“BRETHREN, WHILE WE SOJOURN HERE.”
This hymn was always welcome in the cottage meetings as well as in the larger greenwood assemblies. It was written by Rev. Joseph Swain, about 1783.
Brethren, while we sojourn here
Fight we must, but should not fear.
Foes we have, but we've a Friend,
One who loves us to the end;
Forward then with courage go;
Long we shall not dwell below,
Soon the joyful news will come,
“Child, your Father calls, ‘Come home.’”
The tune was sometimes “Pleyel's Hymn,” but oftener it was sung to a melody now generally forgotten of much the same movement but slurred in peculiarly sweet and tender turns. The cadence 327 / 281 of the last tune gave the refrain line a melting effect:
Child, your Father calls, “Come home.”
Some of the spirit of this old tune (in the few hymnals where the hymn is now printed) is preserved in Geo. Kingsley's “Messiah” which accompanies the words, but the modulations are wanting.
Joseph Swain was born in Birmingham, Eng. in 1761. Bred among mechanics, he was early apprenticed to the engraver's trade, but he was a boy of poetic temperament and fond of writing verses. After the spiritual change which brought a new purpose into his life, he was baptized by Dr. Rippon and studied for the ministry. At the age of about twenty-five, he was settled over the Baptist church in Walworth, where he remained till his death, April 16, 1796.
For more than a century his hymns have lived and been loved in all the English-speaking world. Among those still in use are—
How sweet, how heavenly is the sight,
Pilgrims we are to Canaan bound,
O Thou in whose presence my soul takes delight.