In the Hymns of Faith and Hope, by Rev. Dr. Horatius Bonar, 1857, this well-known poem first appeared, bearing the title, "Heaven Anticipated." It has owed much of its popularity to its unusual rhythm and the beauty of the refrain. The hymn leads us to the conclusion that life is a melancholy affair if left to itself, but the sure hope of redemption illumines the outlook. So, in the catacombs underneath Rome, on one side of the devious paths the inscriptions on the heathen's tombs are sad and desponding, while on the other side, where the Christians are buried, they are bright and full of hope. Death is not the end; the sense of despair yields to the blessed certainty of a happy immortality. We shall find our old friends in heaven; we shall know them when we see them. The new life will be occupied partly in "knitting severed friendships up." And as for that awful dread of divine justice, it will be displaced by a wonderful peace; for we can rest implicitly in God's justice when Jesus the Saviour stands by, with the sure pardon in his hands! It is according to one's hearty confidence in receiving this information that he will look forward toward the inevitable crisis. I sometimes think that people will enter heaven as the miscellaneous vessels enter New York Bay through the Narrows. Some will actually have to be tugged in by the violent faith and prayer of others, who will be at hand to help their feebleness as Christiana helped Readyto-Halt. Some will come in slowly and undecidedly, as if they dared to put up only a sail or two, and the wind was uncertain. But there will be many proud, glad ships, with all their spars covered with white canvas. To them will be "an entrance ministered abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' Out of this exquisite piece of poetry have been compiled two very acceptable hymns. The refrain is what gives the title to each; and this was the exclamation of the dying man, as it has been recorded for more than two hundred years in the annals of Scotland. At the sinking of the sun, late in the afternoon of the final day of his life, one of his friends, standing beside the couch, asked him, What think ye now of Christ?" To that this "true saint of the covenant replied thus: Oh, that all my brethren in the land may know what a Master I have served, and what peace I have this day! I shall sleep in Christ, and when I awake, I shall be satisfied with his likeness. This night shall close the door, and put my anchor within the vail; and I shall go away in a sleep by five of the clock in the morning. Glory! glory to my Creator and my Redeemer for ever! I shall live and adore him. Oh, for arms to embrace him! Oh, for a well-tuned harp! Glory! glory tion concerning his departure was fulfilled dwelleth in Immanuel's land!" The predicexactly, and these telling and intense expressions of the dying saint, with a few others like them, were wrought skillfully into the poem. "Ev'n Anworth was not heaven-ev'n preaching was not Christ; And in my sea-beat prison, my Lord and I held tryst : And aye my murkiest storm-cloud was by a rainbow spanned, Caught from the glory dwelling-in Immanuel's land. "The little birds at Anworth, I used to count them blest; Now, beside happier altars, I go to build my nest; O'er these there broods no silence, no graves around "Fair Anworth by the Solway, to me thou still art dear! Ev'n from the verge of heaven I drop for thee a tear. Oh, if one soul from Anworth meet me at God's right hand, My heaven will be two heavens-in Immanuel's land." A short time previous to this he broke out into a sort of sacred rapture, exalting and commending the Lord Jesus as his blessed Master, calling him his "kingly King." He cried: "I shall shine-I shall see him as he is; I shall see him reign, and all his fair company with him, and I shall have my large share. Mine eyes shall behold my Redeemerthese very eyes of mine, and none other for me. This may seem a wide word, but it is no fancy or delusion; it is true. Let my Lord's name be exalted; and, if he will, let my name be grinded to pieces, that he may be all in all. If he slay me ten thousand times, I will trust." He died March 20, 1661. 1121 "No more death." THERE is an hour of peaceful rest, To mourning wanderers given; There is a joy for souls distressed; A balm for every wounded breast: 'T is found above-in heaven. 2 There is a home for weary souls, By sin and sorrow driven, C. M. 51. When tossed on life's tempestuous shoals, And all is drear-but heaven. 3 There faith lifts up her cheerful eye 4 There fragrant flowers immortal bloom, Appears the dawn of heaven! This piece has long been a favorite in the American churches. It was composed by Rev. William Bingham Tappan, so long the superintendent of the American SundaySchool Union. In a volume called Gems of Sacred Poetry, 1860, he says of this hymn: "It was written by me in Philadelphia, in the summer of 1818, for the Franklin Gazette, edited by Richard Bache, Esq., and was introduced by him to the public in terms sufficiently flattering to a young man who then certainly lacked confidence in himself. The piece was republished in England and on the Continent, in various newspapers and magazines, and was also extensively circulated in my own native land, where it has found a place in several hymn and music-books. It was published in my first volume of Poems, at Philadelphia, in 1819, and soon after was set to music by A. P. Heinrich, Esq., in the same city." It is in Lyra Sacra Americana, 1868. 