THE TUNE.
“Sussex,” by Joseph Barnby, a plain-song with a fine harmony, is good congregational music for the hymn.
But “Jewett,” one of Carl Maria Von Weber's exquisite flights of song, is like no other in its intimate interpretation of the prayerful words. 565 / 501 We hear Luther's “bird in the heart” singing softly in every inflection of the tender melody as it glides on. The tune, arranged by Joseph Holbrook, is from an opera—the overture to Weber's Der Freischutz—but one feels that the gentle musician when he wrote it must have caught an inspiration of divine trust and peace. The wish among the last words he uttered when dying in London of slow disease was, “Let me go back to my own (home), and then God's will be done.” That wish and the sentiment of Schmolke's hymn belong to each other, for they end in the same way.
My Jesus, as Thou wilt:
All shall be well for me;
Each changing future scene
I gladly trust with Thee.
Straight to my home above
I travel calmly on,
And sing in life or death
My Lord, Thy will be done.
“I CANNOT ALWAYS TRACE THE WAY.”
In later years, when funeral music is desired, the employment of a male quartette has become a favorite custom. Of the selections sung in this manner few are more suitable or more generally welcomed than the tender and trustful hymn of Sir John Bowring, rendered sometimes in Dr. Dykes' “Almsgiving,” but better in the less-known but more flexible tune composed by Howard M. Dow—
I cannot always trace the way
Where Thou, Almighty One, dost move,
But I can always, always say
That God is love.
When fear her chilling mantle flings
O'er earth, my soul to heaven above
As to her native home upsprings,
For God is love.
When mystery clouds my darkened path,
I'll check my dread, my doubts reprove;
In this my soul sweet comfort hath
That God is love.
Yes, God is love. A thought like this
Can every gloomy thought remove,
And turn all tears, all woes to bliss
For God is love.
The first line of the hymn was originally, “'Tis seldom I can trace the way.”
Howard M. Dow has been many years a resident of Boston, and organist of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons at the Tremont St. (Masonic) Temple.