CHAPTER III PIONEER HYMN WRITERS WHILE the Psalms and hymns of Watts were coming into use in the New World, Americans themselves were trying their hand at versifying. Reference has just been made to the noble paraphrase of the 137th Psalm by Dwight. But with rare exceptions the hymns of the eighteenth century have long since been forgotten, for though colonial America had theologians and preachers second to none she was not yet on intimate terms with the muses. During the years that Charles Wesley and Doddridge and Cowper and Toplady and a score of others were enriching the literature of England with a veritable treasury of sacred song, the yield on this side of the sea was scanty and for the most part of an inferior order. Nor, indeed, as already stated, was there much incentive to hymn-writing. The Episcopal and many of the Presbyterian Churches held strictly to the singing of Psalms, while the Congregational Churches, and such of the Baptist and Presbyterian as preferred hymns, were well contented with the collection by Watts. The Methodists were few in number, and they had their Wesleyan hymn book. Not till American independence became more than a political fact, and the sons of this new soil awoke to full self-consciousness and felt the spur of freemen and heard the call of a new age, did the era of hymn-writing, in any large and worthy sense, begin on this side of the Atlantic. But while this is true, the pioneer efforts date from a much earlier time, and are of genuine interest not only because they were pioneer but because in some instances they were decidedly creditable. A forerunner among American hymn writers was Samuel Davies. Without doubt he was one of the most brilliant men that adorned the American pulpit during colonial days. He was born in 1723 and died at the early age of thirty-seven, but in that short time he made a wonderful record. He preached in Virginia for several years, and in 1759 he succeeded Jonathan Edwards as president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. As a pulpit orator he was the most distinguished American of his times. The crowds that gathered to hear him were so great that again and again, like Whitefield, he held his services in the open air. Before he was thirty he visited England, and his preaching in London created such a stir that it attracted the attention of George the Second, who invited the young man albeit he was a Presbyterian-to occupy the pulpit of the Chapel Royal. Davies did so, and the king was so delighted with the sermon that during its delivery he could not refrain from repeatedly whispering words of praise to those who sat near him. Davies was quite given to preaching on current events-indeed, this was one secret of his immense popularity. Being of a poetic bent, he was also in the habit, now and again, of appending an original hymn to his sermon. These hymns do not appear to have been sung by the people, but they form a very appropriate and effective close to the printed discourses. The Lisbon earthquake occurred in 1755 and made a profound impression on both Europe and America. It moved Charles Wesley to write a special group of hymns, which came into general circulation. Samuel Davies improved the occasion to preach a sermon of warning and admonition. The hymn which followed it bore the title: "The Different States of Sinners and Saints in the Wreck of Nature." It is now entirely forgotten, but for many years it was widely used both in America and England. In part it ran as follows: "How great, how terrible that God, He frowns, and Earth's Foundations shake, "Where now, oh where shall Sinners seek "In vain for mercy now they cry; "But, Saints, undaunted and serene In the early collections this hymn was included among those classified as "Alarming," and designed to arouse sinners from their easy slumbers. But it should be added that most of Davies' hymns were not of this character. Indeed, for that age they were remarkably free from the smell of fire and brimstone. The year of the earthquake also witnessed the disastrous defeat of the British and colonial forces under Braddock, by the French and Indians. A wave of dismay swept over the central colonies and especially Virginia. The general gloom was deepened by the almost complete loss of the crops, from lack of rain. Davies, who was an ardent patriot, took occasion to 'preach a special sermon on, "Virginia's Danger and Remedy, and occasioned by the severe Drought in sundry Parts of that Country, and the Defeat of General Braddock." With dramatic eloquence he pictured the "Slaughtered families, mangled corpses, men, women, and children held in barbarous captivity in the dens of savages; routed garrisons, demolished fortifications, deserted, desolated settlements upon our frontiers." With fiery zeal he denounced France as the center of a "formidable confederacy of Popish tyrants" which was trying to shatter British liberties, and then he feelingly referred to "our brave ally, the King of Prussia." Strange reading in these days of reversed alliances! Following the sermon came this hymn, which later found its way into the hymnals of various denominations and was in use down to recent times as appropriate for FastDays: "While o'er our guilty Land, O Lord, "While Clouds collecting o'er our Head "On Thee, our Guardian God we call, |