OLD REVIVAL HYMNS.

The sober churches of the “Old Thirteen” states and of their successors far into the nineteenth century, sustained evening prayer-meetings more or less commonly, but necessity made them in most cases “cottage meetings” appointed on Sunday and here and there in the scattered homes of country parishes. Their intent was the same as that of “revival meetings,” since so called, though the method—and the music—were different. The results in winning sinners, so far as they owed anything to the hymns and hymn-tunes, were apt to be a new generation of Christian recruits as sombre as the singing. “Lebanon” set forth the appalling shortness of human life; “Windham” gave its depressing story of the great majority of mankind on the “broad road,” and other minor tunes proclaimed God's sovereignty and eternal decrees; or if a psalm had His love in it, it was likely to be sung in a similar melancholy key. Even in his gladness the good minister, Thomas Baldwin, of the Second Baptist Church, 309 / 263 at Boston, North End, returning from Newport, N.H., where he had happily harmonized a discordant church, could not escape the strait-lace of a C minor for his thankful hymn—

From whence doth this union arise,

That hatred is conquered by love.

“The Puritans took their pleasures seriously,” and this did not cease to be true till at least two hundred years after the Pilgrims landed or Boston was founded.

Time, that covered the ghastly faces on the old grave-stones with moss, gradually stole away the unction of minor-tune singing.

The songs of the great revival of 1740 swept the country with positive rather than negative music. Even Jonathan Edwards admitted the need of better psalm-books and better psalmody.

Edwards, during his life, spent some time among the Indians as a missionary teacher; but probably neither he nor David Brainerd ever saw a Christian hymn composed by an Indian. The following, from the early years of the last century, is apparently the first, certainly the only surviving, effort of a converted but half-educated red man to utter his thoughts in pious metre. Whoever trimmed the original words and measure into printable shape evidently took care to preserve the broken English of the simple convert. It is an interesting relic of the Christian thought and sentiment of a pagan just learning to prattle prayer and praise:

In de dark wood, no Indian nigh,

Den me look heaben, send up cry,

Upon my knees so low.

Dat God on high, in shinee place,

See me in night, with teary face,

De priest, he tell me so.

God send Him angel take me care;

Him come Heself and hear um prayer,

If Indian heart do pray.

God see me now, He know me here.

He say, poor Indian, neber fear,

Me wid you night and day.

So me lub God wid inside heart;

He fight for me, He take my part,

He save my life before.

God lub poor Indian in de wood;

So me lub God, and dat be good;

Me pray Him two times more.

When me be old, me head be gray,

Den He no lebe me, so He say:

Me wid you till you die.

Den take me up to shinee place,

See white man, red man, black man's face,

All happy 'like on high.

Few days, den God will come to me,

He knock off chains, He set me free,

Den take me up on high.

Den Indian sing His praises blest,

And lub and praise Him wid de rest,

And neber, neber cry.

The above hymn, which may be found in different forms in old New England tracts and hymn-books, and which used to be sung in Methodist 311 / 265 conference and prayer-meetings in the same way that old slave-hymns and the “Jubilee Singers” refrains are sometimes sung now, was composed by William Apes, a converted Indian, who was born in Massachusetts, in 1798. His father was a white man, but married an Indian descended from the family of King Philip, the Indian warrior, and the last of the Indian chiefs. His grandmother was the king's granddaughter, as he claimed, and was famous for her personal beauty. He caused his autobiography and religious experience to be published. The original hymn is quite long, and contains some singular and characteristic expressions.

The authorship of the tune to which the words were sung has been claimed for Samuel Cowdell, a schoolmaster of Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, 1820, but the date of the lost tune was probably much earlier.

In the early days of New England, before the Indian missions had been brought to an end by the sweeping away of the tribes, several fine hymns were composed by educated Indians, and were used in the churches. The best known is that beginning—

When shall we all meet again?

It was composed by three Indians at the planting of a memorial pine on leaving Dartmouth College, where they had been studying. The lines indicate an expectation of missionary life and work.

When shall we all meet again?

Oft shall glowing hope expire,

Oft shall wearied love retire,

Oft shall death and sorrow reign

Ere we all shall meet again.

Though in distant lands we sigh,

Parched beneath a burning sky,

Though the deep between us rolls,

Friendship shall unite our souls;

And in fancy's wide domain,

There we all shall meet again.

When these burnished locks are gray,

Thinned by many a toil-spent day,

When around this youthful pine

Moss shall creep and ivy twine,

(Long may this loved bower remain!)

Here may we all meet again.

When the dreams of life are fled,

When its wasted lamps are dead,

When in cold oblivion's shade

Beauty, health, and strength are laid,

Where immortal spirits reign,

There we all shall meet again.

This parting piece was sung in religious meetings as a hymn, like the other once so common, but later,—

“When shall we meet again,

Meet ne'er to sever?”

—to a tune in B flat minor, excessively plaintive, and likely to sadden an emotional singer or hearer to tears. The full harmony is found in the American Vocalist, and the air is reprinted in the Revivalist (1868). The fact that minor music is the natural 313 / 267 Indian tone in song makes it probable that the melody is as ancient as the hymn—though no date is given for either.

Tradition says that nearly fifty years later the same three Indians were providentially drawn to the spot where they parted, and met again, and while they were together composed and sang another ode. Truth to tell, however, it had only one note of gladness, and that was in the first stanza:

Parted many a toil-spent year,

Pledged in youth to memory dear,

Still to friendship's magnet true,

We our social joys renew;

Bound by love's unsevered chain,

Here on earth we meet again.

The remaining three stanzas dwell principally on the ravages time has made. The reunion ode of those stoical college classmates of a stoical race could have been sung in the same B flat minor.