Lead Kindly Light: Its Origin and Its Romance

Famous Hymns of the World Series
ITS ORIGIN AND ITS ROMANCE
BY ALLAN SUTHERLAND
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. HENRY C. McCOOK D.D., LL.D., Sc.D.
Illustrated
NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1905 By The Butterick Publishing Co., Ltd. Copyright, 1906 By Frederick A. Stokes Company
rom the earliest eras of history, religion has been wedded to song. In every stage of civilisation and in well-nigh every form of worship this has been true. From the rude ululations of savage medicine-men, with the monotonous beat of tum-tums, to the splendid Levitical choir of the Hebrew temple that rendered the psalms to the accompaniment of stringed and brazen instruments, the record does not vary.
How rhythm and melody react upon the religious sentiment, and why religious experience naturally flows in rhythmic utterance, one need not here inquire. Such inquiries belong to the natural history of sacred psalmody. But there are our sacred books to attest the facts. A large part of them are poems. The poets of ancient Israel were true prophets. The core of the Hebrew religion and worship lay within its religious songs; and these are the portions of its ritual that have lived; and one may safely predict that they shall run the whole cycle of being with our race.
As far back as the days of Moses, we read of Miriam under a prophetic impulse breaking forth into song to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from the Egyptians on the peninsular shore of the Red Sea. A refrain of that hymn has come down to us:
“Sing unto the Lord for He hath triumphed gloriously;
The horse and his rider He hath whelmed within the sea.”