VI. UNITARIAN HYMNODY
The production of original hymns in New England took a peculiar course. After Samuel F. Smith, the spirit of praise left the Orthodox churches and took refuge with the ostensible Unitarians. The reaction against the rigid and harsh Calvinism was not so much against the doctrine of the deity of Christ, as against the false corollaries drawn metaphysically from the noble doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, as well as the crass, materialistically conceived, conception of the state of the impenitent dead, that was painted so luridly and offensively in song as well as in sermon.
Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843), was the son of Professor Henry Ware, who held the chair of Divinity in Harvard College for thirty-five years. He himself became professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care in the same institution in 1830. The pastor for thirteen years of a prominent Unitarian church in Boston, he never wavered in his faith in the deity of Jesus Christ. How otherwise could he have written that triumphant Easter hymn:
“Lift your glad voices in triumph on high,
For Jesus hath risen, and man cannot die;
Vain were the terrors that gathered around him,
And short the dominion of death and the grave.”
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), America’s first great poet, wrote five hymns for Henry D. Sewall’s Unitarian Church hymnal in 1820. He was a member of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in New York City. Yet in 1865 he could write a hymn containing the following stanza:
“Lo! in the clouds of heaven appears
God’s well-beloved Son;
He brings the train of brighter years;
His Kingdom is begun;
He comes, a guilty world to bless
With mercy, truth, and righteousness.”
In 1875 he could still write in a hymn on “The Star of Bethlehem,”
“Yet doth the Star of Bethlehem shed
A luster pure and sweet;
And still it leads, as once it led,
To the Messiah’s feet.”
An even more remarkable Unitarian was Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), the great physician, but even greater poet. He had the reputation of being rather radical in his religious views; he was a humorist whom human life rather amused than impressed seriously (though he was tender enough to human suffering), but, when a hymn seemed an appropriate close for one of his genial essays, he could write,
“Lord of all being, throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near.”
But unless in the deeper depths of his soul there still lingered faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, how could he write,
“O Love divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On thee we cast each earthborn care;
We smile at pain while thou art near.”
Especially that last verse of unshaken faith:
“On thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love divine, forever dear;
Content to suffer while we know,
Living and dying, thou art near.”
What might not Oliver Wendell Holmes have done for Christian hymnody, had he had Charles Wesley’s evangelical experience and piety?
Another Unitarian deserving recognition was Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876), who is not remembered because of his successful pastoral career of forty years, nor by his theological treatises and religious writings, but by his two Christmas hymns, perhaps the best written in America (not forgetting Bishop Brooks’ “O Little town of Bethlehem”)—“Calm on the listening ear of night” and “It came upon the midnight clear.” The first was written soon after his graduation from Harvard College in 1834, and the other in 1849 after he had been in the pastorate over a decade. Of course, he was a firm believer in the deity of Christ, else he could not have written these hymns.
After Dr. Ray Palmer, our best American hymnist is John G. Whittier (1807-1892), who never aspired to such honors! His hymns have been most deftly extracted from longer poems and, despite their being mere fragments, are distinctive hymns in progress of thought and structure. Moreover, they are the very choicest passage in these longer poems. The additional marvel is that this Unitarian Hicksite Quaker, who was not taught to sing hymns in his youth, should have given finer expression than any other writer to the sense of present intimate communion with Christ:
“But warm, sweet, tender, even yet
A present help is He;
And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.”