for every voice lifted pleading and praise in monophonic impromptu. The refrains--

O how I love Jesus,

O the Lamb, the Lamb, the loving Lamb,

I'm going home to die no more,

Pilgrims we are to Canaan's land,

O turn ye, O turn ye, for why will you die,

Come to Jesus, come to Jesus, just now,

--each at the sound of its first syllable brought its own music to every singer's tongue, and all--male and female--were sopranos together. This habit in singing those rude liturgies of faith and fellows.h.i.+p was recognized by the editors of the _Revivalist_, and to a mult.i.tude of them s.p.a.ce was given only for the printed melody, and of this sometimes only the three or four initial bars. The tunes were the church's rural field-tones that everybody knew.

Culture smiles at this uncla.s.sic hymnody of long ago, but its history should disarm criticism. To wanderers its quaint music and "pedestrian"

verse were threshold call and door-way welcome into the church of the living G.o.d. Even in the flaming days of the Second Advent following, in 1842-3, they awoke in many hardened hearts the spiritual glow that never dies. The delusion pa.s.sed away, but the grace remained.

The church--and the world--owe a long debt to the old evangelistic refrains that rang through the sixty years before the Civil War, some of them flavored with tuneful piety of a remoter time. They preached righteousness, and won souls that sermons could not reach. They opened heaven to thousands who are now rejoicing there.

CHAPTER VIII.