66 1122 "Darkness cometh never." Oн, land relieved from sorrow! 2 Oh happy, holy portal 3 Oh, home where God the Father 4 Rise, then, O brightest morning! Come, then, triumphant day! When into new adorning We change and pass away: For so with firm endeavor Our spirits gladly tend Where darkness cometh never, And joy shall never end. 7s, 6s. D. Rev. Samuel Willoughby Duffield wrote this piece. He had a keen sense of the sweetness of sound and the agreeableness of true rhythm. And then he was a sincere Christian; and was going to die young, though he did not know that. He loved home, and he loved heaven. This piece voiced his nature well. In his English Hymns, 1888, he has given his own account of its composition: This is an original hymn, composed in 1875 under circumstances peculiarly calculated to draw the thought to things above. It has existed in manuscript, unpublished, until the preparation of Laudes Domini called it out. The first draft of the hymn is on two crumpled pieces of paper which have been several times cast aside and nearly destroyed; but they have mysteriously reappeared, even from the depths of waste-paper baskets and the wild confusion of disintegrated material ! The refrain really produced the hymn. Perhaps it grew up. primarily, from the rhythm of Bernard of Cluny, which the author has always loved, and the cento from which he rendered, in its original meter, in 1868. The Heimweh'-the heavenly longing-has many hymns besides this which express it." From off the fettered captive The chains of Satan fall, While angels shout triumphant, That Christ is Lord of all. 2 Oh, Christ, his love is mighty! Long-suffering is his grace: And glorious is the splendor That beameth from his face. Our hearts up-leap in gladness When we behold that love, As we go singing onward To dwell with him above. In the Lyra Britannica, 1867, this hymn by Mrs. Charitie Lees Bancroft first appeared, its form being seven stanzas of eight lines each. It has been considerably abbreviated to fit it for common use, the present cento beginning with the third verse. Thus it becomes a spirited lyric, which anticipates with joyous triumph the end of life, and the vision of Christ in glory which will burst upon the believer on his entrance into a higher world. But now comes the interruption-do not many men, who are not at all ready in any Christian sense to die, seem to make a most dignified and courageous departure? Yes-Mirabeau, in the last languor of his feebleness, is observed to hush that tremendous voice of his, just to sigh softly to the attendants, "Let me die to the sound of delicious music!" Nelson at Trafalgar, when the last pulse of living energy is welling up, is heard to say grandly, "Now for a peerage or Westminster Abbey!" And even the great Cæsar, looking only to his own robes, and folding them with care about his person, is recorded to have died with dignity, as an immortal Roman should. This is admitted: thus the world's heroes and statesmen and monarchs are sometimes found at the final hour, looking far and looking near. But no one of them, save here and there a believer in Christ, do we discover looking where Stephen looked, or seeing what Stephen saw. That blessed vision is not unvailed. Acts 7:55, 56. "O Paradise." 1124 O PARADISE! O Paradise! REF.-Where loyal hearts and true Stand ever in the light, All rapture through and through, 2 O Paradise! O Paradise! 3 O Paradise! O Paradise! I greatly long to see The special place my dearest Lord In love prepares for me.-REF. P. M. 4 Lord Jesus, King of Paradise, REF. Where loyal hearts and true All rapture through and through, This is perhaps out of the best loved of all the poems by Dr. Frederick William Faber, whose many fine compositions have given him so high a place in the affection of Christians. It appeared first in his collected Hymns, 1862, having originally seven stanzas with the refrain. It puts into words the longing of the soul for its true home, far from the strife and bitterness and disappointment of this everyday life. So the traditions of human history have kept the hopes of men, ill and weak and miserable, alive. There must be somewhere on this planet of ours a home for the soul, tired with wrestling, fatigued with fight. Call it the "field" of Avalon, the "beautiful vale of Tempe, the" Hill of the Serene;" always the same, it meant a locality, outside of the roar and the rush, the anguish and the turmoil, of time and toiling, in which one could find peace at last, where weapons were not tearing one's nerves to pieces with clashing, and horns could hang contented on the walls with no challenge to make for any more war. But it all meant nothing; the rude world rolled along, and rough gibes of ridicule and rougher oaths of cursing were hurled against the man who would not laugh with the rest, and, when disgusted, swear as other disgusted people did, and so soothe his feelings in the hard pressures of wrath and pain. Well, then, if no better spot, surely one can find a breathing-time of release now and then! So bright minds went a step further down into the regions of fable. They talked about halcyon days and related a tender little story about a daughter of Æolus, whose husband was drowned in a cruel sea; when the body was washed upon the shore next day this bereaved widow clung to it, and was drifted back with it into the same waves and strangled in the same embrace. To reward their pitiable affection, the gods metamorphosed them both into kingfishers and changed the name of the birds into Halcyons, and afterward decreed that all oceans should for ever remain calm while these devoted creatures built their nests directly on the water. Thus men had fourteen days called "halcyon days," in which vessels were never even tossed on the billows of the unresting sea; seven days just before the winter-solstice, in which the kingfishers built their nests, and other seven days just after, in DAILY, daily sing the praises 2 In the midst of that dear City 3 From the throne a river issues, And it traverses the City Like a sudden beam of light. 4 There the wind is sweetly fragrant, And is laden with the song Of the seraphs, and the elders, 8s, 75. 5 Oh, I would my ears were open Here to catch that happy strain! Oh, I would my eyes some vision Of that Eden could attain! This is one of the most beautiful and popular hymns written by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, some of whose poems are to be found in many different collections. It is a description of that celestial city in which Christ reigns, an dwhere, as it is told us in the vision of St. John, Revelation 4:3, the sign of God's love surrounds that of his power. Love is symbolized in the rainbow, and power in the throne; and the rainbow is round about the throne. The attribute of omnipotence is not a pleasant one in itself to contemplate. If we should look up at this glorious spectacle and see only the throne, we might be frightened. We should be hushed into trembling silence before the thunder which shakes the cedars, tosses the waves of the ocean, and counts the mountains but as a very little thing. But we see the bow round about the throne; our eyes behold and our hearts believe that whatever is alarming in our thought of the Supreme Being who rules us is embraced in a beautiful circle of emerald promise which gives peace. And this is better than to be told merely by words. The venerable Hooker was uttering something more than a simple rule of rhetoric when he once said, "What we drink in at our ears doth not so piercingly enter as what the mind doth conceive by sight." It does not seem as if any one could ever forget this arch of promise above and around this seat of power. 3 There the Lamb, our Shepherd, leads us On the freshest pastures feeds us, 4 Soon we pass this desert dreary, This was cut from the Bible Hymn-Book, 1845, away back in those early days when there was hardly a hymn-book with tunes published or used in the American churches. The name of Dr. Horatius Bonar had not become a household word, and few people cared to know who the authors of hymns were, though they knew a good one when they found it. It was entitled, "Pressing toward Heaven," and it reproduced the sentiment of Deuteronomy 12:9: For ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you." 1128 8s, 75. "The King in his beauty." 2 Onward then! not long I wander Through the halls of light above! Miss Catharine Winkworth published these stanzas in the Lyra Germanica, Series II., 1858. The poem included much more, but these lines of it seemed the fittest for public It is a translation of one of the German hymns of Johann Georg Albinus, once pastor at Unter Nessa, in Saxony. This author was born March 6, 1624, and died May 25, 1679. use. Christian faith loves to repeat the last words of the martyr Stephen. He did not appear very anxious to know any details of that new life. He was satisfied to put his soul in the hands of God who gave it. God would do with it just what he pleased. Oh, it is easy for one, who, while living, has given his spirit to God, in the covenant hope of redemption, to surrender it joyfully in the hour of death! Stephen knew just where he was. Through the opened rift of the blue sky over his head came a blessed vision to give him welcome and encouragement. There he saw the Lord Jesus at the right hand of his Father. It was into no strange companionship he was going. That mysterious indweller of his mutilated and dying body, which he called his spirit, was on the point now of being cared for better than ever it had been before. Up to this last moment that redeemed nature of his had been, like a militant prince, absent from his royal abode, out in the campaign, dwelling in a tent, roughing it in innumerable hardships. It had had a fight to make to hold fast its Now, in the high utterance of this tranquil surrender, it resembled the same prince, in the hour of triumph, going home to the palace. It mattered little thereafter that would not need it any more. the old tent was battered and torn. He The victory crown. |