“MY GOD, HOW ENDLESS IS THY LOVE.”
The spirited tune to this hymn of Watts, by Frederick Lampe, variously named “Kent” and “Devonshire,” historically reaches back so near to the poet's time that it must have been one of the earliest expressions of his fervent words.
Johan Friedrich Lampe, born 1693, in Saxony, was educated in music at Helmstadt, and came to 136 / 106 England in 1725 as a band musician and composer to Covent Garden Theater. His best-known secular piece is the music written to Henry Carey's burlesque, “The Dragon of Wantley.”
Mrs. Rich, wife of the lessee of the theater, was converted under the preaching of the Methodists, and after her husband's death her house became the home of Lampe and his wife, where Charles Wesley often met him.
The influence of Wesley won him to more serious work, and he became one of the evangelist's helpers, supplying tunes to his singing campaigns. Wesley became attached to him, and after his death—in Edinburgh, 1752—commemorated the musician in a funeral hymn.
In popular favor Bradbury's tune of “Rolland” has now superseded the old music sung to Watts' lines—
My God, how endless is Thy love,
Thy gifts are every evening new,
And morning mercies from above
Gently distil like early dew.
* * * * * *
I yield my powers to Thy command;
To Thee I consecrate my days;
Perpetual blessings from Thy hand
Demand perpetual songs of praise.
William Batchelder Bradbury, a pupil of Dr. Lowell Mason, and the pioneer in publishing Sunday-school music, was born 1816, in York, Me. His father, a veteran of the Revolution, was a 137 / 107 choir leader, and William's love of music was inherited. He left his father's farm, and came to Boston, where he first heard a church-organ. Encouraged by Mason and others to follow music as a profession, he went abroad, studied at Leipsic, and soon after his return became known as a composer of sacred tunes. He died in Montclair, N.J., 1868